A trio of Texan 3D printing enthusiasts have created a lightweight and compact printer head called the X-Truder and launched a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to bring it to market. The X-Truder weights only 16 ounces and has two all-metal hotends, a high torque motor, an internal high-flow fan and individual extruder retraction to help prevent nozzle drag.
After a year of testing and four rounds of prototyping the Praxis3D team believe that they have created the most advanced dual material 3D printing nozzle available. And if everything that they are showing off is accurate then they have certainly brought some interesting innovations to the table.
The core of the X-Truder is its two all metal extruders, each with a copper heatsink, polished stainless steel tubing that acts as a heat break and 60 watt heaters. They also included some simple electrical connections so add-ons and upgrades like additional fans, endstops and bed leveling sensors can easily be integrated into the X-Truder. The filament drive system has a Nema 11 stepper that forces the filament through a fixed pinch gap on the wheel. And the printhead includes a magnetic Klix mounting system that allows the X-Truder to be installed on just about any 3D printer.
The real interesting innovation on the X-Truder is the nozzle retraction feature, which helps prevent nozzle drag. A micro servo will move the extruder slightly to the left or right so the head that is currently printing is favored, preventing part collisions. The servo can lift the printing head by about 1 mm, which pulls the second nozzle about four layers above the current layer being printed. Because it is such an integral part of the X-Truder, the Praxis3D team put it through its paces and they say that it ran through 100,000 changeovers and still showed no sign of wear.
Take a look at the Kickstarter video:
Because the X-Truder can reach some pretty high temperatures it is compatible with a large variety of 3D printing materials including PLA, ABS, PC, PVA, and TPU. Praxis3D does warn against mixing ABS and PC together however as they found during tests that they did not combine very well. Additionally ABS is prone to warping without a heated chamber, so they suggest sticking to small parts. They also suggest running the fan while printing with PLA at all times to help prevent any jams.
The Kickstarter campaign for the X-Truder is set to end on November 30th and they are looking for a pretty steep $100,000. The early bird price of $250 is only available to the first 100 backers, then the price raises up to $275. That means that in order for the Kickstarter to fund they will need to have almost 400 backers. That’s a pretty tough uphill battle, but not entirely impossible.
