There have been quite a few update since our last posting about the pellet extruder. For starter as you can see the pellet extruder has a new home here on the re:3D forums where we will be posing future updates on the development and design. We hope this will also be a place where we can get feedback from the community on our progress as well as input once they receive their machines.
The first big piece of news is the kickstarter campaign. As any of you know we launched a kickstarter campaign back in March of this year and were successfully funded with 50 backers supporting our vision of printing with pellets. Because of this we have begun refinement on our design to create a better pellet extruder than what we currently are running. While it does currently function, we think we can make some improvements that will allow it to run even better. Some of the things we are addressing:
- Improvement of the screw design by decreasing the compression 2:1 to 1.75:1
- Changing the hopper to a metal design from printed polycarb.
- Redoing the linear rail design
For the final bot design we are planning on using linear rails for both the x and y axis instead of the original makerslide we normally use. We have had these on the prototype and we liked them so much on both the x and y we wanted to keep them for the final bot. Below is a photo of the original linear rail design.
This design was taken from the Open Gigabot, which was our first attempt at a printer using linear rails. We have learned a few things since then and it was decided to reevaluate the y axis design. The new design involved using a smaller rail block but having two per rail and is shown below
We are currently working on the new hopper design so be sure to look for updates to that soon. Thanks and happy printing!
