Quote Originally Posted by curious aardvark View Post
use a much smaller stepper motor for the extruder.
Just got some nema 14s, which might do the job. Easy to mount on an effector.
nema 14 & 17 side by side.
The effector will be a 608 bearing so it's not all that big. I was planning to use a pancake nema 17 with 20 mm body to keep things light. The issue is with torque. This is why I started the other thread about extruders. I'm wanting to create an extruder that's light, has small form factor and good torque (with gearing). As well as having some other features like dual drive gears and some extra features I want to add to the idler. The E3D titan fits some of the criteria, but I would also like it to be mostly 3d printed, keeping in the spirit of the gus simpson.

Another (and bigger) reason I was thinking of parallelizing is due to mounting different tool heads like a laser or light duty engraver which are more difficult to mount on/through a series of 608 bearings, whereas a 3d printer can just run a bowden tube through their bores to the hotend. Speaking of which, with an effector on a parallelized gus, there can be a much shorter path for the filament between the extruder and hotend, especially for a non bowden since it wont have to travel through ~5 608 bearings.