Hopper extender

A customer-made part that replaces E17 to leave the hopper open, so pellets can be poured in by hand instead of arriving through the automatic feeding system.

Why it exists

In standard use the G1 feeds itself: the vacuum draws pellets from the bucket up into the hopper. In that configuration part E17 closes E04 (the hopper), so there is no manual access to the hopper at all.

Some customers need to print with an open hopper and pour material in themselves. The hopper extender is what they fit in place of E17 to do that.

E17 is the red cap on top of the hopper — the cone carrying the two corrugated tube connections with their hose clamps. It bolts down onto a flange, with the black gasket (and the feed filter) at the joint.

Top of the G1 hopper. E17, the red cone carrying the two corrugated tube connections, is outlined; the black gasket and filter sit at the bolted joint below it; E04, the hopper body, is underneath

E17 off the machine — this is the part an extender replaces:

The E17 hopper cap held in one hand, off the printer. It is a red moulded cone with two white tube stubs on top, each secured with a metal hose clamp

From How the G1 Automatic Feeding System works — 1:10

There is no official geometry

The customer models their own extender to suit their setup. The only real constraint is that it has to fit where E17 goes.

What you give up

The vacuum feed works by pulling a vacuum inside a sealed hopper — see Hopper. An open hopper cannot hold that vacuum, so running an extender means feeding the machine by hand for the whole print.

Limitations

The machine has to be fed by hand for the whole print