Solidoodle Jigsaw Extruder Replacement w/ Fan Shroud and Receiver - MK5 Compatible for Hexagon and Other Hotends. by GoatCheez

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

This is meant to replace and accompany another thing:
lawsy's Mk5 parts (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:111213)
I have two replacement bases for the above parts, in addition to fan mounts and a receiver. My bases are designed to help extruding softer filament. Sometimes softer or more flexible filament can bend a little bit instead of trying to extrude. My bases try to alleviate extrusion issues for those types of filament by constricting the distance from the stepper to the hotend opening. .
Base3 is more aggressive than Base2 as far as guiding the filament is concerned. Base2 should be the default option unless you are having issues with your filament.
The bases are meant for groove mount hotends and give enough heatsink room to support the size of the hexagon hotend, That was the intention with them, however they should also work for many other hotends. You will probably want to loosen the hobbed pulley/gear attached to the extruder stepper motor when mounting to ensure it aligns correctly with the directed filament guide..
The directed fan mount and receiver are sized for the hexagon hotend, but they may work with others. The directed fan mount should work with most hotends, and will definitely work with any j-head style. The receiver, however, has a piece that extends past the filament guide and would run into either the heat block or heatsink of any non-hexagon hotend. If you want to try the receiver without a hexagon anyway, you could probably just snap off that part of the piece if your hotend ends up running into it.
There is support material included for all pieces. If you need to use a knife to remove the support material, you might want to revisit your printing settings. The bases have support for the tension arm mount, as well as support for the spacing of the stepper motor. The directed fan mount has support for its accessory clips. You should be able to apply force against the print direction, then slide them out. The directed fan mount receiver has two tiny supports for the mounting hole bulges.
As far as testing goes, only base 3 is untested as of this writing. Base 2 has served me well enough for everything other than ninjaflex, so I haven't had a need to switch just yet.
The pictures are of the complete assembly using Base2 - Base2, Receiver, Fan Mount. There is an action picture of the assembly whilst in the process of printing a PET+ calibration cube. I plan on replacing all extruder parts with PET+ due to the strength, temperature, and print quality characteristics.
This thing is close to being finalized. All pieces (outside potentially base3) are very much in fully working order.
Please excuse how dirty my hexagon is in the pictures. I have very much been abusing it. I went through 3 J-Head MK V-BVs before going all-metal. I feel dumb now. All metal hotends are the way to go. Lining ends up limiting temperatures and is really just a cost-saving manufacturing means in most cases. All metal is the way to go. I have a spare cartridge and thermistor for the hexagon. I don't think I will need them any time soon.
One major issue with the J-Heads I had purchased was that the cartridge was "glued" in with cement. Additionally, the thermistor leads were very weak. Hexagon kits come with really solid and reliable parts that exhibit neither of those weaknesses. I'm not trying to sell the Hexagon, but to me it's obvious why it's popular, versatile, cheap to produce, and above all, very usable for a variety of filaments.