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  1. #12
    Staff Engineer printbus's Avatar
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    So few people in the MakerFarm subforum have experience with Bowden. You might have better luck asking for help in the more general help subforum.

    That said, what are your expectations of the Bowden? I don't recall anyone saying Bowden improved their print quality. Bowdens are used to reduce carriage weight and allow higher acceleration, leading to overall faster print speed. Works great printing vases and similar on deltas.

    Bowden creates two new problems. The long length of filament from the extruder motor acts like a spring, softening up the immediate control you have over the extrusion output. And then, any slop in how the filament fits in the Bowden tube effectively adds backlash into the filament drive.

    Retraction is a problem because of these issues. I think Ultimaker uses 6mm of retraction. Run the retraction speed as fast as you can - I concluded 15mm/sec is about the best we can do, but you're on your own with the geared motor. I've heard of many people who end up disabling retraction on their Bowden extruder all together. You may want to revert back to the tighter fit Bowden tube - IIRC some people add a lubricating scheme for their filament feed. The Bowden tube has to have large, sweeping arcs. As already mentioned in your other thread, you're likely to have issues with your arrangement - especially as the carriage moves upwards on tall prints. That'll be forcing some pretty short curves into the Bowden tube.
    Last edited by printbus; 03-14-2015 at 12:03 PM.

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