I spent entirely way too much time trying to get one of these style extruders on my Ender 3. Maybe I picked a knock off without realizing it, maybe mine was just defective, I’m not entirely sure.
But it was ultimately the cause for my printer underextruding on certain layers. If you need a new extruder, go for something better than these cheap $20 ones and get an actually decent one.
But on the bright side, my printer is finally fixed! It feels nice to be able to get back into the hobby again.
Why did you want to originally replace the extruder on your ender 3? I’ve only been running mine for ~100h now, so I haven’t yet figured why one would need to change it. Did yours just break?
Yeah, this is like the 4th time I’ve had to replace it.
I don’t think it’s just a matter of print time, I think it’s also a matter of how long you’ve had the machine. I’ve has mine for I think 4 or 5 years now. The tension arm on the extruder is under constant tension at all times every day. The plastic extruder Ender 3s come with is just not strong enough for the task, so they end up breaking.
I think my second one was basically and identical one made of alluminum. But that one ultimately died as well, for the same reason. So I switched to the above one, which turned out to be a mistake.
So now my 4th one is a CNCed steel dual extruder from micro Swiss. Hopefully it lasts.
The plastic arms breaking seem to be a super common issue with ender 3’s. I have the neo version, which has a metal extruder arm, but I suppose that is also aluminium. Time will tell if that is going to be durable enough. What kind of stuff do you 3d print, if you have been doing it for years? Also just straight pla or more complex stuff as well?
I usually print things you’d find in r/functionalprint, and usually only ever in PLA.
I’ve tried ABS and PETG before, but I’ve rarely used them.
The extenders on ender 3s are all sorts of trash, the bronze gear wears out pretty fast, tensioning issues, build quality.
How you have 100h on one is frankly a miracle. I have multiple ender3 s and I just immediately change out the extruder at this point.
Over 200h now. I rack up hours printing parts with 100% infill as they get annealed in the oven. Time will tell when I get issues. So far I’ve had to retighten the x axis belt once, but no other issues.
I get that the original plastic tension arms break after a while, but I hope that the metal arm on the neo will last longer. Can the softer extrusion gears be replaced with steel or some other stronger material?
They can, but really it’s not even worth it with those things, you can get cheap bag or titan extruder knockoffs on Ali- express that are a million times better. One of my Enders has a cheap titan direct drive kit and it’s actually awesome. I think I paid 35 bucks for it. And the knock off came with dual gear hardened steel gears. Triangle labs makes a killer bmg clone as well