CTC Spring Loaded Feeder (s)

thingiverse

Having had the CTC Printer for a couple weeks now, and enjoyed every single minute, I first did a modification to the HotEnd Fans making adjusting the nozzle heights incredibly easy. This follows on and adds to the Ease of use experience. The Spring Loaded Feeder system isn't new, but apart from some nice-looking Printed variants, there wasn't really a Metal version that suited me perfectly. So after doing a thorough search through Ebay, I found a kit of Metal parts that looked promising for under £10 a kit. Well, the first problem was the way CTC mounts the HotEnds together - they're joined by a 15mm square beam. And the kit comes as a standalone Replacement kit. So that was the first part of the kit to go in the 'Might Be Useful One Day' parts box. The second part to join it was the Traction Gear wheel, because I wanted to keep the original intact and avoid Calibration problems. The Crank arm fitted nearly perfectly, it just needed shimming out to line up the very nice grooved bearing with the throat of the Nozzle. So did the Spring, the Spring cap (an M5 short allen screw), and a tension adjusting Allen screw. So we've kept about half of the Kit... :) 1) Manufacture a viable Spring Loaded feeder for the CTC Printer. 2) The Crank arm used must be Metal only. 3) The geometry of the Nozzles or the Gearing (Traction Gear) stays exactly the same. 4) Ease of use. Here it is... In the kit there is a small screw to retain the bottom of the tension Spring. Not wanting to drill and tap a hole for it in the existing Nozzle Mounting Beam, I came up with a Plate that sits around the top of the Nozzle Throat with a location peg for the Spring to sit on. (These are Left and Right Handed, by the way.) To fit the crank arm, there is a Shim that fits onto the Stepper motor body. Then a 4mm washer was used between the crank arm and the Shim to get the Crank in position perfectly. Lastly, another 4mm washer was used behind the grooved Bearing to align everything with the Nozzle Throat. One last thing to do to the Crank was to open out the Filament hole to 3mm to give the filament extra clearance. I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking... Oh one last thing, the Shim Plates are Left and Right handed, by the way!