Rapide Lite 200 E3D-V6 Bowden extruder retrofit

thingiverse

So, I was quite unhappy with the extruder that came with the Rapide. Particularly the cooling - on both the workpiece, and the heatsink (which itself was quite poor). I decided to retrofit what is quite possibly the best hot end on the market today for a little more reliability and increased ease of part repair/replacement. In my instance, I printed the entire setup in PETG as I didn't have ABS, and don't care much for the smell as PETG has the same heat toerances with zero odour. The weight savings is quite substantial even without the extruder motor, the new configuration is almost over 1/3 less in weight. I've added a SeeMeCNC EZ Struder as my cold-end extruder, however there are many other bowden style extruders you can use in its place. Everything works like a charm - way better than the original print settings, I can now increase my print speed much higher, and still get better results than before. The main bracket that holds the Hot End was originally designed by another user - Credit is due there as the original design was made by Tech2C http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:547706 Because I really liked his design, I copied it from scratch to fit the hole pattern in my configuration.