E3D V4 All metal hotend

[cpunches]

I just received my E3D today and I'll be putting together when I get home tonight. I have the bowden adapter they sell on order but won't get it for a week or two. For those of you already using an E3D, did you need to print an adapter to connect your filament line to the hotend?

[elqisqeyano]

I just received my E3D today and I'll be putting together when I get home tonight. I have the bowden adapter they sell on order but won't get it for a week or two. For those of you already using an E3D, did you need to print an adapter to connect your filament line to the hotend?

This is the best mount, IMHO. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:57889 Use spacers to keep your Z height.

[cpunches]

Thanks I'll give that a shot until the bowden adapter from E3D arrives.

This is the best mount, IMHO. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:57889 Use spacers to keep your Z height.

[cambo3d]

seems like my ed3 is working good so far, I had some hiccups in the assembly though. http://forum.seemecnc.com/viewtopic.php ... 390#p13215

looking forward to trying nylon.

[SanjayM]

Eaglezsoar

Seems like we have had some out of spec heaters come in from China - which is really annoying! All the metal parts are absolutely in tolerance, but after reading your post I have gone through a load of heaters with a micrometer - some are indeed showing some out of round error and over sizing. All prior heaters we have had have been really very circular and in tight tolerance.

Although it's not logistically possible to actually hand-fit check every heater in every block for every customer I promise nothing is being rushed in manufacture - all the parts are being made on the same high-spec CNC equipment to the same tolerance. No corners cut.

My advice to get you running asap would be to use a 6mm drill bit in a drill or just by hand to ream/scrape the inside of the hole - you really only need to take a tiny bit of metal off to make it fit nicely. If you don't have any luck like that then get in touch via email and we will sort you out with a replacement - I don't want anyone disappointed with their hotend.

I would advise reaming the hole over trimming down the heater - accidentally shorting out the internals to the casing could be a real hazard.

Sanjay

[Eaglezsoar]

Eaglezsoar

Seems like we have had some out of spec heaters come in from China - which is really annoying! All the metal parts are absolutely in tolerance, but after reading your post I have gone through a load of heaters with a micrometer - some are indeed showing some out of round error and over sizing. All prior heaters we have had have been really very circular and in tight tolerance.

Although it's not logistically possible to actually hand-fit check every heater in every block for every customer I promise nothing is being rushed in manufacture - all the parts are being made on the same high-spec CNC equipment to the same tolerance. No corners cut.

My advice to get you running asap would be to use a 6mm drill bit in a drill or just by hand to ream/scrape the inside of the hole - you really only need to take a tiny bit of metal off to make it fit nicely. If you don't have any luck like that then get in touch via email and we will sort you out with a replacement - I don't want anyone disappointed with their hotend.

I would advise reaming the hole over trimming down the heater - accidentally shorting out the internals to the casing could be a real hazard.

Sanjay

I did find some spare cartridges that I forgot I had, several of them fit the hole in the E3D fine. So no harm is done and I don't think any less of your Company. Indeed, I feel great about your Company after receiving your personal comments, not many Companies would take the time to contact the customer directly. Thank you for doing so.

Carl

[cpunches]

I received my E3d today and just finished putting it together. I too had to drill out the heater cartridge hole a tad to get it to fit. I used a 1/4 bit, fits like a glove now. I also cut some threads for a screw in thermistor - you may want to consider doing that as part of the manufacture Sanjay, I see a lot of folks using the screw in thermistors now. I can't wait to get it mounted and see how it performs. I wish I'd purchased the Bowden adapter at the same time I ordered the hotend instead of a few days later. I'm hoping it ships in the next few days (nudge nudge ).

[Flateric]

When did you order?

I place an order for two additional hotend's to join the one I already had from them, but it has been going on to over 4 weeks now.

Starting to wonder.

I order both with the bowden adaptor which was in stock at the time.

Hmmm, really wish they would use tracking numbers on these guys.

[daftscience]

When did you order?

I place an order for two additional hotend's to join the one I already had from them, but it has been going on to over 4 weeks now.

Starting to wonder.

I order both with the bowden adaptor which was in stock at the time.

Hmmm, really wish they would use tracking numbers on these guys.

It took a while for mine. I think there were 4 days over the estimated ship date for me. The demand has been huge, and I can see why. But honestly, it's worth the wait.

Protip: (Sorry if everyone already knows this) They give you an Airsure tracking number when it ships. Royal mail will only track it until it leaves the country. But you can throw that number into USPS.com and they will track it the rest of the way for you.

[cpunches]

When I ordered the hotend the webpage said "2 week preorder" - they were pretty much right on the money. Literally right after I ordered the hotend all items went to a 3 week preorder so, in theory, my bowden attachment will ship in the next day or so. It took about 5 days for the hotend to get here (MS) once it was shipped from the UK.

When did you order?

I place an order for two additional hotend's to join the one I already had from them, but it has been going on to over 4 weeks now.

Starting to wonder.

I order both with the bowden adaptor which was in stock at the time.

Hmmm, really wish they would use tracking numbers on these guys.

[SanjayM]

Eaglezsoar
Thanks for the kind words, and I am glad you can get up and running!

Cpunches
Just tracked back though your order, it's a bit of an odd situation.

You will see now on the website that we sell the "Normal version" and the "Bowden version" - The bowden version is drilled and tapped at the top where the filament enters in order to accept a male threaded push-fit coupler. No printed parts involved.

However in the twilight period where you placed your order we were selling the bowden upgrade as a separate "product" on the website - when people ordered the hotend plus the bowden upgrade we would drill + tap the hotend and send them out the bowden tube and couplers. So you have a hotend without threads, but on the way is a bowden attachement that is designed to screw into a threaded hole.

Your options are:
Print a coupling part - this one is nice and is known to work: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:60539
Drill and tap the top of the hotend - you need to drill out the top of the hotend with a 8.5mm diameter drill bit to a depth of around 7mm and tap to bottom with a 1/8th BSPP tap. You sound like someone who is comfortable with cutting threads!
Opt for a refund/replacement - really this whole separately purchasable part thing was a silly idea from the get go on our part, just get in contact via email and we can make things right.

All others with shipping date enquiries
I'm afraid I don't do any of the shipping etc of parts, pretty much purely engineering boff here! And it's not really the right place for me to be going over individual order details in a public forum. However! if you just ping an email to David (At e3d-online.com) who manages all the shipping he will be able to give you a proper update on things.

We are absolutely looking to be able to give more detail shipping info as soon as we can. In about 2-3 weeks we expect to be shipping with no more than a 48hrs turnaround on everything and totally get rid of this whole preorders nonsense.

Have the water-cooled triple-nozzled bowden fed handmade prototype on my desk. Hope to have beta units for sale in the next 4-6 weeks - exciting times.

Cheers,
Sanjay

[kbob]

A triple!

The RAMBo only supports two extruders, AFAIK. Is there an off the shelf controller board that supports three?

[cambo3d]

i believe the azteeg x3 does. acutally it supports up to 4 hotends http://www.panucatt.com/Azteeg_X3_repra ... ax33dp.htm

[Polygonhell]

Still requires external stepper drivers for additional extruders.
On RAMBO the fan outputs are identical to the hotend outputs and there are sufficient thermistor inputs for 4 hotends, you'd need to change the default fuse though.
It should be relatively easy to add additional stepper drivers to RAMBO from one of the aux sockets, whether or not any firmware would support them is another question.

[cpunches]

Sanjay

Thanks for the reply and suggestions. I'll send you a PM here, no need for me to hijack this thread to discuss my options

Cpunches
Just tracked back though your order, it's a bit of an odd situation.

You will see now on the website that we sell the "Normal version" and the "Bowden version" - The bowden version is drilled and tapped at the top where the filament enters in order to accept a male threaded push-fit coupler. No printed parts involved.

However in the twilight period where you placed your order we were selling the bowden upgrade as a separate "product" on the website - when people ordered the hotend plus the bowden upgrade we would drill + tap the hotend and send them out the bowden tube and couplers. So you have a hotend without threads, but on the way is a bowden attachement that is designed to screw into a threaded hole.

Your options are:
Print a coupling part - this one is nice and is known to work: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:60539
Drill and tap the top of the hotend - you need to drill out the top of the hotend with a 8.5mm diameter drill bit to a depth of around 7mm and tap to bottom with a 1/8th BSPP tap. You sound like someone who is comfortable with cutting threads!
Opt for a refund/replacement - really this whole separately purchasable part thing was a silly idea from the get go on our part, just get in contact via email and we can make things right.

Cheers,
Sanjay

[SanjayM]

I reckon i'm going to go for a RepRapDiscount Rumba board, that has native 3 extruder support. And a tonne of awesome features. It's basically everything you could ever want in a board, eveything broken out, tonnes of fets, temp inputs, etc etc. Really nice. Have dealt with RRD before and they make good stuff.

http://www.reprapdiscount.com/electroni ... board.html

Exciting times.

[Flateric]

That does look like a real nice solution. Might have to just order up one to try it.

[SanjayM]

Hi All,

Just a quick one as we are working way into the night shipping stuff.

To everyone that has a pending order with us:

Everything is shipping!

All orders made before June 11th have shipped. Everything else is shipping over the weekend, possibly Monday for some of the very recent orders.

Everyone is receiving the most up-to date hotend, which is effectively the v5 now. Many performance and ease of use tweaks have been done, but the fundamentals such as mounting dimensions, overall length etc (the things that matter for making it fit your machine) have remained identical. You will just be receiving a hotend that is lighter in weight, and has a somewhat improved thermal performance.

We hope to move to a permanent state of "shipping within 1-2 days of purchase" by the end of the week.

Concerning water cooled and multi-nozzle hotends

Because there seems to be a bit of speculation/confusion surrounding this I am going to let the cat out of the bag.

We have on the way a small prototype run of a 4 nozzled, water cooled, bowden fed hotends.

We are calling this new hotend "Kraken" - A multi tentacled water borne monster!

The total footprint of the hotend is only 30*40mm in XY plane, the Z height from top to tip is under 40mm, and the 4 nozzles are arranged in a rectangle only 20mm*18mm apart. The weight without electronics looks to be around 110 grams, which is barely the weight of 2x E3Dv5 hotends. Each nozzle to have separate temperature control. Each nozzle can be individually levelled and adjusted in height to be planar with the bed in a very easy and quick way.

The small size and weight despite 4 nozzles is due mainly to the high efficiency of water cooling, even with only a tiny amount of water flow and a small cooling channel we still have a massive excess of cooling capacity. The second reason is a new way of mounting/gripping bowden tubes which has all the convenience and grip of pneumatic push-fit couplers, but with significantly less bulk and weight.

We intend to keep the price reasonable, and below the price for buying the equivalent number of E3Dv5.

But to be clear - Kraken is not a replacement for the normal v5 hotend, which will remain our main product that suits most users. The Kraken is designed purely for multi-nozzle bowden feed applications. Futhermore it is not finished! We will be shipping the majority of our beta prototyping run to trusted testers. I expect problems to occur and tweaks to be necessary. I will start a separate thread once things are ready, and the final version of Kraken will be developed in a public/interactive manner so the community can input what it wants/needs so that we can give you guys what you want.

Kraken will be open-source when sold publicly.

Cheers,
Sanjay

[Generic Default]

Is the hotend that comes with the bowden tube and push fit connectors mandatory for the Rostock? I'm going to buy one of these in the next day or two and I want to know if the bowden push fit connectors are the same type that the Rostock max bowden cable attaches to.

I'd really prefer not to pay the extra 16£ for a tube and two connectors, and I'm wondering if I can use the parts that came with the Rostock to get the filament into the E3D hotend. How did you guys with working E3ds get your bowden cable connected securely to the hotend?

[Broose]

How did you guys with working E3ds get your bowden cable connected securely to the hotend?

We use something like this: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:57889

[Eaglezsoar]

I went to the E3D site to download a copy of the assembly pdf. Imagine my surprise when I tried to download it up pops a window to login to Facebook. There was also a button that says Skip Login. I cleverly pushed the button to skip login and up pops another window from Scribd that says: To download this document you must become a Premium Reader. Requesting money to download an assembly pdf, that is an insult to all who have purchased your Hotends.

Sanjay, you produce a good product but the support clearly needs some work. I should not have to login to anything just to download support materials.
I am not a member of Facebook or Twitter and I never will be a member.

I should not have to pay money to get a copy of the assembly manual.

I have purchased two of your hotends but with this kind of support I may look elsewhere for any future Hotends.

I also would like to know what is the difference between version 4.1 and version 5. I do not see any reference to version 5 in the "downloads" area.

[Eaglezsoar]

How did you guys with working E3ds get your bowden cable connected securely to the hotend?

We use something like this: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:57889

Cambo3d makes an aluminum version of the above thing and you can find it by going to Seeme's List on the forum.

[SanjayM]

Eaglezsoar
Seems scribd may have changed the way they deal with downlaods etc. Paying for an instruction manual is obviously a stupid concept and not our intention. We are not getting money off this in any way, it's just the way scribd have things set up now.

Will get an alternative download link sorted as soon as possible - in the meantime you can of course still read the manual on the scribd link as before.

I am in the process of sorting out the whole documentation/downloads/support situation on the site, as it's not as clear as I want it to be right now, and needs to include v5 info. But this has to come after physically shipping stuff to people who have paid for and are owed items.

Just to be clear - it's not our intention to withold/monetise documentation or information, that would be entirely counter to our whole philosophy as a company. It's simply a matter of there being a limited number of hours in the day, a huge level of demand, and that we are a small company adjusting to truly massive growth in a short timeframe.

Hope that sets things straight, and if you have any other comments do just let me know.

[Eaglezsoar]

Eaglezsoar
Seems scribd may have changed the way they deal with downlaods etc. Paying for an instruction manual is obviously a stupid concept and not our intention. We are not getting money off this in any way, it's just the way scribd have things set up now.

Will get an alternative download link sorted as soon as possible - in the meantime you can of course still read the manual on the scribd link as before.

I am in the process of sorting out the whole documentation/downloads/support situation on the site, as it's not as clear as I want it to be right now, and needs to include v5 info. But this has to come after physically shipping stuff to people who have paid for and are owed items.

Just to be clear - it's not our intention to withold/monetise documentation or information, that would be entirely counter to our whole philosophy as a company. It's simply a matter of there being a limited number of hours in the day, a huge level of demand, and that we are a small company adjusting to truly massive growth in a short timeframe.

Hope that sets things straight, and if you have any other comments do just let me know.

The fact that you responded at all tells me all I need to know about your Company. Taking time out to answer my comments shows that you care more than anyone else that I
have ever dealt with. 99% of Companies that I have dealt with would not have taken the time to comment, that places you and your Company in a top position for me. I know
that you and others are working your butts off trying to deal with all the orders you have received and that is an enviable place to be, it shows that you are succeeding and will
continue to succeed. As far as the downloads are concerned, I wanted to make you aware of the problem and now I know that it will be fixed. In summation you are great at how
you take care of your customers and your efforts ARE appreciated. I am looking forward to seeing the version 5 info and I will most likely order two of that version as I have done
with version 4. I have no interest in the multi-headed water cooled options but I sure am interested in the single versions. Thanks for responding and may the success of your
Company bring success into your personal life. A person with your beliefs is rare and you deserve to personally share in the success. Please do not respond to this message you
have done what needed done to satisfy me. Thanks!

[Generic Default]

I know this might be slightly off topic, but Sanjay was talking about the water cooled multi-extruder earlier. Would it be possible to use ferrofluids to cool the hotend? Ferrofluids don't need a pump because they naturally flow to remove heat. Maybe it's out of the question, but just consider it.