I spent entirely way too much time trying to get one of these style extruders on my Ender 3. Maybe I picked a knock off without realizing it, maybe mine was just defective, I’m not entirely sure.
But it was ultimately the cause for my printer underextruding on certain layers. If you need a new extruder, go for something better than these cheap $20 ones and get an actually decent one.
But on the bright side, my printer is finally fixed! It feels nice to be able to get back into the hobby again.
Got one of this for about 2 years and it is working well. Did you try to adjust spring tension? Also, 20$ is too expensive for those. They cost about 10$
Yeah, adjusting the tension didn’t have an effect.
And yeah, it’s too expensive for what it was.
Good to know. Thanks.
I bought a cheap dual drive clone a long time ago for my Ender 3 which I’m quite happy with.
One of the best upgrades I did to my CR10s was to install the microswiss extruder (the bowden replacement.)
The other two big ones are the BLTouch and the BTT board (SKR e3 mini)- mostly because I set up UBL around the same time.-Upgraded an Ender 2 pro with this one.
WARNING: buy and ender 3 extruder motor if you plan to do so. Thank me later.
I gave an Ender 2 pro as a present for my little brother and sister. The extruder stopped doing it’s job, so I bought one of these for 50 CHF (in Switzerland you pay a lot for anything). But what’s good is, it works flawlessly. I wonder if I’ll have to tighten the grub screw over time, but that honestly doesn’t bother me much. Also aligning the gears was a bit fiddly, but if you pass a piece of fulament through the extruder, it aligns the gears automatically and then you can tighten things down. IMO worth it.
Edit: the yellow spring is extreme overkill. That might be one of the causes for the problems. Too much tension isn’t good. maybe try installing the stock spring if you’re having problems.
the yellow spring is extreme overkill. That might be one of the causes for the problems. Too much tension isn’t good. maybe try installing the stock spring if you’re having problems.
I ended up replacing the whole extruder with a micro Swiss one because it was causing me such a headache.
If I ever have to use the old one, I’ll give that a shot.
More power to you. Happy printing :).
A good solid extruder if you are willing to build it yourself (and want/need bowden), I can recommend the Voron M4 extruder.
I recently got a bltouch as well. I should have done so waaaay earlier. It’s actually allowed me to switch out those horrible and easy to bump/misalign nobs that control bed height.
Now I just have two nuts per corner holding everything down.
All printers should come with one.
I recently got a bltouch as well. I should have done so waaaay earlier. It’s actually allowed me to switch out those horrible and easy to bump/misalign nobs that control bed height.
Now I just have two nuts per corner holding everything down.
All printers should come with one.
Crap, I bought one of these and it worked well for a few months, but now my printer has been under extruding for a while and I couldn’t figure out why. Do you have a better recommendation?
I ended up switching to this one:
https://store.micro-swiss.com/products/micro-swiss-bowden-dual-gear-extruder
I’ve heard good things about micro swiss, so hopefully this one will last.
I love my Micro Swiss dual gear extruder. I have some homemade filament made from PET bottles that won’t print on a single gear extruder but prints perfectly on the dual gear extruder.
I’m glad it is working well for you.
I’m probably gonna print a mount for it to make it a direct drive extruder, but for now I am just so glad that it works at all that I kinda want to print other things for the time being. It’s been almost 8 months since I last had it working.
Neat! I use one of the metal Creality extruders, which seems to work fine, but maybe this is the next step in my quest to nail my extrusion…
Awesome, thanks! Just ordered one off Amazon. Hoping this does the trick.
Good luck!
Neat! I use one of the metal Creality extruders, which seems to work fine, but maybe this is the next step in my quest to nail my extrusion…
I’m a fan of Trianglelab’s DDB V2.1. Sure it’s fundamentally a clone, but at least they’ve made some improvements to it, and the original is really not worth the price Bondtech is charging for it.
It’s a lot stronger than the Creality extruder and the single gear “all metal” red extruder, which makes extrusions more consistent. It can also print somewhat flexible filaments, at least if you slow down a little.
There are of course better and lighter extruders out there, but the DDB has the advantage that it can be used as a drop-in replacement on Enders etc., and if you want to mod the printer in the future it’s compatible with most custom designs.
I have a Monoprice mini select V1 that I still use occasionally. It has a terrible extruder on it that can’t handle anything. I put a better hot end on it and it runs much better.
I did the hot end because there are no aftermarket nozzles for the V1 Monoprice hot end that I’m aware of. Anyways, the better heating of the filament made the extruder skip less.
It won’t make it amazing, but if you find a knockoff CHT nozzle for the printer. More efficient heating might flow more easily, reducing the pressure on the filament that the extruder has to overcome.
I had some trouble with these cheapo extruders a while back. The key was swapping their gear wheel for my old one, which wasn’t worn out. And yes, I calibrated esteps - it just didn’t grip well. I washed it and adjusted the tension, and nada.
a lot of the amazon cheapos don’t have proper bearings on the gear, so you slowly wear out the the drive bolt. if you see gray powder forming… you have a problem. Some 3-in-1 (though I recommend the PTFE 3-in-1) will slow it down, but it’s still going to wear.
I have Voxelab Aquila and just got the Creality Direct Drive Extruder, tell ya what it’s pretty nice
What extruder did you end up going with?
I recently got a bltouch as well. I should have done so waaaay earlier. It’s actually allowed me to switch out those horrible and easy to bump/misalign nobs that control bed height.
Now I just have two nuts per corner holding everything down.
All printers should come with one.
Why did you want to originally replace the extruder on your ender 3? I’ve only been running mine for ~100h now, so I haven’t yet figured why one would need to change it. Did yours just break?
Yeah, this is like the 4th time I’ve had to replace it.
I don’t think it’s just a matter of print time, I think it’s also a matter of how long you’ve had the machine. I’ve has mine for I think 4 or 5 years now. The tension arm on the extruder is under constant tension at all times every day. The plastic extruder Ender 3s come with is just not strong enough for the task, so they end up breaking.
I think my second one was basically and identical one made of alluminum. But that one ultimately died as well, for the same reason. So I switched to the above one, which turned out to be a mistake.
So now my 4th one is a CNCed steel dual extruder from micro Swiss. Hopefully it lasts.
The plastic arms breaking seem to be a super common issue with ender 3’s. I have the neo version, which has a metal extruder arm, but I suppose that is also aluminium. Time will tell if that is going to be durable enough. What kind of stuff do you 3d print, if you have been doing it for years? Also just straight pla or more complex stuff as well?
I usually print things you’d find in r/functionalprint, and usually only ever in PLA.
I’ve tried ABS and PETG before, but I’ve rarely used them.
The extenders on ender 3s are all sorts of trash, the bronze gear wears out pretty fast, tensioning issues, build quality.
How you have 100h on one is frankly a miracle. I have multiple ender3 s and I just immediately change out the extruder at this point.
Over 200h now. I rack up hours printing parts with 100% infill as they get annealed in the oven. Time will tell when I get issues. So far I’ve had to retighten the x axis belt once, but no other issues.
I get that the original plastic tension arms break after a while, but I hope that the metal arm on the neo will last longer. Can the softer extrusion gears be replaced with steel or some other stronger material?
They can, but really it’s not even worth it with those things, you can get cheap bag or titan extruder knockoffs on Ali- express that are a million times better. One of my Enders has a cheap titan direct drive kit and it’s actually awesome. I think I paid 35 bucks for it. And the knock off came with dual gear hardened steel gears. Triangle labs makes a killer bmg clone as well
Not sure how you fixed it, but i needed to calibrate my e-steps. Moving on to dd with an orbiter soon anyways.
I bought one of these and had a lot of trouble, until i figured out when installing it I accidentally mixed up the spring from the plastic extruder and the new one. Once i swapped them it was fine.
