Has anyone ever heard of the Zesty Nimble extruder? They call it a Remote Direct Driven extruder. It uses a drive cable like what you use might use for a Dremel to drive the extruder while the motor is located off the carriage on the frame. It sounds pretty interesting being that it weighs less than 30 grams and is very small. I was thinking that one of these would make it possible to make a smaller carriage for the IDX that would free up the lost space of the build-plate since it is about as wide as the hotend itself. It could also make the printer more accurate due to the loss of weight. It is on Kickstarter right now if anyone wants to check it out and let me know what they think. I believe that the Titan is a good extruder, but there has always been talk of deflection of the X axis due to weight (not exactly with the Titan) and it doesn't get any lighter than this. Unless you go Bowden of course. This is one thing I hate about the BigBox, so many choices...
I would like to see how it handles retractions. Typically torque windup needs to happen before it reaches operating torque from what I can see, which would likely cause a similar situation to bowden.
From what they say, and who knows until actually more people have one, they use normally 0.8 to 1.2mm retraction. Supposedly, any binding in the drive cable is mostly filtered out by the drive gears which are at 30:1
These types of extruders are not new, check out the flex3drive by mutley3D. I believe the Zesty guys are actually paying him a licence fee to use the idea. I don't use one of these, but lots of people on the reprap forums do and claim great retractions. There have been a few issues with the Zesty discussed about in various places, but most of these are not that bad. Stuff like idler tension and longevity of parts. I can see this outperforming a titan any day though. I'm considering backing, but on my printer the bed moves in Y, so I think I need to cut out the 1.5kg bed weight, before focusing on my 200g X-axis gantry!
I read that the idea isn't new, but the design of the extruder is. And the extra functions built into it are pretty impressive for the size. I have a dual BigBox and I am just waiting for next year to switch over to IDX where I plan to really take advantage of the Nimble. I like the idea of loading directly into the extruder and hope to get it set up so that the bed loses as little space as possible (always bothered me that I lost printing area due to the dual configuration). Plus the weight savings will be great for the dual X-axis...
Hi eca / Mark Curry / GeckoBox3D There are multiple videos online on our Youtube account now, you can find it at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg_sChXStBm237f6Bv_beiA I'm planning to do a big voroni print over the next few days, but last night I did a print with Semiflex and you can see in the attached photos how well it handled the fingers on the Rocktopus (this was my first attempt printing with this filament, I'm sure one more attempt would deal with the small amount of stringing and under extrusion on the top of the tentacles) Switching from bowden setup to the Nimble my retractions have gone from 8mm down to 0.8mm, so it's a massive improvement. Feel free to ask more questions, we'd really appreciate your support to reach our campaign goal!
An update for anyone that was interested in the Nimble extruder.. We're Shipping! It's taken much longer than we'd have liked, but we had to get everything right. A small run was shipped early in the month, followed by the bulk of existing orders last week. The few orders that haven't shipped yet (pending arrival of more parts) we expect to ship mid next week. If you order today you can expect to receive your Nimble within a few weeks, you have no idea how happy we are to be able to say that. Reviews The first Nimble review that we are aware of was posted earlier today by Michael Hackney who is known as the EclecticAngler, he has a blog on advanced 3D printing techniques, technologies and design principles. Head to his blog and read the review: Everything you wanted to know about the Zesty Nimble remote direct drive (RRD) extruder http://www.sublimelayers.com/2017/05/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about.html Please let us know if you post a review of your own so that we can spread the word and address concerns.. if you actually find any Documentation Lykle spent a lot of time designing a double sided instruction sheet which we shipped with earlier orders, but one of the first recipients told us that our online documentation was a lot better! So now we ship a small slip of paper with a link to this instead, feel free to have a read at: http://zestytechnology.readthedocs.io/ Where can i buy a Nimble? Nimbles can be ordered at our online shop at https://zesty.tech/ We have a flat rate for worldwide shipping and you can choose from 4 cable lengths with your order, if you have a different cable length requirement please get in touch with us via email. Thanks is due A heartfelt thanks to all of you who backed our campaign, our wives and families and anyone who helped in any way. If you haven't ordered a Nimble from our store Now is the time to do it.. banish the bowden, and take a load off your carriage/effector! Happy Printing Brian & Lykle
