Introducing Roto Vitamins

Revitalise Your 3D Printer

Roto Vitamins enables you to take the highly optimised lightweight gearbox from our Roto Direct Drive Extruder and implement this into your own toolhead to improve your print quality. The SLM 3D-printed metal heatsink is replaced with a printed plastic cover which can be completely customised to ease the integration into a variety of machines. This design remains compatible with our custom Roto filament sensors and toolboards.

The Roto drivetrain comprises a 11.262:1 gear ratio, which can be paired with a small but powerful Nema 14 motor to provide the “Goldilocks” balance between performance and mass. These are not off the shelf gears though; their profiles have been highly optimised for the specific loads and requirements of an extruder to provide smooth filament motion, which improves print quality. You can find out more about this in the video below!

Transforming Roto Into Roto Vitamins

The most obvious design change compared to the SLM 3D printed metal heatsink is the removal of the cooling features. Once we’d removed those, we needed to make a few extra tweaks to ensure that it was suitable for FDM. Here's what we did:

• To have enough part rigidity from a plastic part, the wall thickness had to be increased throughout the part. To prevent the force from the idler spring bowing/deforming the part, two things were done:
• A large increase to the wall thickness:

• A locating boss was added which engages in the bolt head recess of the gearbox cover to prevent it from being able to move sideways:

• The bi-stable idler mechanism that disengages the idler hobb from the filament to make manual filament changes simples and possible one handed was a feature that we wanted to ensure was retained. However, the geometry requires the use of a 0.25mm nozzle which not everyone has access to, and it also would not have been as durable when printed in plastic. As such, a new design was created that uses a 1mm dowel pin as the ‘clip’ feature that the idler engages with. This alone is not strong enough to resist the idler spring force without deforming and so a support structure has been modelled into the printed part which prevents the dowel pin from deforming. It also has the added benefit of creating a smooth ramp for the idler clip to slide over:

• Note: the holes either side of the support structure have been intentionally made larger than the arc in the support structure to account for the fact that 3D printers make holes undersized. The pin can be pressed in by hand against a hard surface but be careful to not use excess force as this could bend the pin – you may need to alter the hole size slightly for the tolerances of your 3D printer. Glue can be used if required to hold the pin in place although this should not generally be required:

• An access hole has been added to the front of the cover so that you can press out the idler arm easily with the use of an Allen key or similar:

• A 4mm hole has been added to bottom to accept Bowden tubing:

Easy Integration With Your 3D Printer

The aim is to always make integration of our products as easy as possible for users. With this in mind, we have designed several print-ready files for what we expect to be the most popular applications for Roto Vitamins. All designs print without support with the front face (E3D logo side) placed down on the bed. Check them out below:

We recommend that these are printed in ASA/ABS with 4 perimeters, 5 top layers, 5 bottom layers and 40% infill.

Base Variant

The base variant is a compact cover that can be used as is, or as the base for a custom cover to fit into a specific printer. This version mounts via the four Ø3.3mm holes in the gearbox cover which can be a clearance for M3 bolts, tapped to use M4 bolts or use directly with 4mm 45° Polyfix self tapping screws (two holes on each side).

Voron Dragon Burner Mounting

This design extends the printed cover out so that it can mount directly onto the hotend mount piece on the Dragon Burner toolhead.

There is a separate block that needs to be removed to allow access to the left bolt that holds the extruder in place as the bottom left extruder bolt path clashes with it. This was done in two pieces as a balance between cosmetics and functionality/strength.

The groove down the left side of the cover enables access to the left mounting bolt with an Allen key, either a ball nose or the short end of a standard Allen key can be used.

Voron StealthBurner Mounting

There are multiple different versions of the StealthBurner mount to work with different electronics and with/without the dragchain mount. The Roto cover is a single printed part that has all the required mounting features to assemble into your existing Stealburner. You will need to print a new custom StealthBurner main body with a couple of additional cut outs for the idler arm. There is also an optional cable cover that can be used in certain configurations.

Roto Vitamins for Long Cables or Stock StealthBurner Toolboard

This is designed to work with long cables that run back to the main printer control board or with the many commonly available toolboards for StealthBurner. The default version comes with dragchain mounting points:

It’s also available without dragchain mounting points:

Roto Vitamins with Right Mounted Roto Toolboard

This comprises of a custom cover for the Roto extruder as well as a custom StealthBurner main body with a couple of additional cut outs for the cables/connectors. A custom bracket is required to be able to attach a toolboard to the right hand side of the Roto extruder.

LDO Roto Toolboard

This uses a custom spacer to be able to mount the LDO toolboard on the right side of Roto:

The default version comes with dragchain mounting points:

It’s also available without dragchain mounting points:

Duet Roto Toolboard

This uses a custom spacer to be able to mount the LDO toolboard on the right side of Roto:

The default version comes with dragchain mounting points:

It’s also available without dragchain mounting points:

Roto Vitamins with Left Mounted Toolboard

This is the same as the stock Roto vitamins version but has additional cutouts for cables on the left hand side of the Roto cover. However, this does prevent the use of the standard dragchain mount. A custom bracket is required to be able to attach a toolboard to the left hand side of the Roto extruder. In this configuration you can use the optional cable cover that mounts on the right hand side of the Roto.

LGX Lite Mounting Pattern

This design uses the bolting pattern from a LGX Lite.

Roto Vitamins Configurations Summary

In summary, Roto Vitamins is a neat little package that lets you integrate the lightweight gearbox from the Roto Direct Drive Extruder into your 3D printer toolhead. Pairing perfectly with Voron printers, Roto Vitamins is an affordable upgrade that will help significantly enhance your print quality. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to our Technical Support Team at support@e3d-online.com.