I have an MK8Makerbot(?) extruder on my HICTOP branded printer.
The problem with the E3D hotend is that the heatbreak is shorter and doesn't protrude through the top of the heatsink. Therefore I can't mount it to the motor mount.
Any ideas?
I have an MK8Makerbot(?) extruder on my HICTOP branded printer.
The problem with the E3D hotend is that the heatbreak is shorter and doesn't protrude through the top of the heatsink. Therefore I can't mount it to the motor mount.
Any ideas?
For reference, I have the same printer and am speaking from my experiences.
You have two routes you can take with this, but both are effectively the same result - you need to replace the X carriage.
If you want to re-use your existing extruder components you can pull the MK8 extruder off the X carriage and use it as the extruder to drive a bowden configuration, then all you need is a length of PTFE tube and the couplers between the E3d and the MK8 to hold the tube. This is probably the best solution as it takes a lot of weight off of the X-carriage resulting in significantly better print quality, the only downside is that printing with flexible filaments is a lot more difficult with a bowden configuration, if you intended to do a lot of that.
The other option (and the one I took) is to print an entire new x-carriage/extruder assembly. Because the Anet A8 is based off the Prusa and the Z/X carriage assemblies are basically the same as the original Prusa I3 you can just take any design for the Prusa and fit it onto the Anet, I did this with a gregs wade extruder & E3D hotend mount I found on thingiverse.
I didnt look too hard, but if you are adament on wanting to keep the MK8 extruder on the X-carriage and couple it direct-driven to the V6, you can probably find some x-carriage that lines the two up for this purpose (or you could even design one yourself if you are interested in doing so). I didn't look in to this route myself, so cannot give much guidance.