Filament guide for printing TPU - Creality Dual Gear Extruder

prusaprinters

<p>This is a simple insert for the Creality (clone) dual gear extruder to make the filament path going out of the extruder a bit tighter, because while it is better than the stock, there is still a huge gap between the gears and the hole in the aluminium and some of the more flexible TPUs (some close to ninjaflex) managed to escape and I came back to failed print.</p><p>It is exactly this extruder I am using it on - I noticed there are two versions, the other one seems to have the aluminium part a bit closer to the gears, but all of them I could find also use the silver screw for the other non-driver gear, where the threads on the screw chew up the bearing. This version has the black partially threaded screw which is better.</p><p>If your stepper motor side gear is rubbing against this insert, you will have to loosen the screws holding your extruder to the stepper and move it a bit, there is some wiggle room.</p><p>I made three versions, you can print all three at once (one of them takes about 10 minutes to print) to see how tight you can get without rubbing against the gears:</p><p>Standard - closing the gap by 1.6mm<br>Tighter - closing the gap by 1.8mm<br>Tightest - closing the gap by 2.2mm</p><p>There is still a bit of room, but my 0.4mm nozzle can't make such a sharp corner. But the gap is so small it shouldn't be an issue.</p><p>Printed without supports, PLA and 0.16mm layer height.</p><p>After printing make sure to properly clean the part from any stringing to be seated properly and clean out the hole (I just pushed the 2mm allen key that came with the printer through and rotated it to get rid of any debris), you can also use 2mm drill bit.</p><p>After testing the fit you can use some thin double-sided tape (not the foamy kind) to secure it in place.</p>