After building two more extruders, I think I've got it down. The body of this one is constructed almost entirely of MDF, with one aluminum angle to attach it. It only took about half an hour with a hand drill and some calipers to measure where to place the holes, but it is defiantly working far better than anything I have built previously. As you can see from the pictures it is a pretty simple design but is cranking out parts as fast as I can skeinforge them.

Click for larger versions of the photos.

 More after the break, including skeinforge settings.

Here are some of the more important skeingforge settings I am using:

PWM Motor Speed: 215 to 225 (depending on the object)
Extruder Temp: 225 C
Speed: 80mm/s (i think the threaded drive has some effect on this no being accurate)
Layer Height: 0.7mm

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Comments (3)

• 2010-01-09 18:20:36 | Neil  - Thingiverse
  That looks awsome, can we play with it too?
  Reply

• 2010-01-11 10:39:39 | Bradley Stogsdill  - Congratulations on your achievement
  Hi- Remember me?- we had lunch with Ryan and you told me about your machine- it has been a fw months back... Your results look very incouraging. I am looking into CNC to try to make a CNC router and I wonder maybe remove router and install plastic injector and double as a CNC plastic extruder machine? I need patterns for sand casting and maybe instead of using wood, I could make & use plastic patterns? Regards, Bradley Stogsdill
  Reply

• 2010-01-14 21:34:29 | Jeff
  As long as the CNC mill supports GCODE files as input, I don't see why you couldn't swap. The only downside to extrusion is the time it takes to make an object, for example these objects took 20-30 minutes each and they are only about 1 inch in the largest dimension and not very solid. A solid object say, 2"x3"x1" would take 5-6 hours to complete. http://buildyourcnc.com/ has a lot of good info and some "kits" for DIY CNC machines, if you haven't seen this site yet.
  Reply

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