On today's episode I'm going to get rid of this ptfe tube
and convert an ender 3 from bowden style to direct drive
I'll show you how to do it on today's Filament Friday
Filament Friday is brought to you every week by these patreon supporters.
Here's the direct drive unit that I'm going to install I got this from
banggood.com for free to do a review. It's on sale right now for 29.99. But
when I opened the box I was surprised. I was expecting a box of parts
this thing came fully assembled. Stepper motor hot end fans bracket wheels and
wiring all attached and labeled ready to install including tools to do it
plus tie straps and instructions. I was really pleasantly surprised by this. And
pricing, twenty three dollars to buy the motor separately or the hot end
like twelve dollars normally it's on sale for eight. Those two alone
are more than this assembly so it's really quite a good deal.
I'm going to install this on my ender 3 that had the dual gear drive. I showed
that in a previous video that dual gear drive is kind of worn out so I'm going
to replace it. So I took off all the tie straps I unscrewed the bowden tube
and then I loosened the belts and pulled those off the bracket.
So then I can take this thing off and remove it from the machine.
So what I had to do is put a wrench behind this wheel and then spin this
wheel until it's loose enough that I can just take this bracket off. That was
pretty easy. Now I need to disconnect the wire. Make sure the machine is turned
off and for safety's sake just pull the plug before you work on any electronics.
You access the electronics and the wiring through three screws two in the
front and then there's one in the back you have to move the bed to get to it.
Once you have those three you can remove this plate now I did extend my fan wire
here and I connected to direct power. But otherwise it's a normal stock setup.
The first thing to disconnect is the thermistor from the front connector on
the board and then there's the filament cooling fan connector. Pull that out. Now
I pulled it by the wires, you shouldn't do that but my fat
fingers couldn't get in there to just pull the connector so be careful .
The next thing to disconnect is the hot end wires. You just unscrew these
two terminals and then pull the wires out it's the two white ones
on most machines, so just pull those out of the way and then there's two screws
at the back and this is where the fan connects. The fan that cools the hot end.
Now I've got mine spliced in with my cooling fan for the electronics so
it runs all the time that's where you're gonna see these two spliced together.
Normally you would just see just the two red and black wires. At the back of
the box there was a tie strap holding the wire in place so I had to cut that
and then I had to flip this upside down and found there was some tape wrapped
around this that was preventing me from removing the wires so that forced me to
take off this whole bottom. So there's two screws at the front I had to remove
and then there's one at the back. Remove that and then this whole assembly can
come out and then I can get access to that tape. So I just cut through the
the tape with the needle nose and then peeled it back
and once i had that then I could pull the wire assembly out.
Before I installed it I noticed an error. It was saying the hot end was 12 volts
and when i looked at the documentation it was also showing 12 volts for the
hot end. And enter 3 is 24 volts so cr10 is 12 volts so I wondered if this was
right but then I could see inside the shroud the fans were 24 volts and then
I measured the resistance of the hot end and it was 13.2 ohms which is a 24 volt
hotend. So it was just the documentation was wrong. The parts were 24 volts.
The first step was to connect the cooling fan and just screw it into place.
Now I actually got these wires backwards I'll fix that in a second. The next step
was to put in the hot end. So I put the wiring for the hot end, these really
shouldn't matter which way it goes, but it showed the positive to the right
and then the next step was to connect the thermistor. And finally the filament
cooling fan. And then like I said I got those fan connectors backwards
so I had to swap them. So double check your wiring before you power this guy up.
Once I got that in place then I just re-taped this with some electrical tape
where i cut that tape before so two strips of electrical tape wrapped around
this seemed to hold it really well. So now I was ready to reassemble this thing.
I put a tie strap back to hold everything in place so i didn't pinch any wires
as this assembly went back and then i just lifted it back into
place making sure my fan wire was coming out to the top of it
and then lined up the holes and put the two screws at the front
and then i'll put the two screws at the back I just hand tighten the front ones
just partially so that I can put the back one in.
tighten the back one mostly and then tighten the front two so this thing
shifted in place I finally went back and tightened that back one as well.
Once that was all in place I flipped the machine back over and I reconnected my
fan now I can put this cover back on remember there's two screws
in the front and one on the back. So I just put the two screws in front loose
did the back one tighten that up and then went back and tightened the two
front ones now I needed to install this assembly and I just did the same thing
as I did before, slid it over the bar. It was already loose. The bottom wheel was
already loose. So this popped in place put the wrench in and then just tighten
the screw until this thing is tight. Then I needed to adjust that eccentric
nut that it has until I got this flowing back and forth rather smoothly.
Then I connected the belts on both sides and then I just needed to
tighten the belt which I just did by feel to get this thing nice and tight.
The kit includes an extension wire and really nice extension wire
so you have to pull it off the stepper motor before and
extend it out to the new stepper motor over here on the x-axis.
So that's a nice addition that you don't have to build. And then I remove
the old extruder and motor and then I just strap the wires to the holes
where the extruder was before and then I was ready to test it. So I heated it up,
pushed some filament through the extruder. Everything seemed to be working.
I leveled the bed and printed my first CHEP cube and this thing came out awful.
It was over extruding like crazy. I remembered in that old video where
I installed that dual gear extruder that I just removed I had adjusted the e-step
so I had to go back and do it again. Mark 100 millimeters and then control >
motion > steps per millimeter and adjust the e-steps. After running through it
94.5 was the right value to change. And I reprinted the CHEP cube much much better.
One of the advantages of direct drive is printing flexibles and ninjaflex
is like a rubber band. It's really difficult to print on most bowden setups.
So printing this at 50 millimeters per second was a great test and it came
out fantastic. The results are really smooth. It's of course very flexible.
I'm really happy with the results, that this thing was able to do with
ninjaflex.In a previous video I showed that you can put an EZR extruder on
your stock ender 3 and print flexible material like ninjaflex but you have
to print slower 10 to 20 millimeters per second. So this allows you to print
faster and the quality is really quite good. Now as far as printing PLA
I need to adjust my slicer settings because this is not nearly as good
as what i was getting with the bowden style setup. I don't know if it's the
extra weight of this thing because I'm really not seeing ringing but it's just
not as crisp as what I get with the bowden style and that's why I've always
loved a bowden style printer over a direct drive. The other advantage is it's
easy to fix a clog on a bowden style. I can pop that ptfe tube out and fix it.
This one if I get a clog I gotta take it apart. It's not quite as easy.
So those are the major reasons why I stick with bowden over direct drive but
I am liking this setup. And this kit from banggood.com for thirty dollars is an
amazing deal. They sell out quick so if you want to get one I have a link in
the description below, grab it while you can. They get them in over and over but
they sell fast. And even this is on sale for thirty dollars.
normally they're on sale for like thirty five dollars every day
so it's still a good deal. And even if you have a hot end you're trying
to replace just the parts alone may be worth buying this setup. Now if
you don't even wanna spend that there are thingiverse designs where you can
3D print a bracket and convert all your pieces from this guy into a direct drive
and a lot of people have done that and it's been very successful. It's more work
but then it's, you know, it's 3D printed. But I just think for thirty dollars
fully assembled all I have to do is, you know, reconnect some wires this was great.
That's it for this week. If you like what I'm doing here maybe check out some of
the videos that are popping up and if nothing else click on that CHEP logo
and subscribe. I'll see you next time right here at Filament Friday.