E2 - Direct drive Bondtech BMG + E3D v6 on Folgertech 2020 or other Prusa i3 Clone

Description

I have made many improvements to my Folgertech 2020 i3 over the past three years. converting to a Bowden setup and back, trying multiple clone hotends and setups. I eventually had to replace the stock extruder because it had nearly worn through from so much printing. After first trying a cheap but poorly designed extruder from Aliexpress, I picked up a BMG clone, which is hands down the best extruder I have used so far. I first paired it with a genuine E3D v6 hotend in a bowden setup, but experieced jamming in the hotend due to the large retracts involved to make retract work at all in the bowden setup. I wanted to move back to a direct drive setup to get more control over the filament and bring the retraction distance back down, but mounting the motor, extruder and hotend in the original way of the Folgertech design puts a lot of weight far away from the x axis rods, making the whole setup quite shaky, especially with the added weight of the bmg extruder. To this end, I designed a new x carriage and placed the heavy motor on the back side of the x axis, to act as a counterweight to the extruder, hotend and other features on the front of the printer. This also moves the hotend closer to the x axis as well, which adds much needed stiffness to the hotend. The motor had to be placed up high, with a short piece of bowden tube connecting the hotend and extruder. I added extra holes 30mm apart in the x carriage for mounting both the hotend and any other future upgrades. Finally, I added a print cooling fan and duct in front of the hotend. The result is a well balanced and very rigid x carriage. The hotend no longer flexes up and down as it did in the original design. The new carriage plate fits printer design which places two chromed rods 45 mm apart. Note that to get back full coverage of the bed, I had to move the entire XZ structure forward to match the relocation backwards of the hotend, but the 2020 construction of this printer makes it easy. The conversion may be more difficult on other printers.

Statistics

Category

Tags