TrinityLabs Micro Extruder 1.0 by ezmobius

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

This is the first 1.0 release of the new TrinityLabs micro direct drive extruder platform. This direct pinch extruder uses a small gear head stepper from eMinebea that is 56oz/in holding torque before the 30:1 delrin planetary gear head. So this little motor has way more then plenty of torque to direct drive 3mm or 1.75mm filament.
The motor is also so small it only weighs 118grams. And so this entire extruder including the motor, the extruder body, the idler, all vitamins, a 40mm fan and shroud and a Jhead hot end only weighs a grand total of 199grams. Compare this to 560grams for an average Wades or 790grams for a MakerGear plastruder and you can see that this little extruder can allow you to print very fast without the need for a bowden cable setup since the motor is so lightweight.
I have tested this extruder with 5 klilos of plastic and print quality is excellent all the way up to 200mm/sec and probably further even. It is even capable of lifting a MendelMax 3d printer off the table and have it climb up the 3mm filament if it it bnot rowing freely from the spool(don't ask me how I know this;).
The only issue I had with the entire 5 kilos of testing was during a 12hour + ABS print at 230C I melted the delrin gear head enough to warp it and ruin that motor.
So I have added a fan shroud with a 40mm cpu cooler fan that bows on the back of the gear head stepper motor and this has fixed that issue entirely. I am now very confident this extruder is ready for prime time.
So I hereby release version 1.0 that is well tested and printing very nicely.
Since this thing has so very light stay tuned for a dual extruder version com in very soon that will still weigh less then a single Wades extruder!
We now have this motor as well as the hobbled gear and all vitamins and printed parts in our store here >>
http://store.mendelmax.com/lightweight-gearhead-stepper-for-trinity-micro-extruder/