RE: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] reprap build started

Our printer has a (variant on?) Wade's Extruder which uses a stepper motor to feed filament from a coil.
Some of our problems were due to the fact that we were extruding ABS at 220C from an extruder whose plastic parts were printed in PLA which has lower softening and melting temperatures than ABS. Heat leaking from the nozzle and melt chamber kept finding new paths to the extruder body and softening them. Heat from the stepper motor was also causing grief (the current adjustment is a near-microscopic unmarked trimpot on the extruder driver board). I eventually made a new extruder body out of maple. Now it extrudes reliably, and we are trying to get a reliable set of software tools (possibly involving replacing the printer or stepper firmware) to make a semi-turnkey system for all of us to use.

As things are currently coded, the stepper-based extruders and the DC motor-based extruders need different (incompatible) GCode to run them. I am resisting the strong urge to rewrite all the firmware and tools so they interact in the proper (IMHO) manner, both because of the time it would take, and also because it would add yet another (incompatible) branch to the current mess of open-source versions.

Every now and then while we were trying to get the extruder to work some helpful chap would suggest we replace the existing extruder with (the latest-and-greatest new) MakerBot extruder, not realizing how much bigger the latter is...

-Kevin Martin
the Papertrail Handmade Paper & Book Arts
New Dundee, Ontario
518-884-7123
www.papertrail.ca


-----Original Message-----
From: CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com [mailto:CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of wolfgang

to add to the confusicfication...

Are you making the coil extruder head, the syringe based head, the
powder head, or the pellet head?