What all modifications have you made to your extrusionbot?

[M Dod]

Made your own hopper, a new stand, or something else?

Tell us, better yet show us with some pictures.

[Dennis Brown]

Just signed up for posting on the group.  My wife and I built the EB last November.  I had the advantage of the posts here to watch out for problem areas and suggestions for changes and upgrades.  We got it all together and did a dry run test of it.  Everything seemed to work.  However, I was still waiting for my very late RigidBot KS printer, so had no need of filament yet, so I put it aside for the wait.  I did receive my 3D printer a number of weeks ago and built it, including improvements from a large community of users.  I will be getting through my first roll of PLA before too long, which will free up the reel I was planning to use with the EB.

So, I came back to this site to see what great tips and improvements have been made in the mean time, and found that not much has happened since I was last here.  It also seems that Mark has disowned his KS project and support for his KS supporters.  He has not responded to my questions via his site yet.  This is quite a disappointment to me.

However, I see that there are still some members watching this site, so it is worth interacting and sharing as I move forward.

ABS and PLA filament have become competitive enough to question if it makes sense to make my own filament today.  However, the most interesting filament material I have come across is PET.  It seems to have the ease of printing characteristics of PLA with the strength of ABS.  It is water clear in color.  It does not support a flame.  It does not smell when printing.  It is food safe.  It is inexpensive like ABS or PLA as raw pellets, but the filament suppliers are charging a large premium for it.  So, now I have a reason to put the EB into action.  I just bought 10 pounds of PET pellets fro $40 to get me started.

As for the topic of mods I made to the EB, there were a bunch.  I put in every improvement on this site that was mentioned by the time I built it, and put in a few additional ones myself.  I will detail them in a follow-on post when I can find my pictures.  I did swap left for right on the guts.  I did some things a bit easier than others though.  I only used the supplied wire for my electrical wiring, and had left over wire because of the better layout.  I added a better convection cooling arrangement, but now that I am reading about overheating problems, I may also add an internal fan to cool the motor.  It sounds like the take up reel motor is too jerky for good results.  I will also look into improving that if it is making inconsistent results.

So this is more of an introduction of my intentions here.  More to come as I fire things up and improve them over the next few weeks.