March 09, 2016 (posted 8-26-22)

Makergear M2 Paste Extruder

This is a Paste Extruder I was trying to make for my Makergear M2. This is how I went about making it.

This is a simple syringe type Paste Extruder that I am trying to make. I wanted something that was quick and easy to mount on the M2 (without too much hassle anyway). The idea was to use a rack and pinion setup over the typical screw type plunger to try and keep the stepper motor in the same position so the wire connections stayed the same.

I found the rack and gear setup on Mc-master so I tried to incorporate the rack half right into the plunger of the syringe.

The idea was to fill the syringe with what ever I was trying to extrude, prime the plunger and then just slide it in the mount and screw on the cap and it would hold everything in place.

Once the cap is screwed on the rack and gear should mesh up. (this needs a bit of work still.) I have a spare motor so I didn’t actually have to remove the stock filament gear.

The z-height is set by just sliding down the switch on the shaft, and I dropped a spare belt block next to the end stop to act as an offset for the syringe mount.

I had my doubts this setup would work… I figured the motor would just skip or the gears would break. After playing around with some g-code and S3d settings I gave it a shot with cake frosting (probably not the best first choice but what the hell) and as I thought the tiny gears on the rack just couldn’t take it.

It’s back to the drawing board for now… I bought an actual nylon rack (with bigger teeth) from Mc-Master to try again and if that doesn’t work I have a longer extruder cable coming too so I can always move the motor and try the typical screw plunger… I’m determined to make this work.

Here is Version 2… I added another few gears for a little more torque and went with bigger teeth this time too.

The syringe still has to be bolted in with the cap but I beefed it up this time so the gear and rack would mess better.

All loaded and ready to go.

So far so good… after about a half hour of trial and error messing with the settings I have it working for the most part. Here is a video of it in action It’s pushing out a little to much paste right now as I still need to figure out the correct settings. I need to figure out how to slow down the extrusion some more. I turned the multiplier down as far as I can to .01 and that seemed to help but I think I still need to play with the nozzle diameter and extrusion width to get it to where I need to be. I’m not really sure how all those setting effect everything yet and I’m still playing around but, you can only eat so many calibration cubes before you need to take a break. (I ended up changing the filament diameter to like 10 and it worked better.)

I also did a quick redesign and added a door and latch to hold the syringe in to allow for quick reloads.

I never finished playing around with this and there’s always something more to tweak… but had it working pretty well. I just didn’t know what I’d use this for it was just one of those projects I made to see if it could be done. Maybe someday I’ll use it for something.  Think a heatbed could cook some custom pancakes???

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