A few comments - great job with the assembly and installation process. However - your conversions from mm/min to mm/s are off by a factor of 10 (360mm/min)/(60s/min)=6mm/s not the 60 shown. In addition, it's likely that you are volumetrically limited by the copperhead, not by the linear feedrate of the extruder gear itself. 6mm/s*((1.75mm/2)^2)*pi =14.42mm^3/s, which is in the neighborhood of tested max flow. If testing just the extruder itself, use A) large nozzles and b) high flow hotends for a true comparison of capabilities. 3) instead of using wires to flip the pairs, just reverse it in firmware. Much easier.
Thanks for the appreciations! During the design phase I used the upside-down heat break as something metal I had lying around :) and fitting to the purpose of a metal filament exit guide. I grinded down the top in an angle as you did. As things came along they picked up my first quick and dirty solution and forget about the grinding . There will be very soon an upcoming V1.5 with properly molded plastic parts including the filament guide :). The V2 will be smaller with all parts custom made to reduce weight and increase performance.
@@StriK3FoRC3OwO I do not plan at the moment to share the development progress in the end an extruder is not a very complex device. The main stuff we are working on is making it smaller and lighter using custom made parts. There is still some time to go ahead until we finish it most of the time actually is taken by setting up the manufacturing tools. The v2 will have all parts molded as the V1.5 announced by LDO and already available from TL.
I use an Orbiter on my Railcore and love it. Is there a page where we can view the differences between 1.0 and 1.5? I am very much looking forward to a V2.
Hang on now...let's go back to those diagonal artifacts mentioned just before the 2 minute mark: I've seen similar artifacts on prints from both my Ender 3 (with the Micro-Swiss DD kit) and my Sidewinder X1, that only went away when I basically disassembled and reassembled everything on the printer. I never could properly nail it down, but knowing that it's related to misalignment in the extruder and hot end is quite a relief. Anyway, this extruder looks pretty magnificent. Great video!
In the Voron community there are a lot of people using this extruder but packaged differently so it fits in the afterburner toolhead. You need to grease the planetary gears or they are not going to last very long. I have been running one of this in my Voron V2 and it has been running strong for hundreds of hours.
The Sherpa mini is also a great option. Similar weight and similar performance. I prefer it over the orbiter, because it's a much simpler and straight forward design.
@@lukas1672 98g is doable with the current revision, the average is about 108g as for the guys saying speed is an issue, 40mm^3/s is no issues with this motor (@5:1 gearing), when we worked with LDO to develop the original 5mm shaft variant of this motor (the oribiter motor is based off of this) speed was a number 1 concern. There was actually a thinner variant of this motor originally developed, and it could not push what we wanted when LDO ran their internal simulations.
Most of the weight difference between the Orbiter and the Sherpa mini is given by the bigger bontech gears I used in the Orbiter design. With the bigger diameter of the gears the grip and the depth to which the tooth bites into the filament is more constant resulting a more consistent extrusion. For this reason I have accepted the additional weight. Considering the whole X gantry weight for most of the printers the additional 20g do not make a visible difference in print quality but the bigger gears does.
Thanks. You said about trial and error with the stepper wires. You don't have to go this way, two of the wires are a pair and will be continuous when you check them with a voltmeter, the other two are the "other" pair. Now you know you have two pairs. One pair goes on one side of any given plug (or control board connector) and one pair on the other side, one way around the motor turns one direction, flip them around and it turns the other way, Do this with the machine powered down, pulling stepper motor wires with some drivers powered up can destroy them.
I have one and a couple of comments. First, I run at 0.25a not 0.5. At 0.5 it got unbelievably hot. Second, I really dislike the two screw mount. I want one more screw somewhere for stability. Otherwise, I'm liking it and it's printing well.
I designed an adapter for the orbiter and the hydra fan duct! :) I really like it. I use it on my ender 3 pro. It works pretty well! :) Edit: i posted it on Thingiverse a few days ago. :)
@@ToddSaltzman You know what, that seems like something best handled by the slicer when you actually want it deliberately. How about a fuzzy skin where you set the fuzzies to be really long?
It hasn't arrived yet, but when it does I plan to remix the ender3 satsana fan shroud and adapt it to fit a bltouch and this drive, along with the microswiss hot end
I got mine working quite well on my ender 3 pros. I personally prefer the micro fan duct for the v6 style hotends like the Dragon as it's low profile and doesn't take much to assemble it. For the motor heat issue I've elected to use small heat sinks made for pcb boards like the raspi and no skipped steps from it as a result
Option 3 looks like a recipe for clogs in printers where ptfe tube is pushed against the nozzle, since it does not allow to apply pressure to ptfe from the top. And I believe most common printers have that kind of hotend out of the box
Hi Michael. At 5:32 the easy way to put that bolt in is to put the bolt in before the geared cover in placed in position, so that you can make sure the bolt is straight as you wind it in. It greatly reduces the chance of stripping the thread that way. The bolt on the other side, as you showed, is relatively easy to do. Anyway I loved the review, I ordered one last night and am currently designing a mount for it for my Coccon printer. Thanks!
For real, that would be unbelievable with a wood filament, but looks amazing as is. I wonder if there is a way to replicate those "failures" reliably...
Thanks a bunch for the deep dive! I'm a bit bummed that there was so much re-work involved; I'd been eyeing this for my Seckit SK-GO (which sadly has been sitting unassembled for a few months now)... Will keep my fingers crossed that v2 works out better; or that a better FlexDrive kit comes available (as I don't have a resin printer to make those parts myself).
Hi Michael, great video, I liked seeing the Seckit again! But I'd highly recommend you get a crimping tool (I use a Engineer PA-09, but not for long) so you can make some proper wiring. Cheers and thanks.
It looks like a good lightweight option, but I always get nervous about buying anything on aliexpress more expensive than Arduino clones. I'd also like to see you do a follow-up video in the future about how well the planetary gearset held up (given it's SLS nylon).
Truth. I actually verified with LDO that they were selling to Blurolls when I saw that go up in the store. LDO confirmed. Ben Levi (BLV MGN Cube et al) uses Blurolls for all his stuff too.
Ive never considered the prospect of saving weight on direct drive extruder (just didn't click) until this video, and my first thought was a flex shaft to mount the stepper on the frame. First thing you mention was the last extruder being exactly that. Always late to the party 😪
@@3dPrintingMillennial considering The Orbiter is an open source design with a license that expressly forbids commercialization, I think it’s pretty likely that the reviews you’ll read about the orbiter are indeed legit. And I don’t know what you’ve seen, but the reviews I’ve seen of it have been overwhelmingly positive. It outperforms a BMG extruder in almost every respect, and it only weighs a dozen grams or so more than a BMG extruder *without a motor*. It’s a powerful, compact direct drive solution that weighs less than most part cooling solutions, what is not to like?
should look at the OmniaDrop. it's not as small, but it includes the full hotend with cooling ducts and fans. When you add all those components I think you'll find it's darn near the same weight. about 1/2 a Hemera!
This was a vary interesting review. The "Orbiter" is a diamond in the ruff. This is a product has potential. I like the direction their heading in with Orbiter, though; It's not ready for the general public. I would buy one today just because "Teaching Tech" reviewed the product and revealed it's flaws. The most we can do at this point is fix the flaws and share the results with the manufacture, but; I really do like The Orbiter. I never cared for E-3D's direct drive extruder because of the weight, but; The Orbiter is light-weight.
I'm trying to find a lightweight upgrade/replacement for a stock ender 3 (stock extruder/hotend so far)... but I don't have a lot of money. The things I would like are ...1) direct drive extrusion ... 2) faster printing ...3) can print nylon ...4) lightweight ... and 5) as inexpensive as possible. I know that these requirements aren't too hard to find... but there are just so many options and so many pros and cons and so many different requirements and incompatibilities for so many of them and there are SO MANY mixed reviews on Everything. I'm really lost in all the options now and just can't remember which is which and everything I'll need for each option. For example, I was thinking about getting a Spider Pro, but I also need a direct drive extruder, a special heater (I think) and I'm not sure which extruder works and what I need to install the extruder. I thought a regular direct drive extruder would work, but in a video I was watching they said that the OEM direct drive extruder doesn't line up with the hotend. I also already have a Sprite direct drive extruder, but I don't have a hotend or the fans and all that for it. It was supposed to be the entire hotend assembly, but I ordered the wrong thing. I was thinking about just buying the hotend for it, but I'm not sure exactly what I need (all together) to get it to work... and it seemingly will still cost more money to just do that than it would be to just buy an entirely different setup. Hope you forgive the long comment and all the questions. I'm just kind of stuck on what to do and don't have the money to buy expensive hotends and parts... so any info/ideas/suggestions would be appreciated.
People with flexdrive systems always pretend the flex cable itself doesn't exist. A flexdrive system with all its hardware, including the shaft, drags well more than the 150-200 grams a compact extruder does. The shaft itself is an extra annoying thing to account for too, as it will change the weight distribution of the system depending on where you are on every axis. Instead of having the same weight being dragged around everywhere, the amount of cable weight pushing on the hotend changes as you are printing. This makes resonance tuning and other methods of accounting for moving weight a freakin nightmare. Which I'm guessing is part of the new artefacts people discover using that type of system.
I own the G5 from Flex3Drive. I use it on my Kossel Mini and I love it. I do really want to try his Nema 8 version but he has not had the parts for it in stock for a very long time. I think all I really need for it is the Gear Set to attach to the Nema 8 motor. I have already a spare Nema 8 Motor and the rest of the hardware looks to be the same so it should just be a matter of getting a worm gear attached to it and printing out the housing. At least from the looks of it. Hopefully one day he will restock the parts for it. I have not tried the Orbiter but I may just do that soon.
Bought mine about a month or so ago from blurolls and was really impressed. Got the standard one as seen here and made a custom bracket for my ender3 as i didn't notice the CR10 version. It works fine for petg and pla but as mentioned in the video, the filament path wasn't suitable for flexibles and it couldn't feed eSun eLastic (Shore 85A). It basically sucked the filament into the planetary gear housing. Anyway, long story short, I remixed it to integrate the ender 3 mount, use a microswiss style ptfe filament guide, close off the greasy gear housing and increase the clamping range of the drive gears as they were bottoming out on the flexible filament. Now it's perfect (for me)... but I'll still be looking out for the v2 :-)
If you are after reducing weight you might try to supply cooling air by tube from a pump? Get rid of two fans and a good bit of plastic structure to hold it.
no trial and error required for motor wires - just look up the correct pinout for your mainboard - the coils of the steppermotor are in the datasheet. worked 1st try in correct direction for me ...
I can't understand why some extruders are better than others. I get the difference between a bowden system and direct drive extruders, but what can be the difference between the direct ones, other than weight? And theoretically, what would make a perfect hotend?
Did you experience any change in the needed retraction length compared to the "conventional" direct drive extruder? Asking because I'm concerned about the (planetary) gear backlash.
@@jamesmelemede561050 bucks, without fans, or duct, or oh, a HOTEND! again, yes OmniaDrop isn't cheap.. still cheaper than something like a BMG with a 1/2 decent hotend and WAY cheaper than something like a BMG with a Mosquito ..And it's got better filament path than anything else out right now.
So I've been watching a ton of 3d printing videos in anticipation of my first printer showing up monday. Everyone keeps calling the grippy part of the drive gears nobbed. I spent time as a machinist and from my understanding that is knurled.
I've been having the same issues with the flex3drive on my ender 3 pro,. I'm wondering if combining the dual geared setup of the bondtech (which is also used in the orbiter) with a flex shaft be an improvement more for that design though.
If your having problems then contact us through support channels or in the Discord and we will fix them with you. One can not put a flex shaft onto this extruder as the gearing is too low (too much load on flex shaft) among other things.
I don't understand the point of comparing the weight of the Ender 3 extruder stepper vs the Orbiter stepper. The comparison seems to suggest you're reducing weight on the printhead, but the Ender 3 stepper is mounted on the frame not the printhead, so with the Orbiter really you're just adding weight to the printhead.
A lot of people adapt their ender 3's to direct drive by using the same nema17 stepper that the ender 3 uses for it's bowden extruder, and many other printers use the same stepper for the direct drive from factory like the prusa i3
@@ssrix Ah, alright well that makes sense then I guess. I'm still not sure why someone would want to convert to direct drive, but then flexibles are definitely a rare edge-case for me.
@@xKatjaxPurrsx It will make all retractions much better too. If you're printing with an all metal hot end you're limited to about 3-4mm of retraction max, which isn't enough with a bowden to remove strings on petg, nylon. And as you say flexible too
Hey Michael. For any instance where the part cooling fan become the problem for demo print, just put a desktop fan in front of the printer and you can get the best possible cooling (for PLA atleast). MirageC built his custom HevACS part cooling solution and proved this concept.
Hello, I have installed now my Orbiter extruder on my Tevo Tarantula Pro. As explained on the Thingiverse page of the Orbiter (www.thingiverse.com/thing:4223085), before using this new extruder, we have to do some firmware adaptation like explained on this page. Stepps: 655 stepps / mm @ 16 micro-stepping (for the 7.5:1 gearing ratio) Acceleration: 600 mm/s^2 Maximum instantaneous speed change (jerk): 300 mm/min(RRF), 5 (Marlin) Maximum speed: 3600 mm/min Pressure advance: 0.03s Retraction: 1.2mm (for the volcano V6 hotend) Retraction speed: 60mm/s(24V power supply), 30mm/s (12V power supply) Motor current: 0.5A Peak or 0.35A RMS(LDO-36STH17-1004AHG & LDO-36STH20-0504AHG) As I am bit lost how to implement this adaptation, can someone of you explain me how to do this changes. Is there a way to do this changes directly in Malin ? If yes, wher, in which config file ? Or should I add some line in the G-Code startup of my slicer ? I am a bit lost any any help will be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance Zarpyj
i thought it's like a hemera and the heatbreak goes into the extruder for a second and I almost lost my mind. oh well a bummer hope they release a heatsink having version. so you can have a shorter filament path
I have been working on a remote direct-drive extruder using dual Bondtech gears for nearly a year now. I have some tweaking to do before I publish, but I think I will be able to beat the performance of the Orbiter in my final version. The Orbiter does make me wonder whether it's worth it to continue my effort since the improvement would only be slight...
Reprint your Flex3Drive parts in ABS and those will last and provide solid performance, or we can happily ship you some PA12 SLS printed parts for you retrofit. We advise against using PETg or PLA for self printed Flex3Drive housings since those materials are not suitable. Doing so can result in issues. Orbiter is a nice design, but still 25g vs 170g. Pros and cons with all design approaches. Apples and oranges maybe?
Could you make a video about configuring Marlin 2.1 for the Orbiter extruder 1.5? On the productpage of the Orbiter 1.5 is a section "Recommended firmware configuration:" with the settings for the Orbiter v1.5. Most of the settings i can not find in Marlin so i don't know where to edit the configuration files. So a good video that shows how to configure Marlin would be very welcome.
Is tere a posebilety to make a hybrid drive conecting the gear whit a cable like the dremmel extension cable so most of the mass is somewhere else an stil most of the good things of direct drive it's not as light as indirect but it will save a few grams Or have sqeare axels run along the bars transmitting the power that way Gears an stuf tere will be backlash but maby tere is a way
Weighing the parts for the flexdrive is not fair. You need to include a large part of the heavy cable itself. You can measure how much different parts of the cable moves and scale the mass with that factor. My guess is that at least a third of the cable needs to be included in the total accelerated mass.
just can't seem to get the motor to work on my Biqu B1 all it does is vibrate. when I give it a lil help it turns but other than that it just rattles..... kinda lost please HELP!!
anyone played around with hydromotors and hydraulic transfer yet? ... seems like 2 gear pumps linked hydraulically might work for that. other alternative that might be a good step up is a brushless Dc w encoder (more efficient probably, also better power-weight)
Love your vids! It seems like you cheaped out on the plastic kit for the flex drive and then when it wore out replaced it with an inferior solution. "It's already a big upgrade over the broken flex drive" seems disingenuous by comparing a broken solution that was poorly implemented against brand new parts. With the original review of the flex drive, you didn't even bother fixing the cooling to see if you actually got a real performance increase.
Personally I’m trying to move away from pla all together. I plan on only using it for speciality filaments I can’t get in petg and eventually moving to nylon.
Have you ever looked at the BerdAir system for cooling? It would be a good time to give it a try since you have this printer appart and in need of a cooling replacement. It is sort of a new outsider alternative like the extruder you are showcasing in this video.
Looks good, though i might wait for their V2 release. i'm running a pancake stepper with a tevo titan and its adequate for now. I'm looking forward to seeing what mods you do for it!
I installed and did all the configurations, but when I print, a message appears on the screen "driver error restarted the printer". Any solution? I use marlin
Maybe you can make a cooling system with remote cooling fans in some sort of airbox combined with a PTFE tube and a bend copper pipe in the mounted near the nozzle
Love the video. Wondering why weight is such a big factor in the direct drive part? I'm looking to upgrade my hot end and go direct drive at the same time on my Ender 3Pro.
@@ToddSaltzman Ahh - thanks for explaining. So I've got some ringing in my stock setup already, so it would seem that by adding direct drive, I'm only adding weight and adding to that issue that needs solved, right? And so I'm wondering ... maybe I shouldn't do direct drive at all. It seems like it would be a good thing for accuracy of extrusion, but if it fights with ringing...hmm... are there other reasons to do direct drive that make it a clear winner?
instead of mounting both cooling fans on the hot end/extruder block would mounting one or both to the frame and blowing the air down a silicone tube to the hot end/extruder block have any advantages, i'm thinking a smaller unit in total as the reducing ducting would be at the fixed fans end on the main framework, you could also use larger/quieter fans with greater airflow without the weight disadvantage to the hot end/extruder block.
Might be ok for PLA but mine melted when running ABS. Unit wouldn't run at the suggested current so I increased it to a point where it would run but it got too hot and melted into a mess in the gear reduction
I looked at getting an orbiter, but I feel that did not meet one of my requirements, where all the hotend components added too much volume to the assembly. Will look into this at a later stage with the Flex3drive to miniaturise the hot end side. As there is a version of Flex3drive which supports dual drive
Any idea why now that I downloaded 4.8 it now only prints with a 100% infill evan though I have it set to 15% is there something that I'm missing,I've never had this problem before.thanks in advance
A few comments - great job with the assembly and installation process. However - your conversions from mm/min to mm/s are off by a factor of 10 (360mm/min)/(60s/min)=6mm/s not the 60 shown. In addition, it's likely that you are volumetrically limited by the copperhead, not by the linear feedrate of the extruder gear itself. 6mm/s*((1.75mm/2)^2)*pi =14.42mm^3/s, which is in the neighborhood of tested max flow. If testing just the extruder itself, use A) large nozzles and b) high flow hotends for a true comparison of capabilities. 3) instead of using wires to flip the pairs, just reverse it in firmware. Much easier.
Thanks for the appreciations!
During the design phase I used the upside-down heat break as something metal I had lying around :) and fitting to the purpose of a metal filament exit guide. I grinded down the top in an angle as you did. As things came along they picked up my first quick and dirty solution and forget about the grinding . There will be very soon an upcoming V1.5 with properly molded plastic parts including the filament guide :).
The V2 will be smaller with all parts custom made to reduce weight and increase performance.
where can we follow you for updates and stuff like that? :)
would like to get the V2 version for my cr-10s once it gets released.
Thanks!
@@StriK3FoRC3OwO I do not plan at the moment to share the development progress in the end an extruder is not a very complex device. The main stuff we are working on is making it smaller and lighter using custom made parts. There is still some time to go ahead until we finish it most of the time actually is taken by setting up the manufacturing tools. The v2 will have all parts molded as the V1.5 announced by LDO and already available from TL.
I use an Orbiter on my Railcore and love it. Is there a page where we can view the differences between 1.0 and 1.5? I am very much looking forward to a V2.
@@orbiterprojects ive seen the v1.5 on blueroll but the heat break still has the same issue. is this right? thanks
@@MrOrangeman18 The Orbiter 1.5 has a filament guide as part of the housing. It does not have anymore a heatbreak.
Running the orbiter on 3 deltas of mine - awesome extruder really
Excellent extruder, very nice engineering. An Orbiter with a planetary gearbox, brilliant ;) And it really is open source, not pretend ..STEP files!
Michael's smile is so vampire friendly ❤️❤️❤️
wat
Maybe you can talk to a camera, e-nun-ci-ate clearly and smile naturally while following a script.
Very nice tutorial again. You make everything look so easy and simple.
Hang on now...let's go back to those diagonal artifacts mentioned just before the 2 minute mark: I've seen similar artifacts on prints from both my Ender 3 (with the Micro-Swiss DD kit) and my Sidewinder X1, that only went away when I basically disassembled and reassembled everything on the printer. I never could properly nail it down, but knowing that it's related to misalignment in the extruder and hot end is quite a relief.
Anyway, this extruder looks pretty magnificent. Great video!
In the Voron community there are a lot of people using this extruder but packaged differently so it fits in the afterburner toolhead. You need to grease the planetary gears or they are not going to last very long. I have been running one of this in my Voron V2 and it has been running strong for hundreds of hours.
The Sherpa mini is also a great option. Similar weight and similar performance. I prefer it over the orbiter, because it's a much simpler and straight forward design.
its even lighter than the orbiter!
@@tonn0297 your right, I didn't have the numbers on top of my head so I wrote similar, but the Sherpa weighs 115g and the orbiter 138g
@@lukas1672 98g is doable with the current revision, the average is about 108g
as for the guys saying speed is an issue, 40mm^3/s is no issues with this motor (@5:1 gearing), when we worked with LDO to develop the original 5mm shaft variant of this motor (the oribiter motor is based off of this) speed was a number 1 concern. There was actually a thinner variant of this motor originally developed, and it could not push what we wanted when LDO ran their internal simulations.
@@AnnexEngineering 108g average even, nice. You guys rock, have a sherpa mini in my voron v0, couldn't be happier :)
Most of the weight difference between the Orbiter and the Sherpa mini is given by the bigger bontech gears I used in the Orbiter design. With the bigger diameter of the gears the grip and the depth to which the tooth bites into the filament is more constant resulting a more consistent extrusion. For this reason I have accepted the additional weight. Considering the whole X gantry weight for most of the printers the additional 20g do not make a visible difference in print quality but the bigger gears does.
Thanks. You said about trial and error with the stepper wires. You don't have to go this way, two of the wires are a pair and will be continuous when you check them with a voltmeter, the other two are the "other" pair. Now you know you have two pairs. One pair goes on one side of any given plug (or control board connector) and one pair on the other side, one way around the motor turns one direction, flip them around and it turns the other way, Do this with the machine powered down, pulling stepper motor wires with some drivers powered up can destroy them.
I have one and a couple of comments. First, I run at 0.25a not 0.5. At 0.5 it got unbelievably hot. Second, I really dislike the two screw mount. I want one more screw somewhere for stability. Otherwise, I'm liking it and it's printing well.
.5A is the rated max. Never a good idea to run at max amps. It reduces the life span.
Your videos are fabulous! I find this one particularly helpful, as I am piecing together a possible boot build to start
Wow, TT must have been looking at what I am googling. Because I was just looking at obiter extruder this morning
I designed an adapter for the orbiter and the hydra fan duct! :) I really like it. I use it on my ender 3 pro. It works pretty well! :)
Edit: i posted it on Thingiverse a few days ago. :)
Do you have a link?
The diagonal artefacts look a lot like wood grain, that's actually very cool!
Until you don’t want them there anymore. Lol but printed with wood pla would be cool
@@ToddSaltzman my thoughts exactly
@@ToddSaltzman You know what, that seems like something best handled by the slicer when you actually want it deliberately. How about a fuzzy skin where you set the fuzzies to be really long?
I ordered this a few days before this was uploaded, and had hoped you would do a review! What luck!
It hasn't arrived yet, but when it does I plan to remix the ender3 satsana fan shroud and adapt it to fit a bltouch and this drive, along with the microswiss hot end
FINALLY someone did it!!! Thanks Michael!!
I got mine working quite well on my ender 3 pros. I personally prefer the micro fan duct for the v6 style hotends like the Dragon as it's low profile and doesn't take much to assemble it. For the motor heat issue I've elected to use small heat sinks made for pcb boards like the raspi and no skipped steps from it as a result
I got a Seckit Sk-Go thanks to your videos and it has been the printer of my dreams! =D
Option 3 looks like a recipe for clogs in printers where ptfe tube is pushed against the nozzle, since it does not allow to apply pressure to ptfe from the top. And I believe most common printers have that kind of hotend out of the box
Hi Michael.
At 5:32 the easy way to put that bolt in is to put the bolt in before the geared cover in placed in position, so that you can make sure the bolt is straight as you wind it in. It greatly reduces the chance of stripping the thread that way. The bolt on the other side, as you showed, is relatively easy to do.
Anyway I loved the review, I ordered one last night and am currently designing a mount for it for my Coccon printer. Thanks!
honestly, Aliexpress, I've never had an issue. Bangood on the other hand, my one time, I regret. Do like the planetary gear-set idea!
definitely interesting, let us know how it holds up after a couple of months.
looking forward to buy this for my cr-10s when V2 gets released
Got mine last week. Glad to see you do a video on this
1:38 - Wow, these artifacts looks almost like a wood texture!
For real, that would be unbelievable with a wood filament, but looks amazing as is. I wonder if there is a way to replicate those "failures" reliably...
@@Jerguu Where is that "velocity painting" after few years? I wonder why nobody (of major tubers) talks about it now.
With a little care during installation, following instructions and reaching out to support by email or Discord the issue shown is easy to put right.
Might be this issue ruclips.net/video/32dTLRNIYmw/видео.html&ab_channel=MihaiDesigns
Thanks a bunch for the deep dive!
I'm a bit bummed that there was so much re-work involved; I'd been eyeing this for my Seckit SK-GO (which sadly has been sitting unassembled for a few months now)... Will keep my fingers crossed that v2 works out better; or that a better FlexDrive kit comes available (as I don't have a resin printer to make those parts myself).
You can just use a service and get the parts sintered, or printed in whatever you need for the adapter.
Hi Michael, great video, I liked seeing the Seckit again! But I'd highly recommend you get a crimping tool (I use a Engineer PA-09, but not for long) so you can make some proper wiring. Cheers and thanks.
i would like to see the berd air fitted on this machine!
It looks like a good lightweight option, but I always get nervous about buying anything on aliexpress more expensive than Arduino clones. I'd also like to see you do a follow-up video in the future about how well the planetary gearset held up (given it's SLS nylon).
have been running it for a month, gears still look pristine, make sure to lube it.
Blurolls is legit. You just need to know the right stores.
Truth. I actually verified with LDO that they were selling to Blurolls when I saw that go up in the store. LDO confirmed. Ben Levi (BLV MGN Cube et al) uses Blurolls for all his stuff too.
I've been researching this extruder so much recently! Thanks for the vid
"today I'm testing the orbital" lol I gotta watch this whole video now
Ive never considered the prospect of saving weight on direct drive extruder (just didn't click) until this video, and my first thought was a flex shaft to mount the stepper on the frame. First thing you mention was the last extruder being exactly that. Always late to the party 😪
typical I ordered a different direct drive extruder just days ago , THEN I see this a batter one lol :)
I don't think this one is better. Lots of negative reviews so far
@@3dPrintingMillennial There are dozens of direct drive solutions, are you trying to say this one is the worst of them all? 😂
@@robnixon515 considering you can spam fake reviews, yet still ending up with a poor rating really says a lot. Probably not the worst though
@@3dPrintingMillennial considering The Orbiter is an open source design with a license that expressly forbids commercialization, I think it’s pretty likely that the reviews you’ll read about the orbiter are indeed legit.
And I don’t know what you’ve seen, but the reviews I’ve seen of it have been overwhelmingly positive. It outperforms a BMG extruder in almost every respect, and it only weighs a dozen grams or so more than a BMG extruder *without a motor*.
It’s a powerful, compact direct drive solution that weighs less than most part cooling solutions, what is not to like?
@@robnixon515 hey I'm glad it works for up. Maybe the haters all work for Bondtech lol.
as usual the best product review on youtube
should look at the OmniaDrop. it's not as small, but it includes the full hotend with cooling ducts and fans. When you add all those components I think you'll find it's darn near the same weight. about 1/2 a Hemera!
This was a vary interesting review. The "Orbiter" is a diamond in the ruff. This is a product has potential. I like the direction their heading in with Orbiter, though; It's not ready for the general public. I would buy one today just because "Teaching Tech" reviewed the product and revealed it's flaws. The most we can do at this point is fix the flaws and share the results with the manufacture, but; I really do like The Orbiter. I never cared for E-3D's direct drive extruder because of the weight, but; The Orbiter is light-weight.
Teaching tech did not get how the heat break is used as filament guide. Anyway the new version 1.5 has a filament guide as part of the housing.
@@orbiterprojects Cool, Thanks
I'm trying to find a lightweight upgrade/replacement for a stock ender 3 (stock extruder/hotend so far)... but I don't have a lot of money. The things I would like are ...1) direct drive extrusion ... 2) faster printing ...3) can print nylon ...4) lightweight ... and 5) as inexpensive as possible.
I know that these requirements aren't too hard to find... but there are just so many options and so many pros and cons and so many different requirements and incompatibilities for so many of them and there are SO MANY mixed reviews on Everything. I'm really lost in all the options now and just can't remember which is which and everything I'll need for each option. For example, I was thinking about getting a Spider Pro, but I also need a direct drive extruder, a special heater (I think) and I'm not sure which extruder works and what I need to install the extruder. I thought a regular direct drive extruder would work, but in a video I was watching they said that the OEM direct drive extruder doesn't line up with the hotend.
I also already have a Sprite direct drive extruder, but I don't have a hotend or the fans and all that for it. It was supposed to be the entire hotend assembly, but I ordered the wrong thing. I was thinking about just buying the hotend for it, but I'm not sure exactly what I need (all together) to get it to work... and it seemingly will still cost more money to just do that than it would be to just buy an entirely different setup.
Hope you forgive the long comment and all the questions. I'm just kind of stuck on what to do and don't have the money to buy expensive hotends and parts... so any info/ideas/suggestions would be appreciated.
People with flexdrive systems always pretend the flex cable itself doesn't exist.
A flexdrive system with all its hardware, including the shaft, drags well more than the 150-200 grams a compact extruder does.
The shaft itself is an extra annoying thing to account for too, as it will change the weight distribution of the system depending on where you are on every axis. Instead of having the same weight being dragged around everywhere, the amount of cable weight pushing on the hotend changes as you are printing.
This makes resonance tuning and other methods of accounting for moving weight a freakin nightmare. Which I'm guessing is part of the new artefacts people discover using that type of system.
Reduce the hole size to the hotend so it is a press fit all the way down for a bowden tube to constrain XandY and use "thing:4655121" for the Z
I own the G5 from Flex3Drive. I use it on my Kossel Mini and I love it. I do really want to try his Nema 8 version but he has not had the parts for it in stock for a very long time. I think all I really need for it is the Gear Set to attach to the Nema 8 motor. I have already a spare Nema 8 Motor and the rest of the hardware looks to be the same so it should just be a matter of getting a worm gear attached to it and printing out the housing. At least from the looks of it. Hopefully one day he will restock the parts for it.
I have not tried the Orbiter but I may just do that soon.
Orbiter is probably the best design ever made by a Romanian person.
Bought mine about a month or so ago from blurolls and was really impressed. Got the standard one as seen here and made a custom bracket for my ender3 as i didn't notice the CR10 version. It works fine for petg and pla but as mentioned in the video, the filament path wasn't suitable for flexibles and it couldn't feed eSun eLastic (Shore 85A). It basically sucked the filament into the planetary gear housing. Anyway, long story short, I remixed it to integrate the ender 3 mount, use a microswiss style ptfe filament guide, close off the greasy gear housing and increase the clamping range of the drive gears as they were bottoming out on the flexible filament. Now it's perfect (for me)... but I'll still be looking out for the v2 :-)
If you are after reducing weight you might try to supply cooling air by tube from a pump? Get rid of two fans and a good bit of plastic structure to hold it.
no trial and error required for motor wires - just look up the correct pinout for your mainboard - the coils of the steppermotor are in the datasheet. worked 1st try in correct direction for me ...
I can't understand why some extruders are better than others. I get the difference between a bowden system and direct drive extruders, but what can be the difference between the direct ones, other than weight? And theoretically, what would make a perfect hotend?
Did you experience any change in the needed retraction length compared to the "conventional" direct drive extruder? Asking because I'm concerned about the (planetary) gear backlash.
I am running a modified orbiter, the planetary gearbox has less lash than my BMG, printed in SLA.
As a rule, never use DuPont connectors to wire a stripper motor. If the connection slips, you fry your driver.
Btw can you please post the refined version of the flex 3 drive extruder and some step files when you fix it? thx!
You should try the OmniaDrop it's even lighter and it has an integrated hot end. Also it comes with cooling fans for both parts and hot end.
LOL, I just stated the same thing! :) it's my fave hotend/extruder to date.
@@jamesmelemede561050 bucks, without fans, or duct, or oh, a HOTEND! again, yes OmniaDrop isn't cheap.. still cheaper than something like a BMG with a 1/2 decent hotend and WAY cheaper than something like a BMG with a Mosquito ..And it's got better filament path than anything else out right now.
I use this on my troodon 400, works fantastic
So I've been watching a ton of 3d printing videos in anticipation of my first printer showing up monday. Everyone keeps calling the grippy part of the drive gears nobbed. I spent time as a machinist and from my understanding that is knurled.
I've been having the same issues with the flex3drive on my ender 3 pro,. I'm wondering if combining the dual geared setup of the bondtech (which is also used in the orbiter) with a flex shaft be an improvement more for that design though.
It’s what I’m planing to do
If your having problems then contact us through support channels or in the Discord and we will fix them with you. One can not put a flex shaft onto this extruder as the gearing is too low (too much load on flex shaft) among other things.
I don't understand the point of comparing the weight of the Ender 3 extruder stepper vs the Orbiter stepper. The comparison seems to suggest you're reducing weight on the printhead, but the Ender 3 stepper is mounted on the frame not the printhead, so with the Orbiter really you're just adding weight to the printhead.
It's more about comparing a direct feed modded ender 3 to the orbiter.
A lot of people adapt their ender 3's to direct drive by using the same nema17 stepper that the ender 3 uses for it's bowden extruder, and many other printers use the same stepper for the direct drive from factory like the prusa i3
@@ssrix Ah, alright well that makes sense then I guess. I'm still not sure why someone would want to convert to direct drive, but then flexibles are definitely a rare edge-case for me.
@@xKatjaxPurrsx It will make all retractions much better too. If you're printing with an all metal hot end you're limited to about 3-4mm of retraction max, which isn't enough with a bowden to remove strings on petg, nylon. And as you say flexible too
Great video as always!!
Interesting extruder
Thanks for sharing :-)
Now we need to solve the problem of a lightweight extruder for a Delta. (Smile)
Hey Michael. For any instance where the part cooling fan become the problem for demo print, just put a desktop fan in front of the printer and you can get the best possible cooling (for PLA atleast).
MirageC built his custom HevACS part cooling solution and proved this concept.
There was a remote Bowden dual gear drive extruder by the same guy on thingiverse
That looks like a really neat extruder. I would be a bit worried about the nylon on nylon planetary gears. Yes they are nylon but even that will wear.
Plastic gears are actually really durable. There's lots of manufacturing stuff that uses plastic gears and they last quite a while.
Time for a Sherpa mini! Lighter + cheaper + still easy assembly.
Hello,
I have installed now my Orbiter extruder on my Tevo Tarantula Pro.
As explained on the Thingiverse page of the Orbiter (www.thingiverse.com/thing:4223085), before using this new extruder, we have to do some firmware adaptation like explained on this page.
Stepps: 655 stepps / mm @ 16 micro-stepping (for the 7.5:1 gearing ratio)
Acceleration: 600 mm/s^2
Maximum instantaneous speed change (jerk): 300 mm/min(RRF), 5 (Marlin)
Maximum speed: 3600 mm/min
Pressure advance: 0.03s
Retraction: 1.2mm (for the volcano V6 hotend)
Retraction speed: 60mm/s(24V power supply), 30mm/s (12V power supply)
Motor current: 0.5A Peak or 0.35A RMS(LDO-36STH17-1004AHG & LDO-36STH20-0504AHG)
As I am bit lost how to implement this adaptation, can someone of you explain me how to do this changes.
Is there a way to do this changes directly in Malin ? If yes, wher, in which config file ?
Or should I add some line in the G-Code startup of my slicer ?
I am a bit lost any any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you in advance
Zarpyj
i thought it's like a hemera and the heatbreak goes into the extruder for a second and I almost lost my mind. oh well a bummer
hope they release a heatsink having version. so you can have a shorter filament path
I have been working on a remote direct-drive extruder using dual Bondtech gears for nearly a year now. I have some tweaking to do before I publish, but I think I will be able to beat the performance of the Orbiter in my final version. The Orbiter does make me wonder whether it's worth it to continue my effort since the improvement would only be slight...
Reprint your Flex3Drive parts in ABS and those will last and provide solid performance, or we can happily ship you some PA12 SLS printed parts for you retrofit. We advise against using PETg or PLA for self printed Flex3Drive housings since those materials are not suitable. Doing so can result in issues. Orbiter is a nice design, but still 25g vs 170g. Pros and cons with all design approaches. Apples and oranges maybe?
Agreed,
Could you make a video about configuring Marlin 2.1 for the Orbiter extruder 1.5?
On the productpage of the Orbiter 1.5 is a section "Recommended firmware configuration:" with the settings for the Orbiter v1.5.
Most of the settings i can not find in Marlin so i don't know where to edit the configuration files.
So a good video that shows how to configure Marlin would be very welcome.
PLEASE :) Make a video about ender 3 dual z axis upgrade options:/...i really had issues with the single version z axis system
Is tere a posebilety to make a hybrid drive conecting the gear whit a cable like the dremmel extension cable so most of the mass is somewhere else an stil most of the good things of direct drive it's not as light as indirect but it will save a few grams
Or have sqeare axels run along the bars transmitting the power that way
Gears an stuf tere will be backlash but maby tere is a way
Weighing the parts for the flexdrive is not fair. You need to include a large part of the heavy cable itself. You can measure how much different parts of the cable moves and scale the mass with that factor. My guess is that at least a third of the cable needs to be included in the total accelerated mass.
Excellent review, many thanks.
just can't seem to get the motor to work on my Biqu B1 all it does is vibrate. when I give it a lil help it turns but other than that it just rattles..... kinda lost please HELP!!
Love that hotend heatsink
I got 2 to play with aswell, running one with heatsinks and a fan on it on my two trees sapphire plus
Well, shit. I see this now when I am just about to install a bondtech on my ender 3 😂
How do you like it?
@@KLP99 Works fine so far
anyone played around with hydromotors and hydraulic transfer yet? ... seems like 2 gear pumps linked hydraulically might work for that. other alternative that might be a good step up is a brushless Dc w encoder (more efficient probably, also better power-weight)
damnit, these were just coming back in stock.
If you talk about the sherpa mini before I get one im going to be so mad.
Why not use a geared stepper instead of a printed planetary gear? I've seen very tiny ones. Just curious
Love your vids! It seems like you cheaped out on the plastic kit for the flex drive and then when it wore out replaced it with an inferior solution. "It's already a big upgrade over the broken flex drive" seems disingenuous by comparing a broken solution that was poorly implemented against brand new parts. With the original review of the flex drive, you didn't even bother fixing the cooling to see if you actually got a real performance increase.
Thanks I just started to look into that one
You should check input shaper btw, it made me print 10x faster!
I don't understand why you print your printer mounts every time in PLA. If you print with bed temp from higher than 50 °C the mount will be soften.
Personally I’m trying to move away from pla all together. I plan on only using it for speciality filaments I can’t get in petg and eventually moving to nylon.
And now do the Sherpa Mini :)
It’s a nice 40g lighter too
Say please
@@samueldennis8343 please
@@limestone_xyz 💜💜
Seconded
Have you ever looked at the BerdAir system for cooling? It would be a good time to give it a try since you have this printer appart and in need of a cooling replacement. It is sort of a new outsider alternative like the extruder you are showcasing in this video.
berd berd berd, berd is the werd
Hi Michael, How about a test of the Sherpa Mini Extruder 109gram? Head to head with the orbiter?
Looks good, though i might wait for their V2 release. i'm running a pancake stepper with a tevo titan and its adequate for now. I'm looking forward to seeing what mods you do for it!
I installed and did all the configurations, but when I print, a message appears on the screen "driver error restarted the printer".
Any solution?
I use marlin
Super awesome! Just onde question... Could that thing last without a single drop of grease into the gearbox?
I keep having issues with mine paired with a microswiss and esteps and current messed with a million times
Maybe you can make a cooling system with remote cooling fans in some sort of airbox combined with a PTFE tube and a bend copper pipe in the mounted near the nozzle
Love the video. Wondering why weight is such a big factor in the direct drive part? I'm looking to upgrade my hot end and go direct drive at the same time on my Ender 3Pro.
Too much weight causes “ringing” in a print and can be a limiting factor in higher movement speeds
@@ToddSaltzman Ahh - thanks for explaining. So I've got some ringing in my stock setup already, so it would seem that by adding direct drive, I'm only adding weight and adding to that issue that needs solved, right? And so I'm wondering ... maybe I shouldn't do direct drive at all. It seems like it would be a good thing for accuracy of extrusion, but if it fights with ringing...hmm... are there other reasons to do direct drive that make it a clear winner?
You should run an orbiter with a flex drive
That Benchy looked worse than my
Shots fired
instead of mounting both cooling fans on the hot end/extruder block would mounting one or both to the frame and blowing the air down a silicone tube to the hot end/extruder block have any advantages, i'm thinking a smaller unit in total as the reducing ducting would be at the fixed fans end on the main framework, you could also use larger/quieter fans with greater airflow without the weight disadvantage to the hot end/extruder block.
Might be ok for PLA but mine melted when running ABS. Unit wouldn't run at the suggested current so I increased it to a point where it would run but it got too hot and melted into a mess in the gear reduction
i recommend a fin on the motor. they can get pretty hot
Anyone help with wiring plz? Swapping the nema17 for a LDO-36STH17-100AHG. I don't want see any smoke🤷🏻♂️
I looked at getting an orbiter, but I feel that did not meet one of my requirements, where all the hotend components added too much volume to the assembly.
Will look into this at a later stage with the Flex3drive to miniaturise the hot end side. As there is a version of Flex3drive which supports dual drive
The Orbiter is still a fine filament feeder.
Really like this extruder design, Will you be able to help us 10S Pro users with install kits? Dennis in Virginia
Would love you to take a look at the Ender 6!
Noticed you have mechanical endstops, I need to add those to my skgo. Kind of done with sensorless homing.
Nice tutorial video!👍🏻😎
Any idea why now that I downloaded 4.8 it now only prints with a 100% infill evan though I have it set to 15% is there something that I'm missing,I've never had this problem before.thanks in advance