First look at the new EZR Struder!

[lightninjay]

Curious to know, does it come with a hobbed roller, or would I order one of those as well?

Looking to upgrade W.I.S.P.E.R. to using two of these bad boys with a cyclops hotend! Just trying to figure out all that I need to order.

I currently have an original EZ struder, and a hacked together extruder as a secondary filament feeder. If I were to buy two of these EZR struder sets, I would also be looking to get more Bowden Tubing, and since my other motor is not an EZ struder, I am trying to figure out if purchasing one hobbed roller would be necessary or if when buying two sets, one with a stepper motor, would the set with stepper motor come with a hobbed roller?

[Jimustanguitar]

Curious to know, does it come with a hobbed roller, or would I order one of those as well?

Yep, it comes with everything. There's both halves of the main body, the red lever and idler bearing, spring, drive gear (hobbed roller), and all necessary nuts and screws. Even has an allen wrench.

The only thing I added to what came in the kit for my video was a stepper motor and a demonstration piece of bowden tube. If you need more tube, I believe that they sell it, as well.

[626Pilot]

Looking to upgrade W.I.S.P.E.R. to using two of these bad boys with a cyclops hotend! Just trying to figure out all that I need to order.

For Cyclops, you NEED a geared extruder. The back pressure is enough to make a direct drive Nema17 stepper motor stall, which I discovered after some agonizing hours. (Might go okay for awhile, but good luck getting through a print that lasts for more than an hour.) I got the 5.18:1 geared motor and 12.5mm OD / 8mm ID hobbed drive gear from TriDPrinting.com, which I can't pull up right now (no DNS) or I'd link you directly. You will also need either my or Glacian's adapter plate (his uses shorter screws - pick the one that matches whatever screws you might already have.) The plate lets you attach the EZ(R)Struder to the round nose of the transmission housing on the front of the stepper.

As for the hobbed drive gear, yes, exactly the same. John Oly will post these for sale this week! Look for them on our website.

The one I'm using has a 12.5mm OD (it has to because the transmission output shaft is fatter than stock). Will it fit?

[Nylocke]

TriD's website is a little weird, but they are on this page http://www.tridprinting.com/Mechanical-Parts/ (its the 8mm ID one).

Pilot, it does look like it will work, the hobb diameter is the same and the OD is .2mm smaller on the one you have. All other dimensions (excluding the ID) are the same. This is assuming SMC used the Mk7 drive gear dimensions and not their own.

[U.S. Water Rockets]

I received my EZRStruder this week and installed it today. My first impression are that it is a dramatic improvement over the EZStruder.

Initial impressions:
Very easy to install, even with no instructions. It eliminated the weird U shaped melanine spacers used for the EXStruder, and has the correct mounting screws, so the install looks a lot cleaner.

Without directions I was unsure how the align the hobbed gear with the idler. It was very hard to see how it aligns, so I put the gear on and ran some filament back and forth through the extruder by hand to "self align" the nitch with the filament path.

It aligns differently than the original hobbed gear, so you can't just swap the plastic because it does not align the same way. This meant taking off the existing hobbed gear and shattering the supplied hex key in the process (I guess the Loctite worked too good on the grub screw). I got the screw out by heating the hobbed gear with a lighter and then using a pair of pliers to hold a section of the broken hex key and turn the grub screw.

Once that was done the rest of the assembly is dead simple and obvious. It went together really quickly once I got past the hobbed gear.

Filament loading is 10000000 times easier than before. It basically self guides. You don't really even have to press the lever, just insert filament and wrist the knob. Magically the filament appears inside the Bowden tube.

It seems to grip stronger than the EZ struder. I can more easily manually extrude with the knob without slippage. Nice.

I mainly got it for the ease of entry, and loading, which is frustrating with the EXstruder, and was nicely surprised that it seems to drive better as well. I was happy with the existing EZ struder. It's well worth the investment.

I rarely print with flexible filament, but I may try this out sometime with the EZRStruder and see how it goes. The filament path is much more constrained and it looks like it will prevent binding.

[AlanZ]

I installed the new EZR Struder onto my Eris.
Turns out you have to remove the bottom of the Eris because of the way the two nuts on the far end of the extruder are mounted.
No big deal.
I reused the existing Hobbs gear, as it appeared to be identical to the new one.
The Bowden tube is long enough to reach into the extruder, so that's a non-issue

So the new extruder seems to be doing fine... much easier to load when mounted on the Eris.

Now if I can only get my Eris to calibrate properly... but that's for another thread.

[Qdeathstar]

really? A vast improvement?

I got the bondtech qr and honesty I don't notice a huge difference over the stock extruder... And that's a test image to the stock extruder... I'd actually prefer the stock over the bondtech for abs/pla..


Edit: I agree about the loading on the stock being fustrating to load however... The filament is on a roll and curls exactly the way it shouldn't.

[Jimustanguitar]

Without directions I was unsure how the align the hobbed gear with the idler. It was very hard to see how it aligns, so I put the gear on and ran some filament back and forth through the extruder by hand to "self align" the nitch with the filament path.

It aligns differently than the original hobbed gear, so you can't just swap the plastic because it does not align the same way. This meant taking off the existing hobbed gear and shattering the supplied hex key in the process (I guess the Loctite worked too good on the grub screw). I got the screw out by heating the hobbed gear with a lighter and then using a pair of pliers to hold a section of the broken hex key and turn the grub screw.

The best way I've found to do this is to load a up a length of filament while the hobbed gear is loose and can slide around. Then you can kind of "floss" the filament back and forth through it to get the groove in the gear to align with the filament path, then just tighten it.

[U.S. Water Rockets]

Without directions I was unsure how the align the hobbed gear with the idler. It was very hard to see how it aligns, so I put the gear on and ran some filament back and forth through the extruder by hand to "self align" the nitch with the filament path.

It aligns differently than the original hobbed gear, so you can't just swap the plastic because it does not align the same way. This meant taking off the existing hobbed gear and shattering the supplied hex key in the process (I guess the Loctite worked too good on the grub screw). I got the screw out by heating the hobbed gear with a lighter and then using a pair of pliers to hold a section of the broken hex key and turn the grub screw.

The best way I've found to do this is to load a up a length of filament while the hobbed gear is loose and can slide around. Then you can kind of "floss" the filament back and forth through it to get the groove in the gear to align with the filament path, then just tighten it.

Great minds think alike. That's exactly what I did! I mentioned it in my post, but I guess I was not explaining it well. It worked great doing it that way.

[626Pilot]

really? A vast improvement?

I got the bondtech qr and honesty I don't notice a huge difference over the stock extruder... And that's a test image to the stock extruder... I'd actually prefer the stock over the bondtech for abs/pla..

I was actually considering the Bondtech, which I really don't want to do because I feel it's overpriced. The other option was to design my own EZStruder replacement, but I didn't want to get into that. I've since ordered an EZRStruder. I'm glad they came out with this when they did

[Qdeathstar]

yeah...


it's like buying a house... you should live with it for a while before you make any improvements. I ordered them when I bought the printer, but I didn't install them upfront... If I had to do it over again I wouldn't buy the bondtech, e3d v6, or the matter control touch and instead would have gotten a duet, autoleveling, heat spreader, and pei... and would still have had some money left over...

[lightninjay]

Just thought I would tag back in with an update.

I discovered that the EZRstruder requires a SLIGHT modification to work with the geared steppers from TriDPrinting and their hobbed rollers. The oval hole in the red push lever needs to be modified to be more circular, otherwise the grub screw for the roller gets caught on the red arm.

I modified both of my EZRstruder red arms by dremeling the oval out to be more of a circle. So far, the added torque and stepper resolution increase has been awesome! Still just trying to dial in the proper settings for my cyclops, but that is a different story.

General view of one of the extruder setups

I copied Gchristopher and used his and the dinosaurs' mounting scheme

Currently trying to get a rather cool looking succubus to print

[U.S. Water Rockets]

Just thought I would tag back in with an update.

I discovered that the EZRstruder requires a SLIGHT modification to work with the geared steppers from TriDPrinting and their hobbed rollers. The oval hole in the red push lever needs to be modified to be more circular, otherwise the grub screw for the roller gets caught on the red arm.

I modified both of my EZRstruder red arms by dremeling the oval out to be more of a circle. So far, the added torque and stepper resolution increase has been awesome! Still just trying to dial in the proper settings for my cyclops, but that is a different story.

IMG_20160820_011032.jpgIMG_20160820_011039.jpgIMG_20160820_011046.jpg

Can't you just loosen the grub screw, pull the hobbed roller off, flip it over and align it and then tighten the grub screw?

[lightninjay]

Great question! Alas, I cannot. Once flipped, the grub screw does not come in contact with the geared stepper's shaft in order to be tightened down.

Had I just used a regular tradition EZstruder it would not have been an issue.

But since I chose to go with the newer EZ(R)struder with the geared stepper motors, the fatter stepper shaft and reconfigured 8mm ID hobbed roller create a scenario with a raised grub positioning screw.

Thus, I did something to the effect of this.

I dremeled out the flatter edges of the red button to make it more like a circle.

I would have preferred to just flip the roller, but I suppose one could just use shorter hob screws or attempt to grind theirs down a bit...

[626Pilot]

Maybe SeeMeCNC will release a geared extruder again, one that is compatible with the EZR. The Rostock MAX v1 originally shipped with a totally huge one.

[bLiTzJoN]

Oh phew.. glad I'm not the only one that noticed the pinch point needing modification (seems flipped, should be more bite, not more roller). I got frustrated and swapped back to my old extruder that was working fine.

[lightninjay]

Oh phew.. glad I'm not the only one that noticed the pinch point needing modification (seems flipped, should be more bite, not more roller). I got frustrated and swapped back to my old extruder that was working fine.

I actually took the time to grind down my set screws using a Dremel and a grinding disk. Now I have no issue with the set screw hitting the red release lever.

The EZRstruder seems to exert a more direct pressure on the filament than the EZstruder did. Could just be placebo, but, for this reason, I think the EZRstruder is a better pair for the higher torque of a geared stepper motor.

A few seconds of grinding on a set screw will get ya going in order to use the EZRstruder and a geared stepper motor with the larger hobbed gear. Or SeeMeCNC can slightly redesign their red levers, although this option may be unlikely due to the already sunk investment in their injection molds.

[gchristopher]

the dinosaurs' mounting scheme

The dinos were excited to see you printed their design!! I did a double take before realizing "oh yeah, those are the 'totally-professional-looking-CNC' eyes."

[img]http://gchristopher.net/3dprinting/dinos_view_mount.jpg[/img]

Though it looks like with a gearbox in place, it could use some adjustment for the extra effective length of the motor. That was always a tight fit.

[bLiTzJoN]

...Or SeeMeCNC can slightly redesign their red levers, although this option may be unlikely due to the already sunk investment in their injection molds.

Since they do their molding in house, it might be a worthy investment to tweak. I can't feed anything with it, useless. I was blaming the PrintBite for bed adhesion to start with; then, I was blaming the filament and started cranking the temps (220 for RigidInk PLA, ummm... not right). I was actually getting pissed so I started pushing the filament and it started printing fine as long as "I" was the extruder. I didn't want to mess with any longer and swapped it back to the old one. I almost feel stupid cause I didn't have any issues to begin with, yeah, don't fix what ain't broke.