Need help deciding on new hot end

[tc3jg]

Hey all. I've got myself a Rostock max v1 with the Ez extruder, new arms (ball joints) and new injection molded carriages. But I've found the v1 hot end I have is just old and dated been printing abs since I purchased it and I would like to get into pla and ptle I think it's called. Basically looking for a more future proof solution.

What would be a good hotend to get it looks like e3d is the way to go just saw they released a new one called the Titan.

[geneb]

Install a 30W heater cartridge and a threaded thermistor as well as a new PTFE liner.

Poof!

Instant new hotend for muuuch less than a "real" new hotend.

g.

[Xenocrates]

If you want to print PLA well, then do as Geneb suggests. The stock hotend, while temperature limited, is much better for PLA than all metal ones. If you want to get into higher temperatures, I personally like the E3D V6, although the Prometheus is a good option as well. Those will do higher temperatures such as PET, PC, and even PEEK if given a temperature capable sensor. I personally use the E3D V6 with a PT100 (I have the official V6 block and a home made volcano block since it was made before they released theirs). I've had minimal problems with it, once I had things sorted out (although one downside of the PT100 is that the grub screw can fill with crap, requiring you to warm the hex key with a blowtorch while turning it with vicegrips to get it out (Personal experience)).

If you want ultimate flexibility, and don't mind having to fiddle with re-configuring it for a long time, then the Prometheus is for you. It can accommodate almost any configuration you want, so long as your desired nozzle size is available. (They had ~5 last time I remember looking). It also does slightly better with PLA than the E3D, as it has a seamless nozzle.

If you want rapid re-configuration, and a wide range of nozzle size, even though you're stuck with only two melt-zone length options (Volcano and V6) and a single heat break length, then E3D gains there.

There are a pile of tiny hotends just coming onto the market, if what you want is minimal size. The Pico-hotend mentioned elsewhere on the forums comes to mind. I don't know of any with significant history yet though.

For multi-extrusion on a delta, the Cyclops or Diamond are probably the best options, as they have only one nozzle to deal with, which should eliminate dripping and drooling. They have the disadvantage of not being independently adjustable temperature wise.

[Polygonhell]

I own a lot of hotends, and it's frankly difficult to judge them by user feedback, without knowing what the the user has tried and what their expectations were and in some cases how lucky they were with the particular sample they got, I'd take every piece of feedback on a hotend with a grain of salt and that includes mine.
There is a lot of I have one of those and it works for me, so it must be your fault feedback, for certain hotends when people have issues, I would not discount the negative feedback based on that sort of reaction.

That said, basically there is nothing wrong with the original hotend that shipped with the V1, and as Gene said, you can upgrade the heater and thermistor and/or just replace the PTFE liner.
I like JHeads from Hotends.com for PLA, and I use them for ABS on occasion.
The E3D hotends are good, but there have been a number of people who've experienced issues with PLA on V5's and it seems V6's
I like Arcol.hu hotends, but they are very different beasts
LulzBot's Buddaschnozzle's are also good
I have not used a Prometheus, and as I've said before the configurability is more of a turn off for me

There are a number of newer small hotends coming out I like the look of the DeltaPrintr one, but I'll wait until I see what the feedback looks like before I given them a try.

FWIW I currently have an E3D V5 on my Max, and for the printer I am currently working on I plan on using E3D V6's, but as I've said before I have several E3D hotends V4 and V5's that will not print PLA reliably, the V6's are supposed to be more reliable in that area, but I have certainly seen people reporting problems with them.

[Nylocke]

Lulzbot is now using a smaller version of the RepRapDiscount Hexagon (heat sink is just shorter to fit in a tighter area) and it seems to be quite good. I haven't tried it but I want to get one at some point for my TAZ, a lot less complicated than the Buda I have and probably more reliable because of it. Its also all metal like the E3D. Unsure of it's PLA performance.

[tc3jg]

Ok awesome thanks for the replies you all are why I love owning a Rostock, sounds like the move to make is to get an all metal hot end like the e3d hotness and then upgrade the stock hotels for use with PLA. The. Some how create an easy way to swap between the two. Is there anyway to save the printer settings for each one such as z height? So i don't have to re create and set up the printer when I switch filaments?

This has to be the most frustrating thing about the delta style for me. It seems anytime I make a minor change the printer gets thrown out of whack. I bought it and have enjoyed building it but want to hold its settings better.

[Nylocke]

Xenocrates mentioned the Pico, I was a backer on the campaign. The machining is beautiful, on par or better than E3D, but im not a fan of how it performs. The body is stainless so the heating is sort of weird and uneven and it makes unloading and loading filament a pain. The nozzle is a good angle for part surface finish, but its thin and looses heat sort of easily (most print temps must be offset by 20 degrees or so). I never tried it with PLA and I heavily doubt it would do well. Both are sitting in my extra hotend box (I got one 1.75 one and one 3mm one), I might consider putting the 3mm one on a direct drive mendel type printer, but other than that I dont see much of a use for them.

[tc3jg]

Xenocrates mentioned the Pico, I was a backer on the campaign. The machining is beautiful, on par or better than E3D, but im not a fan of how it performs. The body is stainless so the heating is sort of weird and uneven and it makes unloading and loading filament a pain. The nozzle is a good angle for part surface finish, but its thin and looses heat sort of easily (most print temps must be offset by 20 degrees or so). I never tried it with PLA and I heavily doubt it would do well. Both are sitting in my extra hotend box (I got one 1.75 one and one 3mm one), I might consider putting the 3mm one on a direct drive mendel type printer, but other than that I dont see much of a use for them.

Ok looks like I will steer clear of the pico

Looking at e3ds site now

[tc3jg]

Should I get the kit with the volcano?

[Xenocrates]

Personally, I say yes. the volcano may not come out often, but it doesn't hurt to have it.

[tc3jg]

Personally, I say yes. the volcano may not come out often, but it doesn't hurt to have it.

Ok cool looks like I'll be dropping the coin tonight
Can you explain in more detail what the point of it is again?

[Nylocke]

It lets you extrude a lot more plastic (high flow). It lengthens the melt zone by a lot and it includes larger nozzles (.4mm to 1.2mm are available) so you can print really high strength standard resolution parts or even higher strength low resolution parts really really quickly (using the .8mm nozzle or larger can cut a massive 40+ hour print into one that takes around 8 hours). Since the melt zone is longer it allows the plastic more time to transition and the plastic that comes out its more uniformly heated and it in general bonds with the lower layers better. Theres a video comparing a standard .4mm E3D print to a 1 or 1.2mm nozzle print with a volcano. They did a time-lapse comparison and then compared the strength of a tiny outcropping for mounting the part onto something. The .4mm one broke off by hand vs the volcano they had to get blunt nose pliers and even then it was still difficult. It may not seem super useful at first (I thought it was kinda dumb when I first saw it), but I actually prefer to print with the .6mm volcano nozzle now because it offers a good balance of speed, resolution, and part strength over a standard .4mm E3D nozzle.

[tc3jg]

It lets you extrude a lot more plastic (high flow). It lengthens the melt zone by a lot and it includes larger nozzles (.4mm to 1.2mm are available) so you can print really high strength standard resolution parts or even higher strength low resolution parts really really quickly (using the .8mm nozzle or larger can cut a massive 40+ hour print into one that takes around 8 hours). Since the melt zone is longer it allows the plastic more time to transition and the plastic that comes out its more uniformly heated and it in general bonds with the lower layers better. Theres a video comparing a standard .4mm E3D print to a 1 or 1.2mm nozzle print with a volcano. They did a time-lapse comparison and then compared the strength of a tiny outcropping for mounting the part onto something. The .4mm one broke off by hand vs the volcano they had to get blunt nose pliers and even then it was still difficult. It may not seem super useful at first (I thought it was kinda dumb when I first saw it), but I actually prefer to print with the .6mm volcano nozzle now because it offers a good balance of speed, resolution, and part strength over a standard .4mm E3D nozzle.

Welllll you pretty much sold it. I'm ordering it tonight nylocke, they should pay you for making them another 140 usd

[Mac The Knife]

I was told back in December that SeeMeCNC has a new hotend designed for the Eris,,,, All metal, but still uses a teflon liner.

[tc3jg]

It will be nice to see what they come out with.

Ordered my e3d from filastruder about 149 an some Change excellent customer service

[tc3jg]

Well well look what arrived today!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9ql42vzm81zeo ... M.jpg?dl=0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And yes they included the gummy bears

[3D-Print]

Well well look what arrived today!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9ql42vzm81zeo ... M.jpg?dl=0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And yes they included the gummy bears

The sour bears are the best!!!!

[tc3jg]

Well well look what arrived today!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9ql42vzm81zeo ... M.jpg?dl=0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And yes they included the gummy bears

The sour bears are the best!!!!

Yes I would agree with that, I'm actually very sour it looks like I wasn't sent the correct heating block. Frustrating!! I was excited to get started

[Xenocrates]

Did you accidentally get a PT100 block? That's an interesting hiccup if so. On the bright side, you can use the Volcano somewhat even while waiting for the right part to come in. Never heard of them having issues like that before though.

[tc3jg]

Did you accidentally get a PT100 block? That's an interesting hiccup if so. On the bright side, you can use the Volcano somewhat even while waiting for the right part to come in. Never heard of them having issues like that before though.

Yes that's what tims email to me states that it's a pt100. No idea what that even is
Yeah lucky I didn't tear down the machine yet. But I'll wait unless I get too ancie then I may have to set up the volcano. Should have ordered another heat break so I don't have to switch them out when I go between the volcano and v6.

I will wait tho since the machine isn't totally down

[Xenocrates]

A PT100 is a high temperature RTD sensor. However, it needs a specific amplifier board to talk with the Rambo, and either Repetier .92, or a custom thermistor table (Or marlin). I use them on my hotends. They are nice, but expensive to work with (~20 per sensor, ~25 for the board, but very resilient and capable of measuring past the melting temp of the heater block) Hopefully Tim (I assume this is at Filastruder) will have you the right block soon. You may even be able to get him to pack it in with another heatbreak (To save on shipping for one of you, since while he's a fine guy, he does have a business to run and can't give away stuff for free too often while still paying the bills).

[tc3jg]

A PT100 is a high temperature RTD sensor. However, it needs a specific amplifier board to talk with the Rambo, and either Repetier .92, or a custom thermistor table (Or marlin). I use them on my hotends. They are nice, but expensive to work with (~20 per sensor, ~25 for the board, but very resilient and capable of measuring past the melting temp of the heater block) Hopefully Tim (I assume this is at Filastruder) will have you the right block soon. You may even be able to get him to pack it in with another heatbreak (To save on shipping for one of you, since while he's a fine guy, he does have a business to run and can't give away stuff for free too often while still paying the bills).

Ok cool thanks for the knowledge sounds nice. Yeah I've done enough this week the heat break will have to wait. Soon id like to be able to just swap out the while hotels plate with everything assembled but no rush

[Penged]

Geneb, where do you find a 30W heater cartridge and a threaded thermistor as well as a new PTFE liner to upgrade my stock hotend?

[Xenocrates]

Amazon to the rescue.

http://www.amazon.com/Fluorotherm-F0150 ... =PTFE+tube

http://www.amazon.com/Signstek-Reprap-C ... +cartridge

http://www.amazon.com/Modular-Thermisto ... thermistor

[Penged]

Thank you for the links Xenocrates. I think the next questions are how do I change the liner to PTFE?
Will I need to tap the hole that holds the thermistor? if so, what size tap will I need?
Will I have to change any settings in MatterControl?
Will this modification cause me to have clogging issues with PLA?