Delta – Extruder – Nimble – Part 3
In this post, I will talk about my experience of coupling nimble with smart effector from duet3d. You can read more about it here. The main advantages of smart effector in my opinion are:
- Integrated Z-probe
- Simplification of wiring for heaters and fans
- Stiffness of PCB effector
- LED lighting to illuminate the printing bed
- Great product and support from Duet3D community
The documentation at Duet3D explains the wiring and configuration of smart effector. Please refer to it for wiring.
You need to have an adapter for nimble to attach it to smart effector. Lykle has the design in his thingiverse page. I used v2.2 but now he has v2.4 with some design modifications. For the fan, I used the 270 degree fan design from this thingiverse page. I used a fan adapter by dc42’s thingiverse page to attach the fan to the smart effector.
Note that the spacing between arms is 55mm, so I have to change the laser cut aluminium carriages from 64mm spacing to 55mm. You can see the finished set up in the following pictures.
You can see the smart effector in action in the following videos:
The setup and printing experience was smooth. The only minor complaint I had was the tight spacing on the effector. If you have big fingers then you are in for some frustration, otherwise it is a very nice setup.
By this time, I had my nimble finely tuned. Along with smart effector, the nimble proved to be a great combination. The small footprint of this effector does not reduce available print area in the build plate. The integrated strain based sensor is very accurate and consistently gives me accuracy of less than 0.02 mm. I tried to print with one of the difficult materials, ninja flex and it came out well, as you can see in the picture below.
Similarly, I tried to print Amphora and PETG apart from PLA. They also came out very well.
If at all you choose to go with nimble extruder, it is best to get smart effector along with it. I think it is one of the best combination for delta printers.
In the next series of posts, I will talk about Titan Aero extruder and Bondtech BMG extruder.
Creating Objects 