Extruder tips

To make the extruder less fiddly to put together and take apart again I would recommend putting shake proof washers between the nuts and the plain washers. Once you get the bolt finger tight the washer bites and hold the nut. That allows you to tighten them with just an allen key rather than an allen key and a spanner in the other hand.

I would also recommend using wingnuts to replace the nuts that tighten the springs unless you have a deep nut spinner. It is very time consuming otherwise to open the pump and tension it up again.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

nophead Wrote:
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> I would also recommend using wingnuts to replace
> the nuts that tighten the springs unless you have
> a deep nut spinner. It is very time consuming
> otherwise to open the pump and tension it up
> again.

It is hard here to purchase M3 wing nuts. As well, the M3 long bolts made of studding are very close together, which could mean that wing nuts will clash.

Well actually I made tapped knobs just the right size using my milling machine but I figured that the tension is not critical enough that you could afford to leave all the wingnuts you were not adjusting in the vertical position. I.e. at most one quarter turn away from the ideal position. I think then you would have room to spin the nut you are adjusting. I couldn't find any dimensioned drawings of wingnut so I can't absolutely be sure. Worst case you could clip the wings a bit.

They seem reasonably easy to get here in the UK, I did notice a US site with them at ten times the price though.

I will order some so I can check for sure and also as a backup because my knobs are made from Perspex so I don't know how long the threads will last under that much tension.

Once the machine is up to FDM then it would be easy to make custom knobs for the job with captive nuts.

I will put some pictures up this evening.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

I did order some M3 wingnuts but they took 10 days to arrive due to a postal dispute here in the UK. There is just enough room to spin them as long as you keep the others vertical and don't tighten one a lot further than its partner. Still a bit of a faff, but kinder to the fingers than my home made knobs. Making the extruder a bit wider and making the nuts on the other end captive would be worthwhile improvements.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]