Direct Drive Hot End Effector for Athena II Printer (MTU)

thingiverse

While taking an open source hardware and software course we were asked to improve upon the Delta Athena II RepRap printer. Printer Link found here ( http://www.appropedia.org/AthenaII ). The current setup uses a bowden sheath that makes it very difficult to print with flexible materials such as ninjaflex. So I developed a method using a flexible driveshaft to mount the extruder motor to the frame and convert our hot end to a direct drive hotend. This allows flexible materials to be directly fed into the hot end while keeping the weight of the motor out of the equation. Further instructions can be found on appropedia, http://www.appropedia.org/Direct_drive_extrusion_hot_end_for_flexible_materials Please feel free to comment on the design and expand its use for other printers. All files were made using open scad and are available for download. Thanks for looking! Future updates to come as the experiments continue to progress!