Accidental discovery: through an oversight of my own, I had forgotten to turn on the air assist while cutting some wood. Constant flame lit the 3D printed nozzle on fire. I caught it just as it was starting to get deformed and blew it out. I really didn’t want to deal with it at that point, and just fired it up again. Much to my surprise, the deformation on the nozzle is resulting in a way better cut now. Not even a little burn mark on the surface, nothing. Before I was getting very little burn mark which I was using as a design element. But now … it’s as clean as the wood itself.
I need to take the nozzle off and investigate the deformation and see about reprinting a new one with the same changes. Heh.
I haven’t pulled the burnt nozzle off yet because I want to do some more cutting/engraving of some pieces that I want done. However, just looking at it, one of the things I think happened is that when the ABS melted, it stretched a bit, bringing the tip of the nozzle closer to the material. It used to float about 5mm above it, now it’s within 3mm. I also think internally it changes as the ‘hissing’ pressure coming out of it is louder, which indicated a more restricted airflow. We’ll see when I yank it off eventually.
