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NinjaFlex filament

Discussion in 'Printing Filament' started by Melody Bliss, Jan 13, 2014.

  1. Jeff Lastofka

    Jeff Lastofka Member

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    The BIC pen tube is a bit brittle and has some little cracks from when I worked on it. Even though it's working great I'll replace it with the Teflon I ordered from the link you sent (I found a little lower price there without the push in fitting).

    I may have answered my own question - I think the hexagon hot end is the only part I'll have to drill out a little for the 4mm Teflon tube. Of course that's dead easy to remove and I expect I won't have to get into taking apart the mechanism above.
     
  2. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    No, you do not have to drill the hotend at all. It will accept the 4mm od tube just fine.
    The only part that is not (quite) large enough is the hole in teh GregsWade that feeds to the top of the hotend.

    In earlier releases it was the same diameter as the hotend feed (4mm) production runs now are slightly undersized.
     
  3. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    There is no difference in disassembly however. Remove the hotend and use a 4mm bit to drill out the hole from the top of the Gregs Wade (with the feed mechanism all open--spring loaded screws removed)
     
  4. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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  5. Jeff Lastofka

    Jeff Lastofka Member

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    I can see the hole OK. My BIC tube goes in fine, but the Teflon's too large. I got my printer direct from Robo3D back in February of this year.

    It's awkward seeing and working in there. I think I'd like to take the extruder out instead of drilling it in place. (Or I could remove the top of the printer for good access instead I suppose.) It looks to me like the two screws that hold it in are the one that I loosen to swing out the hot end clamping piece, and another one just like it that must be hidden above the part cooling fan.

    So I'm assuming I remove the fan and the two larger screws I just mentioned to lift off the extruder for drilling access.

    Is that a good way to go?

    Looks like the hobbed bolt would come out of the gear by hand while holding the hex head with a wrench. That would make better access, too, but maybe once I have easier access and visual I'd decide I don't need to to that. It sounds like you're saying people just remove the spring bots, swing the bearing back and then plunge a drill down through, with the hot end removed....

    While I'm doing all that I could think about a duct for the part cooling fan. Would that help bridging performance? I don't seem to need it otherwise.
     
  6. Geof

    Geof Volunteer Moderator
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    i removed the hotend and used a hand drill bit from the bottom up(just be careful not to hit the hobbled bolt). and yes remove the fan and the 2nd screw is above it.
     
  7. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    The sizing of that hole is not critical to the extruder (the Greg's Wade) working correctly. It is even less so if you use a PTFE tube from the hobbed section all the way into the hotend :)
     
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  8. Jeff Lastofka

    Jeff Lastofka Member

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    Yup, I figured it's just for clearance and not real fussy. I want to keep the drill axial with the existing hole and not go too far and hit the hobbed bolt, so I'll take a little time to put a depth collar on the drill bit after using a tool to check the distance I want to drill from the bottom up and then rig up something to keep the drill bit close to vertical. Probably being more careful than necessary, but better that way than doing an oops.

    I removed the part cooling fan and was going to remove the rear bolt for the extruder assembly but it felt REALLY tight so I decided to just leave things in the printer and work there, even though the access is awkward.
     
  9. Jeff Lastofka

    Jeff Lastofka Member

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    I ended up taking the top cover off the machine and worked from above. Much better access. Now that it's back together I see I should open up the U-groove on the filament side of the double spring activated ball bearing clamp. It doesn't fit around the 4mm tube so it curves the tube and doesn't look nice and workman-like.

    I also struggled with putting the hex chamber back up inside the machine so the swinging clamp would close around it. It seems like it only goes in one particular orientation even though you'd think any of the six possible angular positions would be the same. Seems like it's maybe not symmetrical (centered) with the round end? It didn't look that way just casually but I didn't check it carefully.

    I have a second hot end assembly coming as backup parts and I can try that. I also have a hardened steel nozzle coming and maybe I'll check out all that stuff at once.

    So all back and running now, waiting on the new nozzle to try some specialty filaments.

    Thanks for the tips and information.
     
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  10. Jeff Lastofka

    Jeff Lastofka Member

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    In case anyone's been following my posts to modify their own system, I've learned that it's really important to keep the opening in the Teflon tube side for the hobbed bolt access as small as practical. The original dimensions I posted for the BIC pen tube version I made might be kind of generous with the opening size. Smaller is better....
    Put the tube in place bumped against the bottom of the hole for reference, grind the hobbed bolt against it a little to mark the spot, and then open it up about 3.5 mm long for the actual hole plus some outward taper on the wall thickness. I think the Teflon was a little fussier on this than the BIC tube. I just ran a two hour print with the Teflon setup.
     
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  11. Juan Guzman

    Juan Guzman New Member

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    I added an oiler and that really helped, I am still making adjustments but it is looking better.
     
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  12. Ocsff

    Ocsff Active Member

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    Drill out and add ptfe tube because the pen tube is plastic ptfe is teflon make all the difference
     
  13. Jeff Lastofka

    Jeff Lastofka Member

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    Yup, second that. My pen tube with side cutout was working fine, but I could see it was going to crack eventually, plus I wanted to make things easier to load filament. I drilled out to fit the Teflon tube people use for Bowden setups (linked a little ways back in this thread). It's 4mm OD, 2mm ID. I put in a little piece that sticks up just short of hitting the feed bolt. Works great for Ninja and stiffer filaments.
    I've also turned my printer around backwards so I work from the back, and I printed my own clamp arm for the ball bearing roller. It doesn't have the filament guide groove block above the roller, so I can see down in there much better to hit the tube hole when loading filament. I made a little guide arm with a round hole instead. Photo attached. And I'm only using one clamp nut, on a longer threaded rod with a plastic washer that doesn't hang up on the threads like the stock thin metal washer. And I made a longer nut to be easier to turn. This setup works awesome. So much easier to see and load filament. You can see the Teflon tube hole easily here. I have the clamp arm file and the guide hole arm too if someone wants them. The guide arm has a square shank that sticks down into a square hole in the machine. I've since added a nicer hobbed bolt from an eBay vendor. The stock one worked, but the aftermarket one is machined a lot better. More uniform and sharper teeth. About $9. Not really needed, but nice.
    Clamp.jpg
     
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  14. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Yea, I also am lazy and just never take the tube out unless I am replacing it.
     
  15. Jamie_1

    Jamie_1 New Member

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    Yes, email the people at Robo 3D and they send you an stl file. It replaces the extruded housing and perfectly fits a Bowden tube inside, so it doesn't ball up after Hobbes bolt.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
     
  16. daniel871

    daniel871 Well-Known Member

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    No email needed. Just print this object and install it because the Greg's Wade extruder Robo used on the R1 is a standard design with lots of mods.

    http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1028388/#files

    EDIT:

    For example. If for some unholy reason you wanted to change to 3mm filament you could print this extruder body and install a hotend intended for 3mm filament and go that way.

    http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1032586
     
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  17. Domenic

    Domenic Member

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    How do you fix the retraction issue? Since you have to turn off retraction, when I print there are a lot of strings all over my print.
     
  18. CDitty

    CDitty Member

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    I decided to try using ninjaflex last week and read up on it from the forum here. I can get it to feed fairly regularly and mostly avoided the binding by using the pencil tube trick. I cam also say that using an oiler helped tremendously. I could tell a difference from before and after.

    One problem I am having is the top layers don't look nice. I changed it to print 6 top layers and they still look kinda crappy. Any suggestions on how to make them look nicer?

    This is what I'm trying to print up. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1546607
     

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  19. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    For NinjaFlex ... those look pretty good :)

    One thing to consider trying... With normal filament going down in layer height will increase the amount of detail. SO for smaller parts you would tend to want a smaller layer height, but you might consider raising the layer height a bit and see if it improves.
     
  20. CDitty

    CDitty Member

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    Much nicer looking. Thanks for the tip. I'll upload an image in a bit.
     

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