Monday, July 11, 2011

Stepper Extruder

I've been sidetracked on a few projects and just now getting back to printing.

Instead of working on a scanning solution I decided to move on to a Stepper Extruder. There are several out there and the "Wade" one is the most known. I went with a derivative called "Accessible Wade's Extruder by GregFrost".

 This particular version did not have a base which fit my printer so I used it as a starting point. I added a base which allowed me to mount a standard MK4 hotend and use the same Dinos used with the Brutstruder. I made some small riser blocks in order to increase the z-axis capacity.

With the Brutstruder I was printing .36 mm layer height at 27 mm/s. With the stepper extruder I am now able to print .30 mm layer height at 30 mm/s.

I used the Brutstruder to print a first stepper extruder and then printed this one using it:







































I made a driver using a Pololu A4983 as discussed in a previous post. 
I messed up by not breaking out the Enable pin, but I can use the one connecting the Pololu board and it works fine. I fixed the circuit layout and included the corrected version in my previous post. I just haven't gotten around to etching a new board. When I do I'll try and document the process since it is a bit different than what I have seen others do. Here it is from start to mounted finished board.