Cheap & simple Filament Guiding Upgrade for Titan Extruder & Clones - enables flexible Filament

thingiverse

[Update] After abundant testing with flexible and stiff material, I may say: It works, it's easier to insert new filament, no jams with filament loosing the hobbed track, no material breaks if you push to much. This is only for 1.75. I have a cheap titan extruder clone with a poor filament guidance. Usually it works good, but with much pressure, the filament is leaving the hobbed area. If you have an E3D Titan, that will probably not of interest for you. But still, they share a common weakness making it impossible to print with flexible Filaments. You can upgrade that within an hour for material of a cent. It eases your filament handling a lot. You need: -a small ptfe-tube with 2 mm inner diameter and 3mm outer diameter (as it is used for inserting into nozzle throats), abou 5 cm length. -something for cutting and resizing, I used a file, a dremel-like device, and a knive. -Titan Extruders & Clones comes with an exchangable filament tube for 3mm and 1.75 mm. You need the 3mm. If you mess it up, you only wasted something you don't need. 1. Take you piece of ptfe tube and insert it into the 3mm tube of the titan. If you make it longer like in the 3rd photo, it fits into the Bowden Adapter, wich is good - because here is another space, where the filament could curl up. Leace it 3 - 4 mm longer on the upper side. 2. Glue it. You wil cut it unsymmetricly, so you don't want the white tube to turn. Carefully here, to much glue in the way of the filament could lead to warp reactor overloads. 3. Now you have somthing like in photo 4. 3. Cut it back on the side of the idler, almost to the original material (see photo 5) 4. Shorten the side of the driver wheel. Here you leave 2 -3 mm standing. Cut only a bit, if you cut to much, start at the beginning. Hold the pieces together to see for yourself. It's not just a horizontal cut, try to leave standing as much as possible in the middle (counterpiece for the hobbed area...) (Photo 6). 5. It's okay when the tube still touches the hobbed area. Just make sure that you can move the wheel. 6. The blue thing on pic 7 is something you need in case of poor guidance for other Filaments. If you put much pressure on the piece with the guidance and idler wheel, it probably won't stay in the middle, enabling the filament to bypass the the hobbed area. This thing push it back right to the middle. You prbably could use a washer. This is a 'washer ' especially made for my clone - with other titan clones you'll probably need it a bit different. 7. Put it togeter like in pic 7. 8. The filament still can escape above the driver wheel. Just put another piece of you 3mm ptfe tube like in photo 8. Push it down until it touches the wheel. Glue it (at first glance, a 4mm tube seems to fit better here, but does not help - because it does not go down to the wheel. 9 Print your felxible stuff. 10. Donate me big money. When using a scissor for cutting ptfe-tube, it works better with filament inside.