Dragonstruder Toolheads

I usually don’t come by these forums, unless I’m troubleshooting something (hi Mini 2s!) so I apologize for posting and not responding a while back. Some people asked for STLs to Dragon-based Lulzbot toolheads, and i have two: The Dragonstruder is based on Lulzbot’s M175 design:

The Orbiter Dragonstruder is new design that utilizes an Orbiter extruder:

I’ve been running the Dragonstruder on my Taz 6 for close to a year and it works a treat. Between that and the BLTouch, I am amazed at how it transformed my Taz into a printing machine. I never even bother to check if a print has successfully started anymore, as it flawlessly lays-down whatever I load in it. It simply comes correct. It’s worked so well that I haven’t even done the additional work needed to clean up cable mount points, because I just can’t justify the downtime when it has been so reliable.

In addition to tweaks to fit the Dragon and V6 heatblock, the Dragonstruder has a few upgrades from the M175, including having the mass moved quite a bit back towards the gantry, some stiffening to reduce X axis oscillation, and inclusion of a BLTouch. Note that all of these are only possible because I don’t run stock firmware. I may have a close-to-stock version from early development if anyone has interest.
The one thing I would note on this design is the 25mm fan (which is spec’d to the Lulzbot BOM) can be underpowered for higher temps using the high-flow hotend. I may revisit this in the future, but it’s only an issue if the hotend is kept at a high temp without extruding for several minutes (which is an issue with the HF Dragon in general).

The Orbiter Dragonstruder is a dropish-in upgrade to an aero mini (which is actually quite compact). It will even work on a lulzbot mini 2, as it has just enough clearance to allow for tramming (leveling) of the X gantry. (I need to tweak the fan shroud provide just a bit more clearance) It uses the same basic volumetric envelope as the aero mini while being much lighter. I’ve been running this on my Mini 2 for somthing like 6 months now, and it’s been performing extremely well. (I run a SF Dragon on this) I have made minor revisions I still need to test, but the earlier version is working extremely well without as-is. Same caveats apply about messy cables and whatnot, but Zipties.

Anyway, I always appreciate the open-cource nature of Lulzbots, so thought I would give back in kind. I consider these both WIP, but Ive cranked out hundreds of prints with both, and would not trade either for the OG toolheads they replaced. Cheers.

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Thanks for putting you ideas back in! I think you messed up your link to the dragonstruder so ill include that here

Do you have a repo for the firmware? If not what are some of the pitfalls that you ran into setting up your own firmware? How did you get started building your own firmware?

Thanks once again for your ideas and hopefully the forums can continue to help with your mini 2 troubleshooting.

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