The Bondtech Extruders

bondtech · November 20, 2016

When I just started with 3D printing years ago I frequently ran into problems caused by the feeders, not specifically Ultimakers. With a background in engineering it inspired me to design my own alternative feeder. I found a great partner in the community of Ultimaker, helping in pushing this feeder to new levels by supplying valuable feedback and experiences. This all lead to the 'Bondtech extruder'

The biggest difference between the Bondtech Extruder and other extruders is that it uses two counter rotating gears that are gripping the filament from both sides which minimizes the risk of grinding, slipping and under extrusion. The geometry of the gears also gives very little filament deformation that is important in Bowden style printers.

In order to be able to quickly change filament it has a Quick Release lever to release the pressure of the filament and also a thumbscrew with a compression spring to fine-tune the clamping force applied to the filament.

The extruder features a planetary gear reducer with 5.18:1 ratio that gives it a lot of torque and also a high resolution to be able to print fast pushing the filament hard but also providing fine details with small nozzles. The E-step value is 492.45 for 2.85/3.0 mm filament and 476.50 for 1.75 mm filament.

The hardened steel gears are made specific for each filament diameter.

Below you see two parts printed on our Ultimaker 2 Extended, the right one is printed with a 1.5 mm nozzle with 0.7 mm layers, the left one is printed with 0.25 mm nozzle with 0.05 mm layer height.

I love the possibilities 3D-printing gives and it is such a fantastic tool to boost your creativity and be able to develop new exiting products right at your desktop.

For more information about the extruder you are most welcome to visit our webpage where you can download installation instructions, read our FAQ and download free stl-files. Our webpage can be found at www.bondtech.se

If you have any questions you are welcome to post them in Bondtech QR 30 universal thread and I will do my best to answer them.

Other forum threads regarding the Bondtech QR.

https://ultimaker.com/en/community/18369-bondtech-qr-30-universal?page=1

Edited November 20, 2016 by Guest

ultiarjan · November 20, 2016

Hi,

This summer I bought one form Carl / 3Dsolex, just because I was curious about it. I run it on one of my UM2's for a few months now. And though I'm probably not the most interesting person to give feedback as I didn't really torture test the device I have two remarks concerning the bondtech.

I find the Quick Release to be useless with the short spring you deliver with it. I always have to almost totally unscrew the screw to be able to use the quick release. People tell me I can replace the spring with a longer one... it's still on my to-do list but I think you should really deliver a longer one with the feeder.

2th and more important issue is the driveweels get polluted with plastic over time, and it's a pain to clean them. It's expected this type of drivewheel to pollute more than the knurled wheel of Ultimaker, and the front one is pretty easy to clean, but the one in the back is a pain in the @$$ to reach ( any tips here?

So overall do I like it? yes it's a nice piece. Do people need it? well I guess most UM2+ users don't, I think the new + feeder works fine for 99.9% of the users. For people with the old UM2 feeder it's a very nice option, specially since Ultimaker is making it much to difficult for people to just buy the + feeder (some re-sellers sell it, some don't...)

neotko · November 20, 2016

IMO the pollution isn't big at all, at first I did clean it every day, but so far is been 4 months since I did clean them (on 3 machines 1.75 version with my FatIRobertI mod) and I got zero issues. But indeed I use a stronger spring, but I never never tight it, I adjust it enough to keep it there, also I done lots of crazy retractions and it performs flawless. On UM2 afaik to avoid filament on the bolts is important to lower the amps of the motor since the default of um2/um2+ is too much for the planetary gear motor of the bondtech standard kit.

Also about um2+ I'm making a mod, reusing my basic FatIRobertI design and will use a new metal bolt. This way I want to transform the um2+/um3 feeders to bondtech using the cheap 45€ dualdrive gears.

I just started this evening, so it still has much more work to do. But since the um2+/um3 spring is the same of the old um2 (more or less) it should be quite easy to reuse most of the important parts of the feeder and install a bondtech more enclosed extruder (for flexibles) and with a more classic IRobertI feeder style with a fast filament release. What I want to work is a easy to open door, so everything is more accesible, and making it more easy to open unlike um2+/um3 feeder that need's some time to open it (releasing the tension, unscrewing x4 screws and it has small parts that are easy to misplace).

Edit: This mod was finished a few weeks ago

https://ultimaker.com/en/community/34976-neotko-fatiroberti-bondtech-adapter-feeder-for-um2-um3

It will have more updates in the next months, to make it smaller, just because

Edited December 23, 2016 by Guest