Scope of this project was to fix the extruder of one of our printers. Last week I noticed that our orange ERP printer had a small issue on the extruder. The pins that hold the motor in place were broken (probably one of our maker wasn’t gentle enough with it!). So, to avoid the definitive break of the pin, I decided to design a new bracket to help the motor stay in place.

Design Software: Tinkercad

Materials and tools: -Builder 3D printer; -PLA red; -Caliber; -Sanding paper.

3D printer settings : -200 micron quality; -50% infill; -50 mm/s speed; -no retract.

I quickly decided the shape that could fix my problem. Therefore, the first step was to take the extruder’s measurments, and I used the caliber to do that.

The design concept was extremely easy: it is a ring, which the extruder goes into, in addition it has a pin to be fastened on the printer. The motor is 47mm by 47mm, and that’s also the inner dimension of the holder. Moreover, I calculated a 0.4mm tolerance inside the ring to compensate for 3D printing deformation. While the thickness of the holder is equal to the space between the motor and the printers’ frame, and it’s 2.5mm. It is a simple shape, so I decided to use Tinkercad as a design software.

The holder is not going to bear a lot of stress, so I used PLA as material. Also, since it’s no intricate shape, I could avoid using retraction and go quite fast. The print took just 1 hour and it didn’t give any problems!

After the print, just a little bit of sanding was needed to fit the ring on the extruder. The pin also was in the right dimension. In conclusion I was quite proud that all the measures were right, no waste of time and material!

The whole job took less than 2 hours, and now our small orange baby is ready to start printing again any kind of your crazy stuff!!!