It wouldn’t make any sense to place a spool of filament instantly on a 3D printer’s extruder carriage — that may be cumbersome and the load would make the printing efficiency horrible. So, 3D printer designers place the spool close by and feed the filament to the extruder by (often PTFE) tubes. However these tubes can get fairly lengthy and pushing the filament by them by hand will be trouble. That’s notably true when it’s worthwhile to do it a number of occasions a day, when you’re switching filament loads. The answer is MrFlippant’s Velocity Loader.
The Velocity Loader has one job and that’s to shortly push filament by Bowden tubes. MrFlippant designed it to be used with Prusa 3D printers, however it’ll work simply as properly with some other FDM/FFF 3D printer.
It’s virtually miraculous in its simplicity and utility, that are hallmarks of all really helpful instruments. Simply clamp the gears down in your filament and… that’s it. There isn’t a second step. The act of clamping prompts the Velocity Loader’s motor and the gears will begin turning. These are Bondtech-style gears, such as you’d discover in an extruder, so that they grip the filament completely and push it by. Simply maintain clamping till the filament is the place you need it, then launch.
Better of all, the elements it’s worthwhile to construct a Velocity Loader are simple and low-cost to accumulate. Except for the aforementioned gears (they match the MK3S+ extruder), you’ll want a gearmotor, a restrict change, a 9V battery connector, and a chargeable 9V battery (or an everyday 9V battery when you favor). No fancy motor controller is critical, as a result of the restrict change merely closes the circuit to attach energy to the motor.
That’s actually all there’s to it: simply a great tool that each 3D printing fanatic can recognize.
