What's your favourite, go-to extruder? Also: check out our CNC Kitchen products at cnckitchen.store/ or at resellers www.cnckitchen.com/reseller and on AMAZON (EU) geni.us/s8rYtQ
Thanks a lot! Getting an Orbital for my dual drive Prusa-mini project. I've been doing my own research but it becomes obsolete by the time I come up with a decision.
I'm using a Titan clone for its size and weight and easy fit on an Ender 3. Would be interesting to see how it compares with its extremely small single extrusion "gear".
The one in my Prusa MK3. I am building a a P3 Steel intermittently and is going to start with a "Gregs Wade Extruder", It would have neat to see how "good" it was in the beginning of home 3d printing.
Again an awesome video man. But I dont think we need a lot of pushing force...we need to let the hotend flow and avoid over-pressurizing the heatzone.. or we get crappy quality
Yes, if used in a normal 3D printer capacity (which, granted is a strong focus of this video when it lists and discusses the weight of the print heads), but when used for injection molding-as was the initial purpose for performing these tests-reaching high pressure is the primary concern, not flow rate, consistency in output rate, or weight of the head, as it would not be moving and the quality of the molded part is largely dependent on the mold design, surface finish and level of detail, and achieving a complete fill of the mold cavity.
Interesting idea. After a certain point, it is better to focus on reducing friction in the filament path and having a better heat zone to get higher flow.
@@andreiignat3877 This is definitely a good topic for a video. Ultimately I had to disable pressure advance on both of my Titan geared extruder machines due to gear chatter and failed prints due to sawing through filament. I'm in the market for a new extruder, but ultimate force isn't as important as backlash.
I really enjoyed the video! Very proud that Orbiter V2 won the battle of "force per weight". And among of 11 extruder, 6 of 11 used LDO stepper motor, which a big win for LDO. Very Excited!
@@besenyeim wear may be an issue though. The hardness of belts vs hardened steel gears is significant, to say the least. Guessing abrasive filaments would eat those belts for breakfast.
@@ivyr336 Most of the abrasives are inside the filament though, not exposed. I don’t see it as being particularly problematic. Also, one of the good things about belts is that they’re quite cheap, as a consumable component.
Ive been working on a similar idea for a while based on a failed print, which filled my silicone hotend. It created a blob that had a smooth surface finish, 100% infill and sharp features, which lead me to the idea that it was viable. For those saying why, small FDM parts are weak and struggle with small details due to the printing process. While slower than traditional injection moulding there is certainly a place for a small machine like this. Even a 5-10 minute cycle time is still faster than printing and due to the low cost and size many machines could be run at once.
When he mentioned this I thought about the conical bullets I want to print (based off a patent from the 1700's, it was a flintlock that fired 224 times with a single trigger pull, its party piece wasn't a complex mechanism it was that you could stack bullets with basically a flash hole drilled through the middle so they would fire one after another in runaway full auto). I printed one and it came out ok, but if you make smaller than .50 cal (historically it would have been .69 cal or bigger since those were the popular calibers back then), then you end up with pretty tiny projectile. Something like the creatlity belt printer injecting into a line of molds could automate the process (you need 224 of them to load it up, lol, you might even want to fire it once every weekend), so for accuracy you'd either want Resin printer or injection/cast. Of course casting in lead would be the way it was done previously and how it should be done (also very easy, probably much easier than plastic), however you need to burn more power and if you just want a toy like a glorified Nerf toy that has cool booms and smoke, well plastic should be fine for close range play.
If you haven't already come across it the TH-cam channel TheCrafsMan SteadyCraftin has a number of videos that show the use of a manual bench top pellet feeder/injector/mold clamping device using both metal and 3D printed molds that are a pretty good resource and might be of interest to you.
@@CNCKitchenWhen you say tiny, do you have a ballpark as to what do you mean? There might be some uses in electronics mounting brackets or intricate structures. But the only "widely applicable" (and thus good for TH-cam views) application that I can think of would maybe be DnD/similar miniatures? I'd be curious to hear if you had anything in mind already or if you were moreso approaching this from the "I wonder if I could" perspective. Good luck on the project either way!
We us Dyze Extruders, Nozzles and Hot-Ends on our Blackbelt Printers and they are super reliable. We are printing often big parts which run 3-5 days in average, use PLA, HT, PETG, Varioshore TPU, TPU, nGen, nGen_Flex, etc. and it never skips a beat. One some Dyze Parts we have over 12000 hours of printing and they still work. Really happy with the performance and after the Test here I see even less reason to try something else in the moment. Loved the Video!
Best performance in my tests from years ago was Bondtech QR and Bondtech V2. Planetary steppers with medium diameter gears. Worth a look in the right application. I tested max flows and pressures into a load cell rig in PLA, ABS, PETG, and TPU.
So glad to finally see an OMG extruder represented! I have had an OMG DM1 for around 8 months now, and its the single best purchase I ever made. With the pancake included motor, it is light AF, doesn't require ANY mounting hardware (it just screws into the hot end like a coupler), and just works phenomenally well. 10/10, absolutely love that thing
I’m impressed with the biqu h2, very light and like the hemera has the hot end built into the very small stepper motor which I believe a 9:1 gear ratio.
This is a setup I would have liked to see tested. I believe the package comes in at a similar wieght to the orbitor setup so knowing it's pushing force would be interesting.
I'm putting out this mini-alert about a wiring problem I discovered on my BIQU Hurakan. The video about it is featured on my TH-cam site. Here's the bottom line: BIQU put two ground wires, a frame ground, and a switch / power inlet ground, on the single FG post of the power supply that comes with the Hurakan. It's possible that resonance tuning can work the lower ground wire away from the FG post of the power supply. Having an ungrounded switch / power inlet ground wire loose in that area, where there are a lot of control wires heading to the control broad may be a recipe for disaster. If you have any thoughts on this, please inform your viewers, as some of them might own a Hurakan. Thank you for all the great work you're doing. It's really quite impressive!
I use the Orbitor v2, really nice compact unit. I converted my FLSun Q5 to Direct Drive so weight was a big factor, glad to hear i made a good choice (not that I was worried 😳)
The OMGv2 series extruder gave me an idea. Two completely separate extruders, in series. A big beefy one like the Hemera or Proper at the start, then a bowden tube connecting it to a small lightweight extruder like the Orbiter. The big extruder would provide most of the force, while the small extruder would help with retraction, especially with flexible materials. Both high torque with low print head weight and good retraction performance. It also spreads out the "grip" on the filament, so any grinding will less likely cause an unrecoverable failure. Something even smaller and lighter could be designed, as the head extruder would really only need to provide a fraction of a KG of force.
This is a cool idea. It should be possible to calculate the optimal movement patterns for each stepper, if you approximate the filament path as a system of springs and masses. You could start out by using that same math to calculate the optimal force balance between the steppers as well, to see how much weight savings are realistic. Now that I think about it more, there's another way this might be beneficial - Most of the low frequency movements (the bulk of the pushing) will be done by the remote extruder, leaving the high frequency movements (retractions, starting and stopping, etc) for the hotend extruder. Since that would require sharp spikes of high torque, but no long-term constant torque, a more advanced driver operating with variable current might be able to get a lot more torque out of a tiny stepper without overheating it. Not sure what the options are there, it might push you to a closed loop system.
There is also an extruder based on a brushless motor, the filament flows through the centre of the motor, really interesting design. No idea how good it is though.
Great video! Here's some suggested candidates for a follow up video: The Sherpa mini, micro, and DFA from Annex. The sharkfin. The double Sherpa from Meelis, in four and three gear drive versions, advertised to achieve amazing flow figures. The vz-hextrudort. The new phaetus apex. The lgx mini. There's too many extruders!
The results for the orbiter were really impressive. Would be interesting to see how the cheaper cloned extruders stack up to the originals including the old Titan and Titan clones.
If you are interested in hobby injection molding the TH-cam channel TheCrafsMan SteadyCraftin has a number of videos that show the use of a manual bench top pellet feeder/injector/mold clamping device using both metal and 3D printed molds that is a pretty good resource and might be of interest to you.
Hallo Steffan, ich habe selber viele Extruder ausprobiert. Mellows Cannon ist meiner Meinung nach der beste, aber nicht wegen der maximalen Kraft, sondern wegen der geringsten Flow Schwankung. Ich denke das liegt an der besonderen Art des Getriebes. Dadurch erzeugt er die schönsten Oberflächen entlang der Z Achse. Vielleicht kannst du dazu auch mal ein Test bzw. Vergleichs Video machen.
Sehr interessant! Ich habe jetzt ein OMG V2 für mein bowden Voron 0.2, was ich langsam baue, der Cannon war aber auch sehr sympathisch als upgrade weg. Ich habe ein dropeffect xg hotend gekauft, also flowrate ist nicht meine Priorität, sondern höchstmögliche Qualität und Beschleunigung. edit: typo
@@CNCKitchen Hey Steffan, danke für dein Antwort. Ich hab dafür auch einen Testaufbau im Kopf, Extruder, Drehgeber und ein Hotend in einer Reihe. Der Extrudermotor wird mit Konstanter Schritte pro Sekunde angesteuert und man misst die Schritte am Drehgeber. Das lässt sich sicher mit dem Plotter von der Arduino IDE Darstellen oder in einen Graph. Vielleich mit verschiedenen Geschwindigkeiten oder ein Linearen anstieg. Verschiedener Last oder unterschiedlicher Temperatur am Hotend bzw. ohne Hotend. Wichtig ist das der Drehgeber Direkt das Filament antreibt, ohne Übersetzung.
Super interesting! I was hoping you would also cover the micro-swiss extruder too. I'm interested to pair up the ideal extruder with a 0.8 to 1 mm nozzle, a higher output hot end on my Ender 5 plus to print very large prints (2.5 kg) in a TPU material. Current print is 3.5 days.
File or grind a center channel in the extruder gears of the Hemera to match the spikey design of the Dyze Xtruder Pro and retest, as the Hemera with the large motor was a good performer where the filament grip was its weak point that might be easily rectified. It would be interesting to also do the reverse and increase the motor strength on the units that had the motor as the weak point.
Specially the ones that mount normal NEMA 17s, those have quite the potential for some ridiculous long high current steppers running on them, or if you wanna turn the absurdity up a notch, get one with a built-in reduction gearing.
Some of the 3d printed models and their CNC versions from Mellow; vz-hextrudort printed and cnc version sherpa micro printed and cnc version Would be very cool to see if there's any difference between the printed/home built versions vs the higher end (yet on the cheaper end of the extruders in this test) CNC versions :) You can also get them with 8t or 10t moons and LDO motors, could be very interesting to see if there's any strenght differences in real life between those.
I don't think there is any difference in push force between printed/cnc, at least to the point where printed one can break. But definitely there may be difference in precision - cnc is more precise, rigid, temperature-stable in hot chamber - cnc can deliver more quality to print, not force. And second thing, what can affect force - you can pump more current in stepper with alu extruder - it helps with motor cooling and there is no chance that extruder can melt and jam. 100C+ motor can survive , but definitely not ABS printed extruder.
i paused. i took your recommendation to read the Orbiter 2.0 story. it was an awesome read and jaw dropping to see the level of obsession and pure talent going into extruder design. it was oozing with industry wisdom. great eye opener seeing the many different innovative extruders on aliexpress you would not know some are actually inferior just from the concept--like Mellow Cannon using worm gears---no way!! terrible idea!.. midway through the article i predicted the orbiter would be winning several categories. if you are reading this comment, go find the Orbiter 2.0 Story. it looks like Orbiter and Bondtech have the lowest %loss of peak strength moving from low flow to high flow. i think this is a sign that proper design testing has happened (that the both the grip system and chosen motors are closely matched in capability and neither subsystem is bottle necking by much). you didn't show $cost per kgf and i feel like the Orbiter would also be champion there.
Hey Stefan! With the constant benchmarking of hotends you're "wasting" quite a large amount of filament, have you thought about an update on the homemade filament extruder series? Going over the options in this day and age, maybe giving an update on the filastruder you have?
High Nozzle pressure is really not a good friend of FDM printing. During the definition of my test procedure for hotend testing, I observed that filament will stop printing properly as soon as it enters the pressure creep zone. This behaviour can be observed at all temperature points. Improperly molten material will no be able to retain the shape induced by the nozzle and print path. It will tend to return to its original shape. Have a look to some of my results here: th-cam.com/video/02aufZ1OVvQ/w-d-xo.html Great video as usual by the way, cant wait to see that molding injection project 👍
If you are interested in hobby injection molding the TH-cam channel TheCrafsMan SteadyCraftin has a number of videos that show the use of a manual bench top pellet feeder/injector/mold clamping device using both metal and 3D printed molds that is a pretty good resource and might be of interest to you.
ONE OF THE BEST TECHNO BLOGGERS! SUBSCRIBED, I WATCH EVERY VIDEO. IN YOUR REVIEW, IN MY OPINION, THE PROPERTY EXTRUDER, DESPITE THE SMALLER PERFORMANCE, IS REALLY THE FUTURE. FROM YOUR VIDEOS, I DON'T QUITE UNDERSTAND HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT PATENT LAW. I AGREE THAT PATENTS HINDER DEVELOPMENT, ON THE OTHER HAND, IN ORDER TO INVENT SOMETHING, YOU NEED MONEY. AND IN GENERAL, IT SEEMS TO ME THAT THE FORCES OF THE EXTRUDER ARE A PATCH FOR A FRACTURE. Without changing the nozzle and the hot end, no matter how much the strength of the extruder increases, the efficiency will still be low. It's like putting an elephant in the Eye of a Needle. Thanks for the great work.
Amazing test, but unfortunately the Sherpa Mini is missing. Small motor, but 6,25:1 reduction so still a lot of pushing force, while being really light! More niche but I would love to see the other Annex extruder, the Ascender (which is the original worm driven extruder that inspired the Cannon)
Well, the OMG looks so well created. I love how easy feeding filament through it looks and how inexpensive it actually is. I currently have an all-metal ender extruder and it is actually fantastic from what I can see. Never skips or anything like that and I seem to be able to force quite a lot of filament through at quite the clip, but if I go to replace it because I hit that bottle neck (I've been pushing printing speeds faster and faster so I'm sure that I will hit that eventually) I'll definitely have to refer back to this video...
The " professional " injection molding machines use a spiral ( reverse drill ) to push molten pellets/filament and hold pressure in the mold. I would recommend looking into some of the " DIY " machines for taking your old filament and making new to you filament as that is closer to an injection part of the plastics manufacturing. This is still great information as it also can be used for design choices for a Voron between the weight classes and how much filament can be pushed and how hard. Thank you for not just the hard work, the excellent graphs showing the information and the important summary that makes it well worth the comparison.
I'm so happy with purchasing The Orbiter 2. I never had any problems and a proper tensioned belt allows for great speeds. The only two "flaws" I could find are the temperature, which is acceptable, but shouldn't get hotter and the manual feed for TPU. (Any small kink should be removed, because it will get stuck otherwise) I can't recommend it enough.
Great video, thanks Stefan! And also I'm happy to see Proper Printing compared, he's such a cool guy. On my SK-Tank I currently use a Bondtech LGX with a Dragon HF hotend and 0.6mm nozzle (can't remember if it's Bondtech CHT or Micro Swiss). So far I'm pretty happy with the LGX, but I do like to experiment when I have time. I spent a few months with the Biqu H2 and that was fun, but the cooling performance in that setup wasn't quite there for higher speed printing :-/
Thank you for a great video! I use LGX Lite and like it a lot. I think the way the wheels are aproached from both sides makes them less sensible to missalignment of the wheels, a problem with original BMG and all that use a spring like the Orbiter.
That maybe true, but I'm not sure misalignment is completely eliminated. I recently upgraded to an LGX Lite and immediately noticed clicking of the gears during retractions. Upon further inspection, I discovered there is a small amount of play on ALL the gears, which causes a little backlash and is the source of the noise. Though I wouldn't necessarily say it's a design flaw, more like a design characteristic.
I really like the design of the dyze extruder gears. Since they use those spikes to press into the filament I'm guessing they don't need a tension adjustment because it's not depending on tension to drive the filament. It probably bottoms the two sides of the outer edges of the gears against each other and the spikes drive the filament regardless of what filament is in there so there's no need for tension adjustment. Very interesting design that other manufacturers really should adopt. The squeeze style definitely has its drawbacks
exactly what I was looking for, thank you! When considering an upgrafe a force/price chart would be super useful too and would be great if you could add that 😁
I had a Hemera running on my Ender 3 and was blown away as to how powerful that thing was. There were a couple of times where the filament tangled and it literally took the entire dry box with the spool. I couldn’t even be mad.
I work in the HDPE pipe fitting fabrication industry. Our fabricators use extrusion welding guns that mangle the filament like the bondtech extruder does. If you’re interested in the technology, I think we use an older version of the Wegener EXWELD sigma4 SC TWISTY.
Thanks for this awesome comparison! I wonder how the sherpa mini performance/weight ratio is compared to the orbiter. I am really sad that my good old and still loved titan extruder was not tested too. It would have been really interesting to see how the grandpa holds up against the newbies.
I had hoped to see the latest all-metal hextrudort (if I'm not mistaken it is sold by Mellow) on the list. It claims several improvements over what is otherwise similar to the Orbiter. I'm especially interested whether the angled pattern on the drive wheels makes a difference ...
Back in the day when printers used fat filament, they needed geared extruders. 1.75mm filament came to dominate because the finer filament could be driven directly without gears. Also ungeared extruders are much lighter so suit direct drive printers.
Me too beside theses are all "off the shelf" not self printed versions. Perhaps it would be on par with the BMG. Using the same components after all. I currently run a CW2 and planned to change it into Sherpa mini or micro.
Great video, go the Orbiter, to be honest, trying to make an extruder powerful but also light weight is silly, your best to have two ultralight identical extruders in a push pull setup, if one of my Nano extruders cant push enough, I use a second one at the other end of the reverse bowden tube setup, this setup can be installed by either running one driver each or by running 2 steppers in a series of one driver.
Hey Stefan! Great video! I'm not sure if you saw it, but MirageC put out a really good video out about a month ago about Extrusion Quality which seem to be a large potential driver for the elusive "Prusa Issue 602." What MirageC found is that his BMG extruder had some slight wobble in the gears and that was enough to cause inconsistent extrusion that is visible with light sources directly above the print. With all these great extruders that you have, it would be awesome to see if there was a noticable difference between them with their extrusion consistency and compare them under harsh perpendicular lighting.
I have an IDEX with the 3mm filament OmniaDrop (V older) that works great for squishy stuff. glad to see it get some recognition here, and didn't know they have an updated design!
My lgx lite tensioning got looser over time, from the fixed tension and the SLS end cap that holds the shaft deforming. It would barely grip filament in the normal position
I am currently using an hemera which only cost me like 70€ and I have to say I am very happy with it. I have printed PC and TPU with it without problems.
If we look at the other variable: price --->> The Orbiter v2 wins easily. So I would say the Orbiter v2 is the better one. Even though I do not have good experiences with my own Orbiter v2 as I feel it lacks power, but even besides that point, it's cheap, powerful, lightweight and it extrudes very precise.
One thing that I'm curious about, We know that microstepping ends up getting less force out of a stepper motor than full steps. With the step-down gearing, it's my impression that we should be able (at some point) to simply set the stepper motor driving the filament to no microsteps, and effectively get the full force pushed through to the filament. What I suspect we'll lose is that safety mechanism of skipped steps preventing the extruder from grinding away the filament. But if that can be handled in another way, perhaps we would see even better results, especially in situations where you want high flow printing? Just curiosity on my part, I don't tend to print at higher speeds.
Considering that you’re doing this testing partially for an injection molding system, I’d be very interested in seeing what happens when you put the giant stepper motors on these extrudes. For instance, the Dyze extruded with one of the “Super Whopper” motors would be very interesting, because we might be able to see what the limits of the gear teeth are.
The only criticism I have with the orbiter is you also need a mount for the hotend. With the hemera xs, the mount for the hotend is the heatbreak, which threads right into the extruder. It didn't look like you included the added weight of a hotend mount that is needed for the orbiter, which may cause the hemera xs to overtake the orbiter in your force per weight analysis.
I share your opinion about the Orbiter. One of my printers has a Sprite extruder, but is not as good as the Orbiter I have on my other printer. After testing a lot I prefer the Orbiter. It has the advantage that it is widely supported. In combination with the Hero-Me printhead you get an incredible amount of possible combinations.
4:39 The Bondtech BMG is NOT the OG dual gear extruder. That would be the Printrbot Gear Head. Of course the BMG had a much bigger impact. I would have liked to have seen the Bondtech LGX Lite. I don't expect it to perform as well as the Orbiter (which I do mean to try some time), but would be good to see how it ranks.
If you're 3d printing and the nozzle is massive, then obviously that limits your print speed. But a makeshift injection molding machine would have a stationary nozzle. For that application why wouldn't you use a high current Nema 24 motor and run it at high voltage? I mean, if the limiting factor seems to be the motor.
Great video! But what about DIY extruders? For example, the Titanator v3 from thingiverse is very interesting. Also it's a good idea to repeat this test with TPU filament. I think, the result may be different.
Since you built the rig, would be nice to see what kind of forces the filament can withstand. feed a few different ones through a set geometry bowden and a direct drive setup, because I've got a feeling CF reinforced is liable to turn to dust at some of those pressures.
The micro swiss extruder tested by proper Printing should have been included. Also some choice in flexible drive extruder as flex3drive or zesty nimble should have been included in the tests
Extrusion force shouldn't be a concern so long as you're melting your filament properly one would think. I suppose there is likely an ideal pushing force for any given material in 1.75mm that should not be exceeded. It is likely that volumetric flow rate is the real limiting factor, not extrusion force with all these great extruders.
As soon as the filament starts contacting the mold it begins to harden, making it thicker and requiring more force to push it into all the nooks and crannies and especially thin and long features or channels. The alternative to shoving in a lot of hot plastic quickly under high pressure is to heat the mold to near or above the melting point of the plastic, the downside being that it takes a lot of time to cool down the mold to allow the part to solidify and remove it and then heat up the mold again for the next injection. You can assembly line it by having multiple molds cooling and heating up to maintain a good parts per minute throughput, but molds are typically the expensive part of injection molding so that would not be the most practical solution. For a hobby user unless you are trying to automate the entire process you're generally going to be best off with a manual bench top pellet feeder/injector/mold clamping device that already exists and is not all that expensive. The TH-cam channel TheCrafsMan SteadyCraftin has a number of videos using one, with both metal and 3D printed molds, definitely a good resource for anyone interested in hobby injection molding.
Just realized you were likely talking about the properties of the extruders when used for normal 3D printing, not for injection molding, in which case feel free to ignore the first reply to you 🤣
Going to put in my prediction now. That injection mold project you got in mind is going to back up plastic into the extruder and gum up the whole thing. Your going to need to plan for super low pressure and lots of place for air to escape. As well as a preheated mold.
Double double gear (so two double gear one pushing one pulling) is the best, but not commercialised. The "puller" has most tension, the 'pusher' a bit less, so you have perfect push-pull effect. Used a lot in industrial machines. COOL the motor!
A large set of data can be extracted from this video Stefan. Like the good movies i will need to watch it again. Congratulations and as always thanks for your time and effort.
What's your favourite, go-to extruder?
Also: check out our CNC Kitchen products at cnckitchen.store/ or at resellers www.cnckitchen.com/reseller and on AMAZON (EU) geni.us/s8rYtQ
Thanks a lot! Getting an Orbital for my dual drive Prusa-mini project.
I've been doing my own research but it becomes obsolete by the time I come up with a decision.
I'm using a Titan clone for its size and weight and easy fit on an Ender 3. Would be interesting to see how it compares with its extremely small single extrusion "gear".
The one in my Prusa MK3. I am building a a P3 Steel intermittently and is going to start with a "Gregs Wade Extruder", It would have neat to see how "good" it was in the beginning of home 3d printing.
I'm finally upgrading from the stock Ender extruder to a Sherpa Mini.
Im using a Zesty Nimble v1. For the people wo dont know this extruder it is a remotedriven directdrive extruder. i would love to see it in your tests.
Again an awesome video man. But I dont think we need a lot of pushing force...we need to let the hotend flow and avoid over-pressurizing the heatzone.. or we get crappy quality
I really need to integrate that setup onto a running machine to play around with things like this!
Yes, if used in a normal 3D printer capacity (which, granted is a strong focus of this video when it lists and discusses the weight of the print heads), but when used for injection molding-as was the initial purpose for performing these tests-reaching high pressure is the primary concern, not flow rate, consistency in output rate, or weight of the head, as it would not be moving and the quality of the molded part is largely dependent on the mold design, surface finish and level of detail, and achieving a complete fill of the mold cavity.
Also how it handles abrupt and fast retracts of pressure advance.
Interesting idea. After a certain point, it is better to focus on reducing friction in the filament path and having a better heat zone to get higher flow.
@@andreiignat3877 This is definitely a good topic for a video. Ultimately I had to disable pressure advance on both of my Titan geared extruder machines due to gear chatter and failed prints due to sawing through filament. I'm in the market for a new extruder, but ultimate force isn't as important as backlash.
I really enjoyed the video! Very proud that Orbiter V2 won the battle of "force per weight". And among of 11 extruder, 6 of 11 used LDO stepper motor, which a big win for LDO. Very Excited!
Now this is how you do marketing, I have a sudden urge to buy LDO steppers and I don't even have a project for them!
Appreciate it, Jason! A great job as always!
LDO is really stepper ing up! ;)
@@CNCKitchen if you want win force/weight battle try TD-30-40-PRO motor but price t pay is too high.
spoilers! lol happened to see this comment.
Nice to see this comparison done scientifically, very well done! Thanks for including my beefy design!
The beefiest of the beefy boys! Great work on that unique design!
@@CNCKitchen Thank you!
I believe, your belt design has the most potential of the bunch. It needs more optimization though.
@@besenyeim wear may be an issue though. The hardness of belts vs hardened steel gears is significant, to say the least. Guessing abrasive filaments would eat those belts for breakfast.
@@ivyr336 Most of the abrasives are inside the filament though, not exposed. I don’t see it as being particularly problematic.
Also, one of the good things about belts is that they’re quite cheap, as a consumable component.
Ive been working on a similar idea for a while based on a failed print, which filled my silicone hotend. It created a blob that had a smooth surface finish, 100% infill and sharp features, which lead me to the idea that it was viable. For those saying why, small FDM parts are weak and struggle with small details due to the printing process. While slower than traditional injection moulding there is certainly a place for a small machine like this. Even a 5-10 minute cycle time is still faster than printing and due to the low cost and size many machines could be run at once.
When he mentioned this I thought about the conical bullets I want to print (based off a patent from the 1700's, it was a flintlock that fired 224 times with a single trigger pull, its party piece wasn't a complex mechanism it was that you could stack bullets with basically a flash hole drilled through the middle so they would fire one after another in runaway full auto). I printed one and it came out ok, but if you make smaller than .50 cal (historically it would have been .69 cal or bigger since those were the popular calibers back then), then you end up with pretty tiny projectile. Something like the creatlity belt printer injecting into a line of molds could automate the process (you need 224 of them to load it up, lol, you might even want to fire it once every weekend), so for accuracy you'd either want Resin printer or injection/cast.
Of course casting in lead would be the way it was done previously and how it should be done (also very easy, probably much easier than plastic), however you need to burn more power and if you just want a toy like a glorified Nerf toy that has cool booms and smoke, well plastic should be fine for close range play.
Tiny injection molding is right up my alley! I really appreciate this Stefan!
If you haven't already come across it the TH-cam channel TheCrafsMan SteadyCraftin has a number of videos that show the use of a manual bench top pellet feeder/injector/mold clamping device using both metal and 3D printed molds that are a pretty good resource and might be of interest to you.
I'm excited, too! Any ideas what to injection mold?
@@CNCKitchenWhen you say tiny, do you have a ballpark as to what do you mean? There might be some uses in electronics mounting brackets or intricate structures. But the only "widely applicable" (and thus good for TH-cam views) application that I can think of would maybe be DnD/similar miniatures? I'd be curious to hear if you had anything in mind already or if you were moreso approaching this from the "I wonder if I could" perspective. Good luck on the project either way!
We us Dyze Extruders, Nozzles and Hot-Ends on our Blackbelt Printers and they are super reliable. We are printing often big parts which run 3-5 days in average, use PLA, HT, PETG, Varioshore TPU, TPU, nGen, nGen_Flex, etc. and it never skips a beat. One some Dyze Parts we have over 12000 hours of printing and they still work. Really happy with the performance and after the Test here I see even less reason to try something else in the moment. Loved the Video!
I love the indexed gear force on my LGX, it makes printing more repeatable. In fact, I'd love to see how the LGX lite compares in this testing.
Best performance in my tests from years ago was Bondtech QR and Bondtech V2. Planetary steppers with medium diameter gears. Worth a look in the right application. I tested max flows and pressures into a load cell rig in PLA, ABS, PETG, and TPU.
So happy to see proper printing get a little recognition here. He's been taking on awesome projects for a long time!
It's well deserved and hopefully inspires others!
Totally! Im a big fan of his stuff. Very creative
I was fortunate to spend time with Jon at ERRF last fall, he is a crazy guy, and super smart!
So glad to finally see an OMG extruder represented! I have had an OMG DM1 for around 8 months now, and its the single best purchase I ever made. With the pancake included motor, it is light AF, doesn't require ANY mounting hardware (it just screws into the hot end like a coupler), and just works phenomenally well. 10/10, absolutely love that thing
I’m impressed with the biqu h2, very light and like the hemera has the hot end built into the very small stepper motor which I believe a 9:1 gear ratio.
It's 7:1 but yeah, its great
I've been using it for a year and I've not had a single problem. It just works good.
This is a setup I would have liked to see tested. I believe the package comes in at a similar wieght to the orbitor setup so knowing it's pushing force would be interesting.
Good point! An even smaller Hemera-Like extruder.
I would also like to see this setup tested.
I've been running an OMG v2 for some time now in a Bowden setup. It's been reliable and no issues. Glad to see it did well!
Great to hear some real world experience.
Me to, but as a direct drive.
But I'm not sure mine is the V2 or the older V1 ( it's been a while since i got it )
either way, it works great :)
I bought one also for a bowden setup paired with a dropeffect xg hotend. They are going to go in my Voron 0.2 I'm trying to build.
I'm putting out this mini-alert about a wiring problem I discovered on my BIQU Hurakan. The video about it is featured on my TH-cam site. Here's the bottom line: BIQU put two ground wires, a frame ground, and a switch / power inlet ground, on the single FG post of the power supply that comes with the Hurakan. It's possible that resonance tuning can work the lower ground wire away from the FG post of the power supply. Having an ungrounded switch / power inlet ground wire loose in that area, where there are a lot of control wires heading to the control broad may be a recipe for disaster. If you have any thoughts on this, please inform your viewers, as some of them might own a Hurakan. Thank you for all the great work you're doing. It's really quite impressive!
I use the Orbitor v2, really nice compact unit. I converted my FLSun Q5 to Direct Drive so weight was a big factor, glad to hear i made a good choice (not that I was worried 😳)
It would also be nice to see this testing done with flexible filament for another comparison point between the various models and design features.
Great point!
This is an excellent video!
I'm pretty curious to see your small parts injection moulding project 😎
The OMGv2 series extruder gave me an idea. Two completely separate extruders, in series. A big beefy one like the Hemera or Proper at the start, then a bowden tube connecting it to a small lightweight extruder like the Orbiter. The big extruder would provide most of the force, while the small extruder would help with retraction, especially with flexible materials.
Both high torque with low print head weight and good retraction performance. It also spreads out the "grip" on the filament, so any grinding will less likely cause an unrecoverable failure.
Something even smaller and lighter could be designed, as the head extruder would really only need to provide a fraction of a KG of force.
It would be a nightmare to sync them properly. Filament will still slip from time to time.
This is a cool idea. It should be possible to calculate the optimal movement patterns for each stepper, if you approximate the filament path as a system of springs and masses. You could start out by using that same math to calculate the optimal force balance between the steppers as well, to see how much weight savings are realistic.
Now that I think about it more, there's another way this might be beneficial - Most of the low frequency movements (the bulk of the pushing) will be done by the remote extruder, leaving the high frequency movements (retractions, starting and stopping, etc) for the hotend extruder. Since that would require sharp spikes of high torque, but no long-term constant torque, a more advanced driver operating with variable current might be able to get a lot more torque out of a tiny stepper without overheating it. Not sure what the options are there, it might push you to a closed loop system.
Where is the Microswiss NG extruder that literally won in the tug of war video you mentioned?
There is also an extruder based on a brushless motor, the filament flows through the centre of the motor, really interesting design. No idea how good it is though.
It would be very cool, if the bigger 3d printing youtubers would give it more publicity!
What’s it called?
Awesome video. Maybe needs a DIY version including Clockwork, Sherpa Double Folded Ascender, VZ, etc.
Would love to see more extruders tested. Sherpa mini, clockwork 2 and more.
I thought he would have included the clockwork since he has a Voron
@@yvesinformel221 I hoped for the clockwork and sherpa. But I would expect them to perform fairly similar to the orbiter.
@@scruffy3121 orbiter would probably be lighter
Clockwork vs M4 would be cool too
I was pretty surprised that he didn't at least include a classic Wade's just for reference since it was the go-to option for so long.
Great video!
Here's some suggested candidates for a follow up video:
The Sherpa mini, micro, and DFA from Annex.
The sharkfin.
The double Sherpa from Meelis, in four and three gear drive versions, advertised to achieve amazing flow figures.
The vz-hextrudort.
The new phaetus apex.
The lgx mini.
There's too many extruders!
REALLY cool test Stefan! Love the scientific approach here with the load cell! Great work!
Thanks! Appreciate it.
The results for the orbiter were really impressive. Would be interesting to see how the cheaper cloned extruders stack up to the originals including the old Titan and Titan clones.
The spikes are cool. Maybe cutting a groove in a normal extruder wheel would also improve bite force.
Looks to me like they carved up a normal gear.
Great video, as always! I'm really looking forward to the extruder based injection molding. Very interesting!
If you are interested in hobby injection molding the TH-cam channel TheCrafsMan SteadyCraftin has a number of videos that show the use of a manual bench top pellet feeder/injector/mold clamping device using both metal and 3D printed molds that is a pretty good resource and might be of interest to you.
so no mini sherpa?
the experiment was nicely setup and as always apprenticed the comparison of date and graphs , thank for share
Hallo Steffan, ich habe selber viele Extruder ausprobiert. Mellows Cannon ist meiner Meinung nach der beste, aber nicht wegen der maximalen Kraft, sondern wegen der geringsten Flow Schwankung. Ich denke das liegt an der besonderen Art des Getriebes. Dadurch erzeugt er die schönsten Oberflächen entlang der Z Achse. Vielleicht kannst du dazu auch mal ein Test bzw. Vergleichs Video machen.
Gut zu hören. Das sollte ich unbedingt machen.
Sehr interessant! Ich habe jetzt ein OMG V2 für mein bowden Voron 0.2, was ich langsam baue, der Cannon war aber auch sehr sympathisch als upgrade weg. Ich habe ein dropeffect xg hotend gekauft, also flowrate ist nicht meine Priorität, sondern höchstmögliche Qualität und Beschleunigung.
edit: typo
@@CNCKitchen Hey Steffan, danke für dein Antwort. Ich hab dafür auch einen Testaufbau im Kopf, Extruder, Drehgeber und ein Hotend in einer Reihe. Der Extrudermotor wird mit Konstanter Schritte pro Sekunde angesteuert und man misst die Schritte am Drehgeber. Das lässt sich sicher mit dem Plotter von der Arduino IDE Darstellen oder in einen Graph. Vielleich mit verschiedenen Geschwindigkeiten oder ein Linearen anstieg. Verschiedener Last oder unterschiedlicher Temperatur am Hotend bzw. ohne Hotend. Wichtig ist das der Drehgeber Direkt das Filament antreibt, ohne Übersetzung.
Two extruder/hotend combos I'd like to see you test. Biqu H2, and the Microswiss NG. Thanks. Love you videos.
I feel like we need an updated video with extruders like the microswiss NG
Super interesting! I was hoping you would also cover the micro-swiss extruder too. I'm interested to pair up the ideal extruder with a 0.8 to 1 mm nozzle, a higher output hot end on my Ender 5 plus to print very large prints (2.5 kg) in a TPU material. Current print is 3.5 days.
You could also include Micro Swiss Ng extruder.
File or grind a center channel in the extruder gears of the Hemera to match the spikey design of the Dyze Xtruder Pro and retest, as the Hemera with the large motor was a good performer where the filament grip was its weak point that might be easily rectified. It would be interesting to also do the reverse and increase the motor strength on the units that had the motor as the weak point.
Specially the ones that mount normal NEMA 17s, those have quite the potential for some ridiculous long high current steppers running on them, or if you wanna turn the absurdity up a notch, get one with a built-in reduction gearing.
Some of the 3d printed models and their CNC versions from Mellow;
vz-hextrudort printed and cnc version
sherpa micro printed and cnc version
Would be very cool to see if there's any difference between the printed/home built versions vs the higher end (yet on the cheaper end of the extruders in this test) CNC versions :)
You can also get them with 8t or 10t moons and LDO motors, could be very interesting to see if there's any strenght differences in real life between those.
I don't think there is any difference in push force between printed/cnc, at least to the point where printed one can break. But definitely there may be difference in precision - cnc is more precise, rigid, temperature-stable in hot chamber - cnc can deliver more quality to print, not force. And second thing, what can affect force - you can pump more current in stepper with alu extruder - it helps with motor cooling and there is no chance that extruder can melt and jam. 100C+ motor can survive , but definitely not ABS printed extruder.
@@witalijlewandowski2384 yeah I think we agree :) would be cool to see what it would take to find differences, motor temps etc.
i paused. i took your recommendation to read the Orbiter 2.0 story. it was an awesome read and jaw dropping to see the level of obsession and pure talent going into extruder design. it was oozing with industry wisdom. great eye opener seeing the many different innovative extruders on aliexpress you would not know some are actually inferior just from the concept--like Mellow Cannon using worm gears---no way!! terrible idea!.. midway through the article i predicted the orbiter would be winning several categories. if you are reading this comment, go find the Orbiter 2.0 Story.
it looks like Orbiter and Bondtech have the lowest %loss of peak strength moving from low flow to high flow. i think this is a sign that proper design testing has happened (that the both the grip system and chosen motors are closely matched in capability and neither subsystem is bottle necking by much). you didn't show $cost per kgf and i feel like the Orbiter would also be champion there.
Hey Stefan! With the constant benchmarking of hotends you're "wasting" quite a large amount of filament, have you thought about an update on the homemade filament extruder series? Going over the options in this day and age, maybe giving an update on the filastruder you have?
High Nozzle pressure is really not a good friend of FDM printing. During the definition of my test procedure for hotend testing, I observed that filament will stop printing properly as soon as it enters the pressure creep zone. This behaviour can be observed at all temperature points. Improperly molten material will no be able to retain the shape induced by the nozzle and print path. It will tend to return to its original shape. Have a look to some of my results here: th-cam.com/video/02aufZ1OVvQ/w-d-xo.html
Great video as usual by the way, cant wait to see that molding injection project 👍
Get a better hot end so it melts faster?
i am REALLY looking forward to your injection molding video!!!!! can you try SLA printed molds with plastics that melt at low temps?
Companies like siriya tech make resins that are high temp and work with 200C+ I believe.
If you are interested in hobby injection molding the TH-cam channel TheCrafsMan SteadyCraftin has a number of videos that show the use of a manual bench top pellet feeder/injector/mold clamping device using both metal and 3D printed molds that is a pretty good resource and might be of interest to you.
That's my plan!
@@CNCKitchen yes!
@@CNCKitchen cool!
ONE OF THE BEST TECHNO BLOGGERS! SUBSCRIBED, I WATCH EVERY VIDEO. IN YOUR REVIEW, IN MY OPINION, THE PROPERTY EXTRUDER, DESPITE THE SMALLER PERFORMANCE, IS REALLY THE FUTURE. FROM YOUR VIDEOS, I DON'T QUITE UNDERSTAND HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT PATENT LAW. I AGREE THAT PATENTS HINDER DEVELOPMENT, ON THE OTHER HAND, IN ORDER TO INVENT SOMETHING, YOU NEED MONEY. AND IN GENERAL, IT SEEMS TO ME THAT THE FORCES OF THE EXTRUDER ARE A PATCH FOR A FRACTURE. Without changing the nozzle and the hot end, no matter how much the strength of the extruder increases, the efficiency will still be low. It's like putting an elephant in the Eye of a Needle. Thanks for the great work.
Nice comparison, thanks! You should also take a look at the vz-hextrudort. It's very similar to the Orbiter, but has some very cool unique features.
Amazing test, but unfortunately the Sherpa Mini is missing. Small motor, but 6,25:1 reduction so still a lot of pushing force, while being really light!
More niche but I would love to see the other Annex extruder, the Ascender (which is the original worm driven extruder that inspired the Cannon)
Well, the OMG looks so well created. I love how easy feeding filament through it looks and how inexpensive it actually is. I currently have an all-metal ender extruder and it is actually fantastic from what I can see. Never skips or anything like that and I seem to be able to force quite a lot of filament through at quite the clip, but if I go to replace it because I hit that bottle neck (I've been pushing printing speeds faster and faster so I'm sure that I will hit that eventually) I'll definitely have to refer back to this video...
No Microswiss extruders? Does it mean they are crap?
The " professional " injection molding machines use a spiral ( reverse drill ) to push molten pellets/filament and hold pressure in the mold. I would recommend looking into some of the " DIY " machines for taking your old filament and making new to you filament as that is closer to an injection part of the plastics manufacturing. This is still great information as it also can be used for design choices for a Voron between the weight classes and how much filament can be pushed and how hard. Thank you for not just the hard work, the excellent graphs showing the information and the important summary that makes it well worth the comparison.
I'm so happy with purchasing The Orbiter 2. I never had any problems and a proper tensioned belt allows for great speeds.
The only two "flaws" I could find are the temperature, which is acceptable, but shouldn't get hotter and the manual feed for TPU. (Any small kink should be removed, because it will get stuck otherwise)
I can't recommend it enough.
Great video, thanks Stefan! And also I'm happy to see Proper Printing compared, he's such a cool guy.
On my SK-Tank I currently use a Bondtech LGX with a Dragon HF hotend and 0.6mm nozzle (can't remember if it's Bondtech CHT or Micro Swiss). So far I'm pretty happy with the LGX, but I do like to experiment when I have time. I spent a few months with the Biqu H2 and that was fun, but the cooling performance in that setup wasn't quite there for higher speed printing :-/
Thank you for a great video! I use LGX Lite and like it a lot. I think the way the wheels are aproached from both sides makes them less sensible to missalignment of the wheels, a problem with original BMG and all that use a spring like the Orbiter.
That maybe true, but I'm not sure misalignment is completely eliminated. I recently upgraded to an LGX Lite and immediately noticed clicking of the gears during retractions. Upon further inspection, I discovered there is a small amount of play on ALL the gears, which causes a little backlash and is the source of the noise. Though I wouldn't necessarily say it's a design flaw, more like a design characteristic.
I really like the design of the dyze extruder gears. Since they use those spikes to press into the filament I'm guessing they don't need a tension adjustment because it's not depending on tension to drive the filament. It probably bottoms the two sides of the outer edges of the gears against each other and the spikes drive the filament regardless of what filament is in there so there's no need for tension adjustment. Very interesting design that other manufacturers really should adopt. The squeeze style definitely has its drawbacks
exactly what I was looking for, thank you! When considering an upgrafe a force/price chart would be super useful too and would be great if you could add that 😁
I had a Hemera running on my Ender 3 and was blown away as to how powerful that thing was. There were a couple of times where the filament tangled and it literally took the entire dry box with the spool. I couldn’t even be mad.
I work in the HDPE pipe fitting fabrication industry. Our fabricators use extrusion welding guns that mangle the filament like the bondtech extruder does. If you’re interested in the technology, I think we use an older version of the Wegener EXWELD sigma4 SC TWISTY.
Would love to have seen the vz hextrudort and Sherpa Mini in this test as these are used extensively in the custom/diy printer parts of the community
Thanks for this awesome comparison! I wonder how the sherpa mini performance/weight ratio is compared to the orbiter. I am really sad that my good old and still loved titan extruder was not tested too. It would have been really interesting to see how the grandpa holds up against the newbies.
I had hoped to see the latest all-metal hextrudort (if I'm not mistaken it is sold by Mellow) on the list. It claims several improvements over what is otherwise similar to the Orbiter. I'm especially interested whether the angled pattern on the drive wheels makes a difference ...
I would love to see what you think of the Micro Swiss Bowden extruder. It has its annoying quirks, but overall I've enjoyed it.
Back in the day when printers used fat filament, they needed geared extruders. 1.75mm filament came to dominate because the finer filament could be driven directly without gears. Also ungeared extruders are much lighter so suit direct drive printers.
Would really be interested in seeing a Sherpa Mini in this comparison, but nevertheless, a really interesting video!
Me too beside theses are all "off the shelf" not self printed versions. Perhaps it would be on par with the BMG. Using the same components after all. I currently run a CW2 and planned to change it into Sherpa mini or micro.
Great video, go the Orbiter, to be honest, trying to make an extruder powerful but also light weight is silly, your best to have two ultralight identical extruders in a push pull setup, if one of my Nano extruders cant push enough, I use a second one at the other end of the reverse bowden tube setup, this setup can be installed by either running one driver each or by running 2 steppers in a series of one driver.
Hey Stefan! Great video! I'm not sure if you saw it, but MirageC put out a really good video out about a month ago about Extrusion Quality which seem to be a large potential driver for the elusive "Prusa Issue 602." What MirageC found is that his BMG extruder had some slight wobble in the gears and that was enough to cause inconsistent extrusion that is visible with light sources directly above the print. With all these great extruders that you have, it would be awesome to see if there was a noticable difference between them with their extrusion consistency and compare them under harsh perpendicular lighting.
Very helpful for anyone shopping for replacements. I am working with the APUS from Phaetus, that would be an interesting test.
Stefan, you make the best, most interesting and most unique 3d printer content on all of the TH-cams.
I have an IDEX with the 3mm filament OmniaDrop (V older) that works great for squishy stuff. glad to see it get some recognition here, and didn't know they have an updated design!
My lgx lite tensioning got looser over time, from the fixed tension and the SLS end cap that holds the shaft deforming. It would barely grip filament in the normal position
I am currently using an hemera which only cost me like 70€ and I have to say I am very happy with it. I have printed PC and TPU with it without problems.
Thanks for diving into this.
If we look at the other variable: price --->> The Orbiter v2 wins easily. So I would say the Orbiter v2 is the better one. Even though I do not have good experiences with my own Orbiter v2 as I feel it lacks power, but even besides that point, it's cheap, powerful, lightweight and it extrudes very precise.
Would love to see the HextrudORT tested because of the used gear system and relative cheap price.
One thing that I'm curious about, We know that microstepping ends up getting less force out of a stepper motor than full steps. With the step-down gearing, it's my impression that we should be able (at some point) to simply set the stepper motor driving the filament to no microsteps, and effectively get the full force pushed through to the filament. What I suspect we'll lose is that safety mechanism of skipped steps preventing the extruder from grinding away the filament. But if that can be handled in another way, perhaps we would see even better results, especially in situations where you want high flow printing? Just curiosity on my part, I don't tend to print at higher speeds.
I made a great decision to get a hemera back then. i'm still impressed
It would be fun to frankenstein a extruder from the best parts. Putting a bigger motor on the OMG, and bigger wheels with spikes
Where's the sherpa mini? and the ascender? 2 of the best extruders available rn.
Considering that you’re doing this testing partially for an injection molding system, I’d be very interested in seeing what happens when you put the giant stepper motors on these extrudes. For instance, the Dyze extruded with one of the “Super Whopper” motors would be very interesting, because we might be able to see what the limits of the gear teeth are.
@@wyattutz I'm actually planning to do that for a bowden voron 0.2 I'm building with the OMG V2 😅
edit: oh sorry, I meant the Speedy Power
Can you contact the Exoslide crew to get a sample of their geared extruder to test?
Good video and test as always, Stefan. :) In regards to other extruders, maybe test the Phaetus Apus extruder as well?
It'd be really cool if you also did a test like this on the most consistent extrusion, checking for patterns, and underextrusion etc.
The only criticism I have with the orbiter is you also need a mount for the hotend. With the hemera xs, the mount for the hotend is the heatbreak, which threads right into the extruder. It didn't look like you included the added weight of a hotend mount that is needed for the orbiter, which may cause the hemera xs to overtake the orbiter in your force per weight analysis.
Sounds like it's time to Frankenstein together a Hemera with Dyze spiked drive wheels for maximum power! That might fix the Hemera stripping as well.
I believe there are 2 remote direct drive extruder that run off worm gears. One out of England and the other out of Australia.
I share your opinion about the Orbiter.
One of my printers has a Sprite extruder, but is not as good as the Orbiter I have on my other printer.
After testing a lot I prefer the Orbiter. It has the advantage that it is widely supported. In combination with the Hero-Me printhead you get an incredible amount of possible combinations.
4:39 The Bondtech BMG is NOT the OG dual gear extruder. That would be the Printrbot Gear Head. Of course the BMG had a much bigger impact.
I would have liked to have seen the Bondtech LGX Lite. I don't expect it to perform as well as the Orbiter (which I do mean to try some time), but would be good to see how it ranks.
I honestly thought the BMG would be better than it is. I loved that video though!
I had this idea for a while now. Sad but glad someone beat me to it.
If you're 3d printing and the nozzle is massive, then obviously that limits your print speed. But a makeshift injection molding machine would have a stationary nozzle. For that application why wouldn't you use a high current Nema 24 motor and run it at high voltage? I mean, if the limiting factor seems to be the motor.
What about the extrusion consistency? Does Bondtech LGX benefit from its large extrusion gears?
Great video! But what about DIY extruders? For example, the Titanator v3 from thingiverse is very interesting. Also it's a good idea to repeat this test with TPU filament. I think, the result may be different.
Great video! I run the Dyze on my Voron Switchwire. I find it really good for large nozzles at lower linear speeds.
The Apus would be a fun one to test, from what I heard it got quite the power due to its massive gear.
Great video.
Really wish you had included the Sherpa/Sherpa mini.
Another great video - and it's uncannily similar to videos on the PROJECT FARM channel. Same cadence and categorical sorting. That's a compliment!
its nice to have had this come out while I was installing an orbiter clone on my own printer
Since you built the rig, would be nice to see what kind of forces the filament can withstand. feed a few different ones through a set geometry bowden and a direct drive setup, because I've got a feeling CF reinforced is liable to turn to dust at some of those pressures.
The micro swiss extruder tested by proper Printing should have been included. Also some choice in flexible drive extruder as flex3drive or zesty nimble should have been included in the tests
Need to include the hextrudort, sherpa mini, sherpa micro, Sailfin and clockwork!
Extrusion force shouldn't be a concern so long as you're melting your filament properly one would think. I suppose there is likely an ideal pushing force for any given material in 1.75mm that should not be exceeded. It is likely that volumetric flow rate is the real limiting factor, not extrusion force with all these great extruders.
As soon as the filament starts contacting the mold it begins to harden, making it thicker and requiring more force to push it into all the nooks and crannies and especially thin and long features or channels.
The alternative to shoving in a lot of hot plastic quickly under high pressure is to heat the mold to near or above the melting point of the plastic, the downside being that it takes a lot of time to cool down the mold to allow the part to solidify and remove it and then heat up the mold again for the next injection.
You can assembly line it by having multiple molds cooling and heating up to maintain a good parts per minute throughput, but molds are typically the expensive part of injection molding so that would not be the most practical solution.
For a hobby user unless you are trying to automate the entire process you're generally going to be best off with a manual bench top pellet feeder/injector/mold clamping device that already exists and is not all that expensive.
The TH-cam channel TheCrafsMan SteadyCraftin has a number of videos using one, with both metal and 3D printed molds, definitely a good resource for anyone interested in hobby injection molding.
Just realized you were likely talking about the properties of the extruders when used for normal 3D printing, not for injection molding, in which case feel free to ignore the first reply to you 🤣
Printing with a zesty nimble for years 😊
Love the remote direct drive system!
Going to put in my prediction now. That injection mold project you got in mind is going to back up plastic into the extruder and gum up the whole thing.
Your going to need to plan for super low pressure and lots of place for air to escape. As well as a preheated mold.
Double double gear (so two double gear one pushing one pulling) is the best, but not commercialised. The "puller" has most tension, the 'pusher' a bit less, so you have perfect push-pull effect. Used a lot in industrial machines. COOL the motor!
A large set of data can be extracted from this video Stefan. Like the good movies i will need to watch it again. Congratulations and as always thanks for your time and effort.