 Hey everybody, recently I did a video on the EZR extruder and installing it on the Ender 3. Well, I had some people ask, how come you don't do the aluminum extruders because more of us use that? So what we're gonna do today is we're gonna take this aluminum extruder that I got from TH3D and we're gonna install it on this Ender 3. My name is Jim and this is the Edge of Tech. All right, like I said, we're gonna take this Ender 3 right here, which right now the extruder is stock on because it's a friend of mine's. And we're gonna take this aluminum extruder from TH3D and install it. Now, I did that video with the EZR extruder and this one's just a little bit different. So I wanted to do that because a lot of people reached out and said, hey, we have the aluminum extruder or we wanted to order the aluminum extruder and we wanted to install that. So what I'm gonna do is do the install video for you today. I know it's a little repetitive, but it is different than the EZR extruder. So some of the benefits of the aluminum extruders, especially this one that I ordered from TH3D, is that it comes with upgraded aluminum, it comes with the steel feeding gear, all the screws you need to install it. It comes with a bearing for the filament guide, two PTFE fittings, a high tension spring. You can print flexible adapters and it includes support straight from TH3D. I know I listed off quite a bit real quick right there, but I tell you what, it is awesome. Before I installed the EZR extruder on one of my ender 3s, I actually had this aluminum extruder also from TH3D. So you can pick these up all over the place and some are better qualities than others. And you can find them on Amazon and you can find them pretty much anywhere. But my opinion is order it from TH3D, it's only about 15 bucks and you get the support from TH3D as well. If you order it from Amazon and you have trouble installing it or you have trouble with it coming down the road, you're not going to get that support. That's why I chose TH3D. Some of the other reasons why we want to do this is because this factory extruder from Creality, it will crack eventually. If yours is working and it's not cracked, awesome, keep using it. But if you notice, sometimes under an arm here, you'll get a crack. Some of the things you can look for is under extrusion, maybe clicking in the extruder. Bad prints is another sign. If you're printing and all of a sudden one day your prints just go bad, I would check out the arm, the plastic arm on the Creality extruder. If you don't see a crack from the top of it, look underneath it, because a lot of times it cracks underneath where you can't see it. Anyways, that's a little bit why we're going to do it and a little bit about the extruder we're going to use. I think we should jump into it. Let's go. Alright, so I went ahead to open the bag and this is everything that comes in it with the exception of the tools. The tools we're going to need for this is the wrench that came with the kit, the double-sided wrench there, and these three allen wrenches and everything else came in the bag. So we have your aluminum arm, the PTFE fittings. In this case we're not going to use because we replaced them in the Capricorn video, but it does come with them which is awesome. We have our steel feed gear here. We have the high tension spring and we have this right here which actually goes inside there. So we're going to go ahead and get started. The first thing you want to do is unload the filament if you have filament loaded in your printer. Okay, so the first thing we're going to do after we unload the filament is go ahead and remove the old extruder. As you can see, this is the one we put the black Capricorn on. So this should be pretty easy, but the first step in this is to go ahead and release your Bowden tube from that coupler. We're going to reuse this Bowden coupler or PTFE fitting, whatever you prefer to call it. So I'm going to go ahead and remove it, which is pretty easy. The next thing I want to do is take our Allen wrench, the little baby Allen wrench, and I'm going to go ahead and use the small end and let's loosen the grub screw. And there'll be two grub screws in this one. So go ahead and get it loose in there like I did and then turn it out with the long end. And then you can turn the extruder, get to the other grub screw, and go ahead and loosen that one as well. That will kind of spun on me. So once you get it loose with the short end, you can flip it to the long end and go ahead and loosen that up. We do that so we don't strip out that long end and it does happen on these Creality Allen wrenches. I've done it a couple of times. So we're going ahead and we're just getting these grub screws out far enough where we can actually remove. Perfect. So once you squeeze this lever, you should be able to pop that gear out just like that. Next thing we want to do is take our middle size Allen wrench, go ahead and do the same thing here in the arm. Go ahead and drop it in there. Get it loose. Once you get it loose, you can use the long end and just go ahead and take that whole screw out and that's going to release your spring. So you want to be careful. All right. So we got that loose and we can pull it out and grab your spring. Then what we're going to do is go ahead and take your arm and just remove it like that. So take your Allen wrench and loosen up all three of these bolts and that's what we're going to do next. So once you get them all three loosened and there is three total, if I can get to that one. There we go. So there'll be one, two, three. Then you want to take your Allen wrench and just loosen up those and you can take the first one out with no problem. You want to hold on to the stepper motor down here when you start doing the next two because it will fall. What's holding it up to that plate are these three screws. So you want to be very careful because you don't want your stepper motor to fall down or potentially damage it or your bed surface. Slowly take those out just like that and set it down. And I like to set mine right on the bed, which as long as you're careful is okay. After you got the stepper motor down on the bed, lift up and remove the rest of the extruder that came from the factory. And you've successfully removed the factory extruder. Now we're going to start installing the new one. So what you want to do next is go ahead and push your stepper motor up like that. Take the brand new aluminum part of the base of the extruder and put it there. Then you're going to take two screws and they're the same size and there's only two of them. And you're going to go ahead and get them started so we can hold the stepper up. So you want to push it in there. Take your Allen wrench of the right size and just give it a couple turns. And let's get that stepper motor so it's not going to fall. Then take the next one and it goes in just like that and you can go ahead and screw that one in. And you may have to line it up just to get it through the plate and into the stepper motor. But once you do it should just pop right in. Now I'm not going to tighten these completely down yet. I'm going to get the other ones in first and then we'll tighten that completely down. You want to grab the small screw and that goes in this corner right here. Now something different about this, it's actually a Phillips head. And so I grabbed a Phillips head screwdriver and we're going to go ahead and just tighten that one down. And it should be flush when it's nice and tightened in. Again, I'm not tightening it all the way yet until I know we're good. And you can kind of feel if you have any shift in here you want to make sure you kind of shift it this way. It shouldn't shift with this extruder so you should be fine. So go ahead and tighten that one in so you're good to go there. Grab your Allen wrench and use the small side. Tighten these two in. So now we got this screw, this screw and this screw all tightened. The next thing we want to do is start mounting the arm. Now you want to grab the red extruder arm, the pulley and the black bolt just like that. And what we're going to do is go ahead and install that pulley in the extruder arm. So this is not as easy as it looks on camera, but we're going to go ahead and just position the pulley there and then drop the bolt down through the center and it will be off center just so you know. As far as it's not going to be exactly center in there just like that. And you'll see it's a little bit off center from the arm, but that's how it's supposed to be. Then grab your Allen wrench, tighten it down to about tight and then take the small end and just give it about a quarter turn. You don't want to over tighten this because then your pulley won't spin correctly but you don't want to under tighten it because then it's going to be very loose. So I got it a little too tight on that one. Just make sure it spins really nice. And what we're going to do next is take this little black piece here and that inserts right into the hole just like that. Then we're going to go ahead and set that right there. Take the screw or bolt that looks like this and that's going to go in that arm and we're going to take our Allen wrench again and we're just going to find the, there we go. We're going to just get it in there. So once you get it in and you start tightening it, you want to get it kind of just right up to tight with the long end and once you get it there I'm going to leave it loose. I'm not going to tighten it all the way in. Next thing we're going to do is go ahead and grab the black spring that it comes with and you'll have a very long thicker bolt and a small thicker bolt and we're going to install that spring. So first take the longer of the two bolts and start screwing it in on the left side here. Then put your spring in and screw your bolt right into the center of the spring. Not a big deal, it's pretty easy. Then you want to take the smaller of the two bolts here, put it in this side and start screwing it in and just make sure it also goes to the center of that spring. And we will use the Allen wrenches just to snug them up but I'm just doing it by hand because it's actually really easy to screw in. So once you get them in, grab your Allen wrench, just make sure, there you go, make sure it's tight. This does not have any bearing on the tension of the spring because, there we go. So this does not have any bearing on the tension of the spring because the bolt doesn't go all the way through and it doesn't pull anything closer together. It just keeps that spring from shifting. So go ahead and tighten the left side with your Allen wrench and you're good to go there. So the next thing we need to do is install the new steel feeder gear and that is this one right here. And we are going to install this with the grub screw facing up. So grab your small little Allen wrench and loosen that grub screw just like we did before. Then you want to take the flat part of the stepper shaft and put the grub screw on that side and slowly slide it down and you can squeeze the arm in a little bit so it will kind of go down and you want to just make sure that the gears are in full line with that pulley. Once they are, you can take your Allen wrench and you can go ahead and tighten the grub screw back in. With the long end you just want to go until it's just tight. Switch over to the small end and go ahead and tighten it in. So once you've got your grub screw tight against the flat part of that shaft, you should be almost good. We just need to tighten this in here. The reason why I like to do it even though the spring is in the way, the reason why I like to do it this way is because the spring causes tension against that grub screw and you're going to know exactly with the tension where that pulley is going to hit and it holds it there. So if you want to do this you can do it before you can put your steel gear there on before you put your spring on. It's a little easier to tighten down. I just prefer it to do it after the spring. So take your Allen wrench and tighten down this corner one and it should be pretty close. So I'm going to take the small end of the Allen wrench and put it in this last corner that we need to tighten and just give it maybe like a quarter turn just like that just so it's tight and now everything should be on here tight and it should move nice. So one of the last steps we're going to do is take the PTFE fitting and we're going to install it right into there. Take your wrench that came with the kit and give that about a quarter to a half a turn just so it's tight. If it won't go too far it will strip so be careful. So last but not least take your PTFE tubing and push it through the PTFE coupler or the fitting there and you'll notice that it will come out the other side and there's nothing stopping that. So at this time we don't want to do that we want to push the coupler in and just back it up a hair and just make sure it's right inside. So you'll see a tapered area here and you want it right inside that tapered area so when you feed your filament in it goes in and feeds right into that PTFE tubing. So there is a printed piece you can grab from the product page on TH3D's site that sits right in here and it allows you to print flexible filaments much easier. Tilely recommended once you get the extruder on you can actually use that for your first print and then put it right in there it works really good. In this case we're installing it as it comes so we're not going to install it in this video but it's really easy to do it prints and it actually fits right into there. So once you get everything together you push your PTFE tubing in and it's right inside so it's just sitting right in here you are done. You successfully installed the aluminum extruder that came from TH3D or anywhere else you bought it it's all pretty much the same install. This particular one is really nice from TH3D because it comes with that support if something happens they'll help you they'll be there for you and I really like that for $15 you can't beat that. So there you go you've just installed the upgraded aluminum extruder from TH3D on your Ender 3. It's really simple if I wasn't filming it only takes about five minutes to do it. So you've got rid of this plastic stuff that came from Creality and you've upgraded to the aluminum extruder and it's going to be awesome. Way better tension on that spring. So I'm glad you did that it's really easy to do. I hope you learned something today and as always keep printing. Hey everybody I hope you liked the video if you did please give me that thumbs up. If you want to see more click the subscribe button below and as always if you want to be notified for the next great video click the little bell over here.