Large nozzles

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jeffhuber
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Large nozzles

Post by jeffhuber »

Hey all,

Wondering what your experience is with large nozzles. I'm looking to get really large prints in under 24 hours of print time. The quality isn't a huge issue for me - and I don't need a lot of feature definition.

I ordered a .8mm nozzle for my e3d v6 which should come in a few days. I saw they were also throwing around the idea of selling a 1mm nozzle.

My question to you all: what has your experience been with large nozzles? What is the nozzle / layer height ratio? (.5?) What is the max size nozzle you can use with 1.75mm filament? And other tips, tricks or gotchas would be awesome too!
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JohnStack
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Re: Large nozzles

Post by JohnStack »

I'd be interested in seeing your progress. I'm definitely thinking that a whole lotta settings in software are going to have to be changed. Also, I'm wondering if the extruder is going to keep up. It should - but it will be interesting to find out about your experience. Sorry that I don't have any in that regard. I've gone the other way .35 and things seem to be fine. It just takes forever to print. Not worth it for most things.
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Re: Large nozzles

Post by nitewatchman »

Biggest issue may be the heat capacity of the Hot End. Runnning a 1mm nozzle at areasonable feedrate to justify the larger nozzle may overtax the heating rate of the 40w cartridge. Solution would likely be adding a second cartridge (no second hole, must make allowance?) or going to a higher wattage single cartridge, perhaps a 60w if such an animal exists.

Sounds exciting, look forward to the results!!!
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jeffhuber
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Re: Large nozzles

Post by jeffhuber »

Good stuff guys! I put out an email to e3d asking some of these questions too. I'll let you know what they say!

I wouldn't even know where to start on this idea... but a nozzle that can change size during a print would be awesome.

In the mean time - this is the best resource ive found http://www.tridimake.com/2013/07/extrem ... ozzle.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; . His whole blog is awesome
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Re: Large nozzles

Post by Polygonhell »

The 40W heater cartridge is massively overpowered if you shield the aluminum heater block from the layer fan.
The single most popular hotend used to print PLA and ABS in the reprap world in the JHead, it ships with a single 5.8 Ohm resistor as a heating element, that's much closer to 20W.
If left on with no thermistor connected to the heater block the 40W heater will get hot enough to make the heater block glow redhot and certainly cause a fire if in contact with plastic or wood parts.

I doubt very much it would be the limiting factor with the hotend.

I think it was Nophead who did a lot of W/T (extrusion width/layer height) experimentation a few years ago, the rule of thumb is 1.5 or better.
You can print wider than the nozzle size, with some loss of quality with a 0.8mm nozzle, you can probably go as wide as 1.2mm and following the 1.5 rule that would be 0.8mm layers.
If you stick to nozzle width as the extrusion width you end up with a maximum layer height of 0.53mm.

You will probably end up printing slower to maintain quality with the thicker nozzle because the rate at which you are depositing hot plastic is greatly increased.
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Re: Large nozzles

Post by BONE »

I plan on printing large hollow objects and I was thinking that going with a larger nozzle diameter would help speed up the prints and aid with layer fusion. I've seen parts done in a similar fashion, but I couldn't get any details out of the guy. But it looked large single beads of ABS.
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Re: Large nozzles

Post by DavidF »

My friend prints with a .8 mm nozzle all the time and swears by it when X Y resolution is not critical.
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Re: Large nozzles

Post by teoman »

It may be a better idea to modfiy the extruder and the bowden tube to accept 3mm filament for such a process.

Also, since you will be using a lot of material, i would try to get a setup that can extrude nylon.
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Re: Large nozzles

Post by Hydrolove »

How does one modify the extruder for 3mm filament? The bowen tube and fitting seems straight forward. What is in the extruder that needs changing?
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Re: Large nozzles

Post by teoman »

For that ypu are probably looking at a new hotend setup.

But I am sure others in the know will chime in.
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Re: Large nozzles

Post by jesse »

I drilled out one nozzle to about 1.25mm. Works fine with 1.75mm PLA.
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Re: Large nozzles

Post by jeffhuber »

jesse, cool! any pics of prints?? =)
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Re: Large nozzles

Post by Generic Default »

The heater cartridge can easily keep up, but there will be small changes in temperature when you start or stop the printing. Even smaller changes during retractions.

The main problem is oozing at that nozzle size. Some types of plastics ooze more than others, ABS doesn't ooze nearly as much as nylon. Your square corners will be rounded a lot since the orifice radius is the theoretical minimum radius for the printer. Most likely you will round all corners by around 1mm.

I think ideally you would have several nozzle sizes on the hotend (or even better, an adjustable nozzle like you said earlier) so you can print perimeters with a tiny nozzle for high detail, then fill it in with a huge nozzle for fast printing.

I'll make an enormous nozzle for testing this kind of stuff pretty soon. Maybe 1.65mm orifice to start. That could print a bathtub in a few hours!
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Re: Large nozzles

Post by p38nut »

teoman wrote:It may be a better idea to modfiy the extruder and the bowden tube to accept 3mm filament for such a process.

Also, since you will be using a lot of material, i would try to get a setup that can extrude nylon.
Is modification necessary to move from 1.75 to 3.00 mm with the Rostock Max V2 as shipped? I have only worked worked so far with 1.75. Thanks. Mike
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Re: Large nozzles

Post by jesse »

jeffhuber wrote:jesse, cool! any pics of prints?? =)
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Re: Large nozzles

Post by teoman »

p38nut wrote:
teoman wrote:It may be a better idea to modfiy the extruder and the bowden tube to accept 3mm filament for such a process.

Also, since you will be using a lot of material, i would try to get a setup that can extrude nylon.
Is modification necessary to move from 1.75 to 3.00 mm with the Rostock Max V2 as shipped? I have only worked worked so far with 1.75. Thanks. Mike

Yes, the stock hot end and extruder will only work with 1.75mm filament. I have not modified it for 3mm filament. But if you are going to use a massively larger nozzle then it may be a good idea to use thicker filament.
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Re: Large nozzles

Post by 1ggy »

I'd say on a larger nozzle a smaller filament is better for 2 reasons. One, with such a large nozzle there is very little resistance to feeding so you can extrude much faster, and move faster as well, which a stiffer filament will only hinder. The other is that with a smaller filament, for a given extruder you can extrude more accurately since 1.75mm filament will extrude only 1/3rd as much plastic per step as 3mm. Oh, and 3mm filament seems to be going the way of the dinosaurs as well.
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Re: Large nozzles

Post by Mac The Knife »

The problem with your theory is that we use stepper motors to drive the extruder. Unlike servo motors, or brushed and brushless motors, the torque curve for stepper motors drops rapidly the faster the rpm.
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Re: Large nozzles

Post by teoman »

I have the feeling that if your orufice is say 1.25mm and your filament is 1.75mm and you are going fast you may have the central portion of the filament not reaching full temperature.
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Re: Large nozzles

Post by 1ggy »

Mac The Knife wrote:The problem with your theory is that we use stepper motors to drive the extruder. Unlike servo motors, or brushed and brushless motors, the torque curve for stepper motors drops rapidly the faster the rpm.
How rapidly it drops depends on the particular motor. Some have flatish torque curves, some don't. On the other hand, extruding a thicker filament will require more torque, and if we're talking extruding fast enough for torque to drop significantly, then you're probably going to have problems extruding 3mm also.
teoman wrote:I have the feeling that if your orufice is say 1.25mm and your filament is 1.75mm and you are going fast you may have the central portion of the filament not reaching full temperature.
And imagine how much worse it would be if the filament was 70% thicker? In this case, with either sized filament you'll have to use higher temperatures since the filament flow rate is higher. But it otherwise doesn't matter much, when the filament reaches the angled portion of the nozzle in the melt zone it forms a cone shape and will melt from the surface, so what you're thinking of can't really happen.
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Re: Large nozzles

Post by jesse »

teoman wrote:I have the feeling that if your orufice is say 1.25mm and your filament is 1.75mm and you are going fast you may have the central portion of the filament not reaching full temperature.
The filament coming from the 1.25mm nozzle is like a wet noodle. It saves a huge amount of time compared to a regular nozzle. If the filament isn't melting completely, you can reduce the speed and still have a huge benefit over say 3 layers at 0.4mm compared to 1 layer at 1.25mm.
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Re: Large nozzles

Post by Generic Default »

This may or not make sense, but I don't think heating will be a problem, even if it's inconsistent throughout the filament.

The only reason you want it to get hot is to bond to the previous layer. If the nozzle can't heat the filament evenly, the outside will still be very hot and will bond with the previous layer. The inside of the plastic will be cooler, but since it doesn't contact the previous layer it shouldn't matter.

Still, I think the best solution for bigger nozzles is to have more thermal conductivity along the filament melt path. For less oozing we try to transition the filament from room temperature to melting temperature as quickly as possible, then immediately extrude it through the orifice. This is a game of thermal engineering!
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Re: Large nozzles

Post by McSlappy »

That Game of Thrones, Throne that I printed was all with a .6 nozzle. I did notice that I used what seemed like a LOT more filament even with the reduced infill... But it was good and the final product was pretty decent.
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Re: Large nozzles

Post by jeffhuber »

Here is the response from e3d: interesting stuff

******

Hi Jeff,

I've no plans at present for anything larger than a 0.8mm nozzle, as doing so would approach the ability for the melt zone to cope with the amount of plastic that it needs to melt per second. Going larger would allow thicker layers but not faster overall prints as these larger layers would require to be printed at slower speed to allow the plastic to melt as it flows through the nozzle.

To make a larger nozzle workable would take a redesign of the whole heater block to make it longer and have a much larger melt zone, with better thermal transfer from heater to plastic. I think with a redesign we could go above 1mm without much fuss, probably up to 1.5mm.

It's something I'd love to take a crack at soon, but I have some other products and projects that require my attention in the mean time. I do have in my head a good idea of how it would look/work/be manufactured. If you can get enough people to tell me they want it, I'll get some made up and you can be a beta tester! Ask around on forums/social media and see if people would want a High print speed variant E3D nozzle/heater block. Feel free to share the contents of this email with others.

Cheers,
Sanjay
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Re: Large nozzles

Post by BONE »

jeffhuber wrote:Here is the response from e3d: interesting stuff

******

Hi Jeff,

I've no plans at present for anything larger than a 0.8mm nozzle, as doing so would approach the ability for the melt zone to cope with the amount of plastic that it needs to melt per second. Going larger would allow thicker layers but not faster overall prints as these larger layers would require to be printed at slower speed to allow the plastic to melt as it flows through the nozzle.

To make a larger nozzle workable would take a redesign of the whole heater block to make it longer and have a much larger melt zone, with better thermal transfer from heater to plastic. I think with a redesign we could go above 1mm without much fuss, probably up to 1.5mm.

It's something I'd love to take a crack at soon, but I have some other products and projects that require my attention in the mean time. I do have in my head a good idea of how it would look/work/be manufactured. If you can get enough people to tell me they want it, I'll get some made up and you can be a beta tester! Ask around on forums/social media and see if people would want a High print speed variant E3D nozzle/heater block. Feel free to share the contents of this email with others.

Cheers,
Sanjay
Sounds good, count me in as a beta tester. I want to start making large duct work pieces that will take up the entire build hit of the MAX v2. Doing that with a small nozzle would be really time consuming. I've mentioned before that I have seen someone do large extrusions, but I dont know what his setup is. I think going to a 1mm nozzle would be really close to what he is doing.
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