@Ray_Tice yes, the question is will the benefit of low mass be worth it? The blue pulley is not on the wrong axis (yes it is for a common approach) but i want to feed the filament 90° from the side (or a 60° angel) and within the hotend the molten plastic will exit axial. On the other hand if my belt ratio is not enough i need to add a gear box wich translates with 90° rotation.
@Ulrich_Baer - sorry can’t answer that. Is there a good right angle hot end design out there? I’ve always been dissuaded from that because a cold pull would no longer work for cleaning, a purge rod (mostly for switching to flexi filament) would be less effective, and machining a smooth corner into the melt pool area is beyond my skills.
@Ray_Tice No idea i would build it myself - it is just a block of aluminium with two holes (+ one for the thermistor and one for the heat element). But I should add that i don’t print PLA. Only PET-g TPU BDP POM PC - never done a “cold pull” never needed. Also i switch between all these by just inserting the next material. When switching to POM or PC i insert the filament at lower temp as this would else cause pyrolysis of rest filaments used before. So for cleaning you would need to unscrew the nozzle and the PTFE liner on the other side. Hence you might be right that this will cause issues or is not convenient at all at least for PLA. On the other hand the other PLA printers i have access to also never needed a cleaning as long your temp stay within the limits and you didn’t heat it for over 2min without printing. Afaik the makerbots hotend can’t be “cold pulled”.
Stratasys has some right angle hot ends from back in the day, but they use a gradually-bent steel tube with hot and cold blocks clamped around it. That avoids a lot of machining and risk of dead zones burning the filament.
The E3D cyclops has two right turns in it. Not an exact analog here but it shows the design challenges you need to resolve. For example, how do you get the nozzle to seal against the hot block without leaking?