Thumper V2.2 Extruder

Thumper is a low cost and easy to manufacture direct drive filament extruder. This extruder is based around a 50:10t gear reduction and BMG gear set, just like Sherpa and a few other popular extruders. Thumper is designed with a few additional features in mind, specifically an integrated IR beam break acting as a runout sensor and a quick release latch to open and fix/clean your extruder more quickly and without losing your tension.

Thumper is designed to be very easy to print and assemble on FDM machines, only one component will require support material and a drill + soldering iron is all that is needed to assemble it. Included in the download is all STL files along with an assembly step file for the standard and sherpa mini mounting patterns. BOM and Assembly instructions can be found below.

The IR filament runout sensor in thumper is intentionally placed close to the top of the extruder, that way the end of the filament can still be retracted back out. Due to the nature of an optical runout switch, there is a chance that clear or translucent filaments may cause issues. So far, this has not been the case with any materials we have tried, however we cannot rule out the possibility.

Thumper is an entirely free to use design licensed under CC A-NC terms. For more info on this, please read the license.txt file in the download. Thumper is undergoing continued development, so expect to see a V3 with options for a filament cutter and flow rate tracker in the near future.