The D3D Extruder is (once I receive it) going to be mounted on the X-carriage - but the Chimera has a really tight spacing between it’s two nozzles (I think it’s about 18mm?) There’s currently no good method I’ve found to get them both running truly direct, in a way that can fit in the stock TAZ X-carriage. If I wanted to do a LOT of work and turn the X-carriage into a horizontal-beam (think of the current beams as ‘vertical’) system, I could probably scavenge parts from something, and try and get two extruders that close together.
The D3D extruder will be mounted very, very close to the chimera - there’ll still be PTFE connecting the two, as the nozzle pitch on the D3D is 24.7mm (ish). So each nozzle-path will have a slight bend from the extruder to the Chimera. (Fingers crossed that this works OK - I’m going to assume ninjaflex isn’t ever going to work this way).
The Bowden setup I posted a picture of is mainly because I don’t expect many people to want to grab that D3D extruder - I was honestly a bit iffy about it myself, as it’s going to take some weird firmware mangling, it’s not open source, etc. The bowden setup for the Chimera can be easily converted from the stock TAZ Wade’s extruder, wouldn’t need much firmware mucking about aside from upgrading to Dually and tweaking some thermistor and alignment settings.
Once I’ve got the design a bit more finalized (working on the fan shrouds now - and then another set of shrouds for Volcano-Chimera) I’ll post up some STLs.
As to a solid E3D mount - the best thing I’ve found is to actually use the Hexagon’s extruder body, and print up a J-head mounting plate that you can shim in (the Taz 5/hexagon hotend may already come with this plate). I’ve got my current Dually using that setup for the Volcano extruder, and my loose-plate on a regular E3Dv6 (surprisingly, this works out to make the height difference between the volcano and the v6 nonexistent) in the front Dually slot. My front extruder is usually just for PVA or HIPS supports, so I’m not as worried about that one being a little loose. Also, oddly, the looseness of that E3D mount ends up causing a sort of auto-lift functionality - pressure from the filament feed will stiffen the head a touch, while a retract will pull the whole hotend up very slightly.
Screw it, making this longer! Here’s a shot of the current design for the new mount, chimera and D3D HPX2MAX included. The fans are 24v DC ‘blower’ fans - mainly because I hate designing fan shrouds for regular DC fans, and these can be mounted so that they take up space in the Y plane, instead of the X plane. There’s a space in the carriage body for some zip ties - originally for cable management, now more likely to be a strap to help keep some flexing-pressure from the extruder away from the mounting fins.
I’ve got this running with an (admittedly janky) bowden setup for now. Oddly enough, I can run Soft PLA through the bowden with no problems - I just have to make a poor-mans flexistruder out of one of my extruders, using a length of PTFE with a notch cut into it to keep the filament constrained. The only reason I can do that is because the Chimera is 1.75mm filament ONLY, so the 1.75 PTFE actually fits nice and snug inside my 3mm extruder. I have a feeling I may NOT be able to run Soft PLA with the D3D extruder, which is a shame.
I also had to liberally ‘season’ the hotends (two Volcanos at .6mm for now) or else tons of problems! Yay PLA.
But, on to the good news. This thing is rigid as hell, extremely light (I’ll be power-testing it later, probably once I need to go up to 1.2mm Volcanos), and because the two nozzles are hard-mounted in the same body the tool offsets are very easy (M218 T1 X-18 Y0), and VERY precise. Since both nozzles are housed in the same body, there’s no worries about making sure they’re level, either - if they’re both in the cold end as far as they can go, they’re level. SO MUCH EASIER to deal with than the Dually.
Man, bowden systems are annoying. Print turned out relatively well, but so oozy. I’m worried too much retraction will cause a jam (it’s already at 5mm on tool changes - maybe I’ll go up to about 8). Other than the ooze, part turned out pretty well. I’m probably overextruding a bunch, too.
It’s hard to tell, but there’s a clear PLA core embedded in the part - the ooziness has muddied it up fiercely though.
Anyway, I’ll try and post up STLs for the various parts that make this (it’s really just two parts, 3 if you want to make the bowden mount I used). One note, the Z-min endstop screw on the TAZ is too short to use with this - I jury rigged a stopper with another screw but it’s the wrong size, and a bit wobbly.
Not a terrible first run though. I’ve done worse with a single nozzle.
Can/could you throw up the .stl for your dual greg wade’s bowden mount? please.
I’ve been wanting to try a half direct and half bowden dually setup till I have the cash to follow your lead.
Sure thing, here you go. You’ll probably need to drill out some of those holes, they’re pretty tight (if you print in ABS while it’s still warm, you can - barely - thread a bowden PTFE connector into the largest hole. The ABS will still be relatively soft so you can ‘thread’ it that way).
One thing you’ll probably want to do (I don’t have the time right now) is to thin out the wall on the short side - I wanted this to fit on the TAZ using the same bolts that hold the nameplate on, but that wall is too thick and the bolts are too short. So you’ll either need to thin the wall, or find new bolts. greg_extrusion_mount.stl (83.1 KB)
As a side note, anyone know offhand what size screw the Z-axis endstop leveling post is? I need to get a longer one.
One other thing I noticed and forgot to mention - when i’ve got both nozzles hot, PID seems to freak out a bit - I’m guessing because they share a heatsink. Loooots of temp fluctuations. It may also have to do with heating up one nozzle first, then the other once that first one has reached temp.
Sometime this weekend I’m going to look into this, I have a few thoughts - first I’m going to see what happens if I heat both nozzles simultaneously. If that doesn’t work (I kind of expect it won’t) I’m going to re-tune each nozzle, while the other nozzle is hot. I’m expecting that may solve the problem, but it might cause others (like if I’m only heating one nozzle). I might have to make a little macro that I can click that’ll switch between two sets of PID settings - one for dual nozzles, one for single nozzle use.
One thing to note - not sure if this is different on the TAZ5, but on my TAZ4, the heatsink fan for my E3d runs from my second extruder’s ‘fan’ output (I don’t have separate nozzle fans for each extruder, they share the same connection). The heatsink fan only activates when the hotend temp goes above 50° (set in firmware).
I mention all this to say that my heatsink fan - and the one that will come with your E3D, if you order it right - is a 24v fan. I don’t know if the heatsink fan for the Hexagon will be positioned correctly for the E3d - it can be very, very particular. I had a lot of random problems with jamming until I realized that my fan was mounted one heatsink notch off from where it was supposed to be.
I don’t know exactly about the hexagon hot plate, but a J-head plate that I printed was about 1mm too thick, so if the hexagon is a basic J-head plate, it will likely be too thick. I just shaved the one I printed down a bit.
The heatsink fan needs a little more thought. On the TAZ5, the heatsink fan for the hexagon seems to be a dedicated 5V connection… at least from looking at the wiring, haven’t checked the Rambo. The stock heatsink blower is hard to source and definitely would sit a little high. Which is partially the reason for shimming the j-plate so the fan could hit the lower fins of the E3D and also to preserve the print height as closely to the stock build volume.
Hmm… “one notch from where it was supposed to be”. I was just thinking lowest heatsink fin… would that still be okay?
Looking on Thingiverse, the j-plate may have evolved. I found a plate from the same author for 4.2mm and 6mm, which seems to be inline with what I recall from test fitting.
Okay, you’ve helped build up my nerve for this swap. I’ll hopefully get a new toolhead printed over the next week and see how it goes.
So I’m going to buy an e3dv6 full kit with a volcano extruder to use for big prints. What is better for taz4, the direct mount or bowend? What do I need to mount to the plate?
