Anet MK8 extruder filament guides
Description
Inserting filament into the Anet extruder can be a struggle because the extruder design has open space beside the filament track. With bended filament and especially with flexible filament this can lead to a lot of frustration. Also the stock extruder is not suitable for flexible filament because the filament has no good guiding after the drive gear. I designed two extruder filament guides to solve this issue. One for stiff filament like PLA, ABS or PETG and one for flexible filament such as TPU. These guides guides the filament in the best way for inserting and while printing. The stiff filament guide give the best insertion guiding but the stroke of the U-groove bearing to the drive gear is restricted. The complete stroke is not needed with stiff filament. The stiff filament guide partly fills this gap for easier insertion. The flexible filament guide don't have the stroke limitation. Soft filament compressed much more, therefore the U-groove bearing must be able to hit the drive gear. The guides remains in position because it's slides over the stepper motor shaft, and is holded in position between the heat sink and stepper motor. Installation is simple. Turn the printer off and unscrew the two bolts that mounts the fan and heatsink to the stepper motor. Compress the extruder while screwing or unscrewing these bolts. Unscrew the extruder lever hinge bolt. Slide the guide over the U-groove bearing and stepper motor shaft. Screw the hinge bolt back in, and rescrew the two bolts back in that mounts the fan and heatsink to the stepper motor. The drive gear may need to be turned so that its clamp bolt is on the stepper side. Also adjust the drive gear position on the motor shaft so that it don't hit the guide. Adjust the extruder open position of the with the bolt in the lever so that it cannot be opened further than necessary. Both guides are in two variants, with and without a counterbore hole with 1mm depth that give clearance for the throat that can stick out. The print support for the counterbore hole guide can be easily removed with a suitable flat head screwdriver. If you own a 0.2 mm print nozzle, I recommend to print the stiff guide version 0.2. The stroke of the U-groove bearing to the drive gear is less restricted what can prevent filament grinding or under-extruding with some softer filament. The filament transit hole in the extruder lever has a ledge that also makes filament insertion difficult. Here the entry guide can be inserted for a smooth filament insertion through the lever. Print the guides with a 0.1 mm layer height setting and 100% infill. Use PLA filament because its good printing properties and hardness.
Statistics
Likes
33
Downloads
0