Ender 5 Top Center Extruder mount

thingiverse

I based this design off the top, side, Ender 5 extruder mount from Thingiverse (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3595328). I only used the bottom part to attach it to my doubled 2020 frame. While that design is pretty cool, it's mounted essentially diagonally to the print bed, and I wasn't in love with how the bowden tube looked at the nearest corner. I wanted to see if the extruder could be center-mounted for a more even distribution of the bowden tube and less potential friction (over bending the tube defeats shortening it). To achieve this, I changed the plane of the extruder, angling it up 30 degrees and feeding from the back of the frame. All that took was flipping the spool mount to the other side where you're supposed to put it. With the extruder centered, the Y stepper motor naturally acts as a filament guide, so you could get away with just using the base - I did for many prints until I got the filament runout sensor mount taken care of. I've included a thin ramp that hangs slightly over the Y stepper motor in case you're concerned about running filament over the Y stepper motor. SHORTER TUBE?! Yes, I took 18cm off easily. I could shorten it to 2.5 cm more, but by the time I figured that out, I had already reattached the bowden tube to the extruder mount. HEAT: Not an issue at all. The room I print in is a fairly constant 20-21C. The Y stepper and extruder motors never got above 23C. Some folks noted the extruder motor was getting warmer with the other design, but that isn't an issue here because this uses the NEMA 17 mount. QUALITY: I can say PETG stringing wasn't greatly improved, but blobbing/zits were dramatically improved. Looking at the tiny stringing test, both were run with 3/30 retraction settings. The left is the old one, and the pointy tips are blobby messes. The right, while still stringy, has much sharper details and no blobs. This design requires some additional hardware to work: Nema 17 motor mount: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H8YQYGV/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 M3 Brass inserts (everything is held together with these): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VH3XLFG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 You'll need a few M3 bolts of 10mm or less. I also used four M4 T nuts to mount the base to the rail. As for the runout sensor, that's a custom job for my unique setup. It uses these micro switches: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MFRMFS6/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1