Universal Pellet Extruder V3 ZQ version

27/03/19 I'm pondering making changes to the hopper design as I still sometimes find that it stops feeding. It always happens in the same place where the feed stock creates a void around the screw of about 5mm, creating a dome shaped cavity. If anyone else is having this problem and has ideas about fixing it then feel free to pm me or talk in the forum: https://www.thingiverse.com/groups/universal-pellet-extruder/forums/general/topic:31485

10/01/2019 I'm changing this design status as its now printing well. I also added assembly instructions to the git page: https://github.com/ebenfarnworth/Universal-Pellet-Extruder-V3-ZQ-version/wiki/Instructions-for-assemble

04/10/18 Started to use this to build nodes for an 8m bamboo geodesic dome. Project available here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3135801
I Have changed out the stock 0.8mm head for a 1.2mm head. Working much better for bottle PET.

16/08/18 I made a feed stock stirrer that can be downloaded from here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3051987 This stops the feed stock getting stuck in the extruder when printing with wast plastic.

06/08/18 I have uploaded my revised design, the new design allows me to put back in the left side pillars and with my rotating wire rod I found in the first test that my feed stock still gets through to the extruder ok. For this is working for me so feel free to try this design if you brave! Hopper printed with 0.16 resolutions, 25% infill in PETG and housing printed with 0.26 resolutions and 35% infill.

02/08/18 ** IMPORTANT ** This design just failed for my use case! Printing at 270 degrees (with the fan always on) the case became soft and warped form the heat jamming the extruder. I will have to change the design to fix this. Expect a few weeks or so before upload any revised version.
Feel free to make suggestions in the comments if you have any ideas or improvements.

Discussion group: https://www.thingiverse.com/groups/universal-pellet-extruder/forums/general/topic:31485

This is a complete rework of Mahor's pellet extruder v3. I'm trying to overcome the following challenges with this new design:
Stability - the original design is a bit wobbly and flexible when mounted to the CR10, you can see in some of Maho's videos he has used aluminium to make the front and back plates, but as I don't have the tools to do this I wanted a 3D printed solution.
Dust and mess - if your active cooling is blowing air into the hopper and your printing with shredded wast plastic then you end up with bits of plastic getting blown everywhere. I wanted a different location for cooling (this is not a problem with pellets).
Prevent blockage - shredded wast plastic is very high friction and the pieces of it are very light so it dose not flow very well.
Make it easy to mount to my CR10 - now it mounts directly.

The design I have created also has some disadvantages too, its heavier, its much harder to print, it requires quite a lot of post processing and is much harder to assemble, so if your just printing with pellets and its stable enough for your use case then the original design would be easier to work with.

I printed the housing in Carbon-fibre PETG and the hopper in clear PETG. It was my first time using Carbon-fiber PETG but it printed very well and without problem, however it did take 26 hours on my FFCP! I will print more with this as it make super stiff, strong and light parts, better than anything I used before.

The parts are made very tight and will require some filing to fit and or drilling!

I used tree type supports for the hopper and was able to remove them ok (PETG dose not like bridging). I recommend printing it in ABS then you would not need many supports.

If you print this then you will still need the original part cooler fan ducked from here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2506666 as this is an alternative printed set of parts for this extruder: https://mahorxyz.wordpress.com/2016/05/02/pellet-extruder/

Licensing note: that the GPL is just for the 2 parts I have made here and the licence for the CR10 its mounted on and all the hardware for the Pellet Extruder is not GPL.

FreeCAD files can be downloaded from here: https://cloud.zenquest.co/index.php/s/MeSmmWGivdPe6Io

I will move things here after I have setup git-large-file-storage: https://github.com/ebenfarnworth/Universal-Pellet-Extruder-V3-ZQ-version

Note: I worked in one file until FreeCAD became unbearably slow then I copied the shape to the next file and so on. There are 5 files so far going through different stages of the design and they are all very messy!