My son, Patrick, has observed on more than one occasion that I do not like 3D printing. That may sound odd, because I built a printer back in 2012 and since then I’ve built a lot of printers and I currently have at least three in my lab. But Patrick correctly realized that I don’t actually enjoy printing things that I need. What I do enjoy is building, fixing and even more importantly improving the printers themselves. If you are reading Hackaday, you probably know how that is. This is the story of an upgrade gone bad, although the ending is happy enough. If you’ve ever thought about moving from a traditional hot end to an all-metal hot end, you might want to hear me out and maybe I can save you some trouble.
A few years ago, I picked up an Anet A8 for a really low price. As printers go, it is adequate. Not bad, but not amazing. But it is a fun printer because you really need to do some work on it to brace the acrylic frame and fix other shortcomings. I merrily improved the printer quite a bit over a relatively short period of time and I also bought a bunch of aluminum extrusion to rebuild the frame to the AM8 plans you can find on Thingiverse.
An AM8 is Born
The All Metal Hotend in Action Finally
” data-medium-file=”https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/hotend.jpg?w=400″ data-large-file=”https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/hotend.jpg?w=800″ loading=”lazy” src=”https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/hotend.jpg?w=250″ alt=”” width=”250″ height=”188″ srcset=”https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/hotend.jpg 4032w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/hotend.jpg?resize=250,188 250w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/hotend.jpg?resize=400,300 400w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/hotend.jpg?resize=800,600 800w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/hotend.jpg?resize=1536,1152 1536w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/hotend.jpg?resize=2048,1536 2048w” sizes=”(max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px”>
But life happens, and that box of extrusions sat on the shelf for a few years. Looking for a pandemic project, I decided it was time to take the plunge and the results were great. Having a solid metal frame on the printer really turned it into a world-class printer. Except for one thing.
The extruder on the A8 — actually, the entire X assembly — doesn’t really change on the AM8 build. I had made some very simple changes to the extruder, but it was mostly stock and that was a pain. The extruder is a NEMA17 stepper in a U-shaped metal frame with a conventional extruder bolted to it. A fan totally covers the extruder and the heat break screws right into the bottom, followed by the heat block and the nozzle.
I’d already moved the fan for access, something most people with A8s do. However, the thing was a pain to load and with the cooling not so great on the heat break, jams were reasonably common, if not as common as you might expect. Clearing jams was quite painful though.
New Extruder
I knew for a long time I wanted to put something better in place and I had a few knock-off E3D V6 hot ends sitting around. Like the extrusions, they’ve been in storage for a few years. I printed a mount and …read more
Source:: Hackaday