After accidentally destroying the motor controller and motor, I needed to rebuild the extruder. This is the result:
After the failure of the captured gear drive, I went back to the original pinched pulley mechanism – upgraded to the larger higher torque motor. One of the things I wanted to enable with this mechanism were:
- Improve the tension pulley stability.
- Enable adjustments between the tension pulley and motor spindle in order to test different pulley sizes
- Enable adjustments to the extruder barrel – both vertically and horizontally
I achieved the first point by making the tension pulley mounted directly to the backplane. The motor itself adjusts horizontally opposed to the tension pulley. This arrangement also allows me to test larger drive pulleys.
The barrel needs to adjust horizontally to match up with the center point of the pinch pulley mechanism as I test different sizes. I also wanted to adjust vertically to close the gap between the barrel top and the pulley pinch point.
The remaining plate is used for mounting to the cross slide, and enables me to implement a dovetail mount at a later date.
Now that the machining is done, I’ll wire it up. Additionally, I’ve been working on the software to drive it. (FYI: New TextMate microcontroller plugin drop is coming, with lots of new features and bug fixes)
(Please ignore the machining errors – still learning how to mill)