B2D Extruder – Dependable and Strong 

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2289203

Hello everyone! I am going to give a brief review of a DIY extruder that I think will help many people who are not completely satisfied with their Bowden extruders. 

I have always struggled with Bowden types of extruders. I’ve spent WAY too much money on “solutions” that really didn’t help. They either didn’t extrude enough or too much, or even left my prints stringy. Messing with the settings only frustrated and annoyed me. Maybe I didn’t have the patience for it or just wasn’t lucky enough. I don’t know, but for that reason I have been a die-hard Direct Drive supporter for many years now. I have many printers, in the double digits, and 95 percent of them are Direct Drive.

Since I work at ZYLtech, we have been offering many of the HyperCube and HyperCube Evolution kits, all of which come standard with a Bowden extruder. I have built many of these kits and have eventually converted them all to Direct Drive. I do like the idea of having little weight on the X carriage but again I have always leaned toward Direct Drive... That is until now.

 On my latest HEVO 445 build I decided I would keep the Bowden extruder and run it through some tests. People commission me to make parts for them and I needed a large format printer that would be able to print fast and accurately. This is where the Direct Drive has some issues. The faster you print the more artifacts or “ringing” (whatever you want to call it) appears in the prints. I don’t want to sacrifice quality for speed.

 So, here is a little gem that I came across. It is the B2D extruder, https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2289203. There are quite a few parts that need to be printed and purchased. I have a lot of extra parts, but none that would, unfortunately, go toward building this extruder. I started printing once the parts were ordered (most from Amazon.) Some parts I did in Resin while others I did in traditional FDM. Assembly wasn’t too bad and the extruder itself was pretty impressive looking. I was still skeptical but I am glad I moved forward with it. Installation was pretty easy. Since I was just testing this extruder, I didn’t want to give it a permanent home just yet and designed a 3030 mount for it that I was able to remove quickly. This extruder impressed me very much. I was able to move filament at higher speeds, and since it is a Dual Drive extruder it can grab just about anything and push it through.

Typically a dual drive extruder will cost quite a bit, but this one came out to be around $20 all said and done. The consistency and accuracy is quite incredible and I would love to congratulate maker YYH1002 on a very robust and dependable design. I highly recommend making one!

Thank you again for checking out www.ZYLtech.com and if you have any other suggestions on items to field test please let us know at csr@zyltech.com.