RepRap: Extruders are hot...

I finally released my video on the making of my Mendel a few weeks ago. It's very exciting to finally be done. It's not very exciting to have my extruder break only days after getting it working. The extruder I went with was a variation on Ardian's hot tip.


It worked perfectly for a few prints, at which point the wood transfered enough heat to the bolts that the nuts melted through the PLA and the whole hot end fell off.


I think I will revisit this design at some point. I think where I went wrong was the length of the bolts. If the PTFE thermal barrier was a bit longer, allowing the bolts to be longer, I don't think they would have transferred enough heat to melt out. For now, I'm just going to use what I have and see if I can rig something functional up.