Any good light weight direct extruder/hot-end?

fcwilt

@zapta said in Any good light weight direct extruder/hot-end?:

Thanks @alexander-mundy, that's really good information.

Any reason not going with the direct nema 8 appraoch?

I am thinking getting the sidewinder nimble to have the nema8 mounted lower. Is this reasonable?

Hi,

When you say "direct nema 8 approach" do you mean not using the normal Nimble cable?

If so, that would seem to defeat the purpose of using the Nimble in the first place, which is to get the stepper motor mounted to the frame instead of some part of the moving gantry.

Frederick

gtj0

@fcwilt said in Any good light weight direct extruder/hot-end?:

If so, that would seem to defeat the purpose of using the Nimble in the first place, which is to get the stepper motor mounted to the frame instead of some part of the moving gantry.

Frederick

It depends... With the Nimble (which I also use), you get the high ratio gearing which allows you to use a smaller stepper like the NEMA 8s. Balance that against the mass of the drive shaft, which you still have to move, and it may be a better arrangement for some.

zapta

@gtj0 said in Any good light weight direct extruder/hot-end?:

Balance that against the mass of the drive shaft, which you still have to move, and it may be a better arrangement for some.

IIRC, several people mentioned in posts here that the flex cable tends to wear out. Is it so?

gtj0

@zapta said in Any good light weight direct extruder/hot-end?:

@gtj0 said in Any good light weight direct extruder/hot-end?:

Balance that against the mass of the drive shaft, which you still have to move, and it may be a better arrangement for some.

IIRC, several people mentioned in posts here that the flex cable tends to wear out. Is it so?

I've had it for almost a year now and had no issues.

Alexander Mundy

@zapta said in Any good light weight direct extruder/hot-end?:

@gtj0 said in Any good light weight direct extruder/hot-end?:

Balance that against the mass of the drive shaft, which you still have to move, and it may be a better arrangement for some.

IIRC, several people mentioned in posts here that the flex cable tends to wear out. Is it so?

I've had 2 for over 2 years and they are just fine. As I posted before, I am a hobbiest so probably just 30 kg or so of filament used.

martink1974

i got a flex3drive to reduce weight on my delta and could not be happier , seems for most part a solid and functional design , changing out filement is a doddle and just getting it dialed in at moment first few prints are looking good and easy to get up and running

got retractions dieal in after a few prints and its harder to see but

the 4th benchy came out mint

huge improvement over my previous bowden v6 and bulldog extruder setup

fma

With such ratio, I think a DC motor (+encoder) would be much better than a tiny stepper motor (either using the cable or in direct-drive config)...

zapta

Looks like Zesty and the likes bring happiness to their owners so I placed an order for a Nimble to reproduce it here. I believe that the E dimension is the weakest link in my printer, print quality wise, so decided to focus on it. First I will use the Nimble with its flex cable and then will decide if to upgrade to a light weight direct motor drive.

fcwilt

@zapta said in Any good light weight direct extruder/hot-end?:

First I will use the Nimble with its flex cable and then will decide if to upgrade to a light weight direct motor drive.

The cable makes a good carrier for the wiring to your gantry.

I also have a bowden tube there to guide the filament from the spool holder to the Nimble.

Frederick

zapta

@fcwilt said in Any good light weight direct extruder/hot-end?:

I also have a bowden tube there to guide the filament from the spool holder to the Nimble.

This is one of my qualms regarding the flex drive cable, adding a third thing going to the head.

fcwilt

@zapta said in Any good light weight direct extruder/hot-end?:

@fcwilt said in Any good light weight direct extruder/hot-end?:

I also have a bowden tube there to guide the filament from the spool holder to the Nimble.

This is one of my qualms regarding the flex drive cable, adding a third thing going to the head.

The bowden tube is optional but it does keep the filament from flopping around.

And using the cable for the wire carrier gets rid of any other wire carrier you may have.

I'm very pleased with the Nimbles. I really like how easy it is to change filament. When you remove the little part that presses the filament to the drive roller you have direct access to the top of the hotend.

Frederick

gtj0

@fcwilt said in Any good light weight direct extruder/hot-end?:

I'm very pleased with the Nimbles. I really like how easy it is to change filament. When you remove the little part that presses the filament to the drive roller you have direct access to the top of the hotend.

Frederick

Me too.

I actually use a long piece of 4mm ID PTFE tube from my dry-box all the way to the Nimble to keep the filament in a controlled environment along the entire path.

martink1974

i did look at the nimble before getting the flex3drive , but the design of the flexdrive seemed more robust , and i noticed dc42 used flexdrive extruder on his delta kits

i could not be happier at this point had a couple so spools of filement through it so far and no clogs , filement path has zero restriction when changing material , even flex materials have no problems

gtj0

@martink1974 Heh, I started with the Flex3Drive but had issues both with customer service and robustness. Sounds like they got those things sorted out.

zapta

Flex3Drive have a ~75g nema direct extruder listed on their web site

https://flex3drive.com/product/g5-nema8-cyclops-pre-order/

Edit: this is the single nema8 extruder, very reasonable price and ~75g https://flex3drive.com/product/g5-nema8-extruder/

martink1974

@zapta , that will be gr8 for some machines , that motor iis tiny , not sure if vibes from stepper would effect the delta with smart effector setup i use, but this looks gr8 idea

zapta

Zesty just posted a design for a nema8 adapter. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3856292

Gaza07

I own a nimble and two of the new open source G5 flex3drives the flex3drives worked out of the box and delivered perfect extrusions, which the nimble did not, I messed about with it for 3 months support sent me some new gears but it was the same, It suffered with a weave pattern on all prints and uneven extrusions, The nimble sits in its box collecting dust while the flex3drives are used daily with no problems, And now the flex3drive is open source you can buy the parts and print your own in FDM or SLS / A
Ive always found the support from flex3drive good not that I needed it much.

flex3drive
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Nimble
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fcwilt

@Gaza07 said in Any good light weight direct extruder/hot-end?:

I own a nimble and two of the new open source G5 flex3drives the flex3drives worked out of the box and delivered perfect extrusions, which the nimble did not, I messed about with it for 3 months support sent me some new gears but it was the same, It suffered with a weave pattern on all prints and uneven extrusions

There was clearly something wrong with your setup of the Nimble.

I have installed three and they all have worked fine.

I'm going to try one of the new Flexdrive units once they are available. They appear to be a good improvement on the original design.

Frederick

A Former User

I have three nimble's too, never had an issue. Brian and a likle are real engineers who know what they are doing.

I had a single flex drive before the nimble's, I had nothing but trouble with it, trouble the owner (Jason I think) of flexdrive did his level best to blame on everything but his product, suffice to say the P.O.S. flex drive lies in a storage bin somewhere.

Admittedly nimble's require you to know what you are doing to get them set up, but that's not the products fault if someone can't test and analyse things.