MakerBot® is offering our first dedicated 1.75mm filament extruder! It's a huge leap forward for personal manufacturing- you will be amazed by the improvement in your print quality, and the reliability of use obtained with the MakerBot® StepStruder MK7.Designed from scratch, the StepStruder® MK7 contains a number of newly created custom manufactured parts. The MK7 redesign rolls in all the innovations and user experience from the MakerBot® Plastruder MK5, StepStruder® MK6, and StepStruder® MK6 Plus into one cutting edge, pint size device! The StepStruder® MK7 is compatible for use with MakerBot® Generation 4 Electronics and the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic® 3D Printer.BOLDSmaller format, lighter, more gumption! The MK7 uses our tried and true NEMA 17 motor to drive it- a lighter extruder with tons of torque and reliable stepper performance. The extruder design has been carefully refined, and the assembly process is faster and requires fewer pieces than ever. The StepStruder® MK7 represents major advances in the design, functionality, reliability, ease of use, and print quality for desktop 3D Printer extruders. We've trimmed as much from the design as we could, and what's left is a tightly functioning device that has only one reason to exist- to extrude endlessly!LITTLEOur most compact extruder yet, the StepStruder® MK7 is less than half the weight of our previous extruder. The MK6 Plus extruder was a sturdy 1.8lbs, and the MK7 is only 0.8 lbs! The inside of your MakerBot® Thing-O-Matic® will feel positively spacious with an MK7 in place- spacious enough you could mount a second MK7 right next to it!We've also shrunk the filament as well, and the StepStruder® MK7 is exclusively for use with our 1.75mm stock from the MakerBot® plastics selection. No more big 3mm filament here! All MakerBot® ABS colors and PLA are available in 1.75mm- now is the time to switch filament sizes if you haven't. Do you want cleaner prints, with less stringing, finer detail, and faster start-up? Drop in the MK7 extruder and you're off and running with 1.75mm. Really easy!FASTWe're proud of what we can offer you with the StepStruder® MK7- the shortest build time of any of our extruders. Our assembler Colin, who has built more MK7's than anyone, reports that it takes less than half of the time to build a MK7 than any of our previous extruders.The MK7 is still fully modular, and any component can be replaced or worked on without replacing the entire unit. We're trading up for easier, faster assembly so you can get back to the business at hand- printing! The lasercut acrylic pieces from previous designs have been removed in favor of precision-milled aluminum and high strength injection-molded plastic components.The extruder heats up faster too- knocking minutes off start up time, and saving hours of your time throughout it's use.SCIENCEThe MakerBot Stepstruder® MK7 is an all-new extruder which was designed from the ground up exclusively for 1.75 mm filament. We have eliminated all PTFE tube components from the design, allowing the extruder to work with higher-temperature materials, and dissipate heat more effectively than ever. A custom aluminum heat sink and fan keep heat from spreading from the cartridge heater.It's our most compact and reliable extruder to date, and the simplest to assemble! The stock 0.4 mm nozzle allows printing at a layer height of between 0.32 and 0.27 mm right out of the box, for the most detailed prints you've ever seen from your MakerBot®. Even better, the compact design allows us to stack two complete extruders next to each other for an EXPERIMENTAL dual-extruder setup! The design and software for the MK7 are fully open source, so get involved and become a leader in Dualstrusion™! Keep in mind Dualstrusion™ is strictly experimental and not for the faint of heart! It's an open source challenge to our users to take EXPERIMENTAL dual extrusion to the next level!Buy it: http://store.makerbot.com/stepstruder-mk7-complete-stepper.htmlStepstruder MK7 is tracked on Github: https://github.com/makerbot/Stepstruder-MK7.