Minimalistic MK6 Bowden Rework

thingiverse

The MK6 was Makerbot's first attempt at building an extruder that supported 1.75mm filament. It was a great step forward for 3d printing. It was easy to construct and had no moving parts. However it did have some major drawbacks. Primarily, there was an almost complete lack of accessibility to the drive system. You literally had to disassemble the entire thing if there was a jam, or just to do simple maintenance. Also, the design of the acrylic housing unit was not entirely optimized for 1.75mm filament. Parts of the acrylic were still meant to support 3mm filament, which means there were gaps that 1.75mm filament could curl into. This rework attempts to mitigate these problems through a redesign of the acrylic housing and delrin tensioner. It also uses the bowden drive method to increase accessibility and compatibility with today's hot ends. Along with this drive system is an x-carriage designed to work with the J-head Lite hot end and the Mendel style printer. Some of these parts are available on my ebay store: http://stores.ebay.com/ohpakron. This project is at an early stage, so check back for updates.