Nozzle made a Nozzle

[Generic Default]

Too bad I can't print it in aluminum. Yet.

The threads are M6, the entire thing is about the size of your fingernail. I used a 0.35mm nozzle on my Tri hotend, with my magnetic PTFE arms at 0.03mm layers (30 microns). It came out pretty well, but not perfect. I need to make a 0.1mm nozzle and upgrade to 0.9 steppers so I can print scale models of insects and stuff.

It looks a lot better in real life, the camera makes the surface seem rough and bumpy. You can see individual fabric threads behind it for size reference. It's as smooth as the brass nozzle to the touch. The threads came out functional, as good as ones that could be made in metal on a lathe. It threads into an M6 hole with a tight fit.

Notice how the top blobbed. This was a kind of small scale test print, and I learned that 0.35mm nozzles in nylon can't print smaller than 4 square millimeter layer areas without blobbing. Need a smaller nozzle!

[McSlappy]

That's very nice! Very very detailed!

[Greg von Plettenberg]

I had a similar problem with blobbing. It could be due to the previous layer not having cooled sufficiently before the next layer is printed. One easy solution is to print two at a time or print another dummy part so the layers have time to cool. Amazing resolution though, you are moving into the realms of laser resin systems.

[gestalt73]

That is an outstanding small print.

With prints and features that small, there are usually two things happening.

Thing 1: Like Greg said, if you have insufficient layer cooling times, you end up printing on a wet layer, and it gets all smooshed. In that case, printing more than one gives each layer more time to cool down.

Thing 2: If you have a minimum layer time set, your printer will take literally X number of seconds on a layer, which sounds awesome until you get to features like the tip. if it's taking 20 seconds to place that top layer down, you're actually transferring enough heat through the plastic to remelt the previous layers. In that case, you can try any combination of at least two of these three things: turn your minimum layer time down to 0, insert a pause of x seconds between layers, run a part cooling fan to get the layer to cool faster.

Now, knowing the melting point between nylon and pla, have you given any thought about trying to use it?

[Generic Default]

It might be able to melt PLA, but of course the heat transfer would suck. Brass has a thermal conductivity of 120, nylon is around 0.25. So that means this printed nozzle will conduct heat about 480 times worse than standard brass ones.

Stainless nozzles can print though, and they are only 80x more conductive than nylon. It may be possible with special thermally conductive plastics to print an entire hotend. The thing that prevents it for this one is that the orifice can't be printed correctly with a 0.35mm nozzle. Smaller nozzles are key here. I plan on making a bunch of tiny ones to sell with my Tri hotend eventually.



And just so you guys know, I have a full metal hotend in my pipeline for the next year or so. By full metal, I mean it mounts to any 3d printer and makes parts out of solid metal with the existing 3d printer infrastructure that you already have.
For now I'm sticking with the Tri hotend and thermoplastics. There are glass filled plastics as strong as steel, and almost as stiff as concrete. Those will definitely work out as soon as I can get a filament making machine.