You make good points John.
I would really like to hear from everyone that has a Rostock MAX about their experiences with the stock hot end. Not just the people that hang out here, but _every_ person that's assembled their kit and used it. I think that they had the hot end design on the table and it was proven to work with their H1.1 machine, so they ran with it.
I don't think they've got an aversion to selling third party mods, it's just they don't want to sell _printed_ third party mods. One of the most unique features of the machine is that ALL the plastic components are either machined (bearing covers) or injection molded. It takes time to develop good injection mold designs, they're expensive and time consuming to manufacture and they're limited by their available capacity. (Time spent making upgrade parts is time lost making stock parts.) They're a very small company (less than 12 people I think) so they've got to carefully plan resources and keep an eye on every penny that goes through the place.
Now that being said, I'd love to see little upgrade goodies coming from them as well as more participation in the forum here.
I think the Rostock MAX has been in production for something like 8 months now. Considering the rapid pace of development, I'm amazed that there aren't more issues than there already are.
I do agree that the hot end is a problem for some people and it's my understanding that they're working on a new design. I think that if I were to put the stock hot end in a "class", it would be "expert". It can be a finicky beast to make work properly and can frustrate the total newbie. The typical j-head or E3D would fall in the "beginner" class because they've gone through so many design iterations that all the sharp edges have long ago been filed off and there's little left to give a newbie a bad cut.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the hot end issues that people experience are directly attributable to the thermistor being used. In both of my hot ends I've replaced the stock thermistor with one of these:
http://www.makerfarm.com/index.php/hot- ... istor.html because I destroyed both of the stock devices I got.
(The first one was destroyed by feeding it 12V when I shorted its leads out against the hot end when I simultaneously shorted out the resistor leads, the second was due to soldering the leads and not crimping them, resulting in a stress failure of the tiny, tiny thermistor lead).
I've had _zero_ issues with the hot end that I couldn't directly attribute to me not knowing what the hell I was doing at the time. I suspect that the thermistors they've been shipping are for whatever reason, wildly out of spec. I haven't yet had the time to test this theory out - I'm going to be doing that soon. What I have noticed is that the MakerFarm thermistor reads within three degrees of what my meter-equipped thermocouple reads. (My read point is at the interface of the brass nozzle and the aluminum it threads into). The only stock thermistor I have is installed in my Onyx heated bed and THAT sucker reads 30 degrees higher than actual, even after a PID tuning cycle. This is why I suspect the stock thermistor.
In the chapter that covers upgrades, I'm going to show how to install a 40W heater cartridge and threaded thermistor into the stock hot end. I may also add a brass slug that fits into the other side of the hot end where the thermistor would go. This would (I think) prevent the hot end from dumping heat so fast as it takes brass much longer to give up its stored heat than it does aluminum.
g.
