This is a great and cheap upgrade! If you have issues changing your filament because the stock extruder is too tight, buy this immediately! Recently got an additional printer (Ender 3V2) and immediately upgraded to the all metal! One of the best upgrades!

I was looking for some knob handles for my poi, and unsure of the size, shape and weight, and realized it would $15 to buy most pairs I was looking at. They were all 3d printed TPU and I normally just do things myself but Ive got a fairly stock Ender 3 (other than the bullseye cooler) and been told it couldn't do TPU because of the Bowden. Well instead of spending $30 on a couple pairs of handles I decided I'd spend the same on this and a roll of TPU and figure it out anyway. Status quo be damned! I got the TPU first and tried to print it, but got nowhere. There was a gap between the extruder gear and the intake of the Bowden tube and the filament would just push out there and never actually be forced into the hot end. I couldn't even print a purge line.

I got this today and installed it. Its pretty simple and similar the original so taking that one out should tell you how to put this in. I just printed my first TPU item and it came out flawless (although at 20mm/s but I decided to start conservative)

Now that that works I plan on printing so many other things like endcaps for staffs, and grommets/seals and the like. I'd like to build a beetleweight combat robot and a lot of the armour is TPU. I feel like this opened up a whole new avenue for printing nonrigid items, and has expanded the life of my Ender for much longer as that was a reason i had though about updating. 6 years strong and its been a beast!

I've had my Ender 3 since 2019, and out it started printing horribly: layers were splitting and stringy, it would print wih no filament coming out, etc. After replacing the default extruder with this one it prints probably better than when it was new. It was clicking at first but I had it screwed in too tight.

Had the original plastic extruder and the arm portion snapped causing dashed lines on my prints, because the filament wasnt being pushed through properly. I didn't noticed the snapped arm at the time until I removed the extruder itself.

The original brass toothed gear on the extruder stepper gear can be a challenge to remove. Eventually used a ligther to heat the brass to make the metal soft/expand, then used pliers to pop the gear off. I positioned one jaw of the pliers under the gear and the other jaw on top the stepper motor armature post (the post the gear is fitted on). Also made sure to keep the lighter's flame away from the stepper housing during the heating process.

There might be a better way to remove the fitting, but these were the tools I had at the time. I can see using a demel to grind off the gear, but that might cause unwanted shavings in the stepper motor.

If you still have the plastic version of the extruder, just upgrade to metal before you go insane from the troubleshooting causing a brain aneurysm.

Extremely happy with this sturdy replacement and I can resume my printing!

Like a lot of others, my Voxelab Aquila's stock plastic extruder arm cracked not long after I got my printer. I printed a replacement arm, and that actually got me by for about 4 months, but that arm started to wear out and was causing unreliable extrusion too.

I didn't really feel like I needed to upgrade to a dual gear, or even a direct drive set up for my PLA and PETG printing, so I started looking into the aluminum stock replacements. I've heard these can have issues of their own; the spring can be too stiff, bad hardware, no instructions, and the pivot spacer can be too short which keeps the arm from moving.

I'm happy to report, this kit has none of those problems. The stock spring is working fine, parts are all well made and fit great, no problems with the hardware and fittings. Instructions consist of an exploded view drawing with the parts labeled, which was enough for me. If you really run into trouble, there are a bunch of videos out there, or just look at your stock extruder, it goes together the same way. I'd suggest assembling the roller to the arm first, then putting everything else together with the spring being last.

So all in all, this is a great kit. I'm surprised a kit of machined and anodized parts like this can be sold for such a low price to be honest. I feel like maybe aside from the brass extruder gear, the rest of these parts should last the life of the printer.

If you are shopping for one of these, and seeing about 30 different versions that look the same, just get this one and be done with it.