GEEETech i3B/C/X: MK8 Refurbished Feeder

thingiverse

Hi at the beginning my GEEETech Pro i3B came with an "old fashion" metal feeder MK8, but last year I updated my i3B to i3C adding the second MK8, and got the new black plastic MK8, and a spare black feeder in order to have both extruders with the same feeder. The new feeder has lots of nice beautiful enhancements compared to the old metal one, mainly two are easy filament insertion and separation from barrel mounting block and MK8 itself, this last characteristic enables unmounting of the MK8 from the printer without unmounting also the barrel and the extruder itself, in this way if you have a block in the barrel or in the nozzle you can easily unmount the MK8, use the tool to push away the block and remount the MK8 without losing alignment between the two nozzles, I love this option! But the new feeder does not have regulation for pre-load spring, and this can be a big issue with bad filaments. To solve this issue I redesigned the feeder in order to integrate also in the new design this regulation, and it works! I started from original GEEETech design, copied with lots of patience and tricks, I closed both bottom and top in order to have something more strong, original injected parts are for sure stronger than any printed ones. The pin where mounts the bearing wheel cannot be strong enough if printed, so I replaced with a screw, M3x10... I also chose to use PTFE tube to ensure quite filament movement. Warning, part #5 has a long bridge near 40mm, if your printer cannot afford this kind of bridge use supports! If you "fall in love" with this design, please remember that it takes time to be created, designed and shared... so maybe you can use the "tip designed" button on my profile!