I know a few of you guys said not to buy this but I also know a few of you print a lot and are willing to spend the money on a real E3D hot end. However, I decided to get one of these anyway because it was cheap. Well to my surprise, it’s actually working great! $13.25 for everything in the picture and I haven’t had a single jam yet. I’m sure there may be some issue lurking around the corner but I’ll deal with that if it ever comes. But for now, this cheap Chinese knock off is doing great. Also, one thing that was mentioned online is that the only part of this hot end that may be an issue is the heat break if it’s not machined properly. That part is replaceable so even if I had gotten a bad one, it would be easy and cheap enough to get a new one. Overall I’m satisfied with my purchase. I did however use all my old components. The heater, thermistor, cooling fan and part cooling fan are all stock. I did have to print an adapter to go from the 30mm fan to a 40mm fan though. I didn’t want to re-wire everything. Lol. It works great and saved me a bunch of money.
Well, most of the Chinese knock-offs don’t have the precisely engineered internal surface finish and crucially, they have a little PTFE right near the nozzle thereby limiting the maximum temperature. I can’t say I reccomend them even if they do work for some plastics. Also, watch out for the pipe coupling on top standing proud which is fine for a Bowden setup but doesn’t fit with some other kit.
the only problem these things have besides the ptfe lining is that the nozzle and heat break dont mate very well and it tends to leak after some time… if possible lap the two surfaces before you use this or just look out for leaks. Also the nozzle diameters tend to vary … so a 0.4mm is not actually a 0.4mm … this throws of calibration.
The key word here is tolerances in an engineering sense.
There are other reasons to buy a genuine E3D hotend BTW, such as the regular availability of spare parts and a selection of mods you can apply.
This has ptfe all the way to the tip, and they are fraudulently using the J-head trademark. Don’t buy this stuff.
@ThantiK That’s true in most of them. I remember seeing a Chinese hotend that looked nothing like either an E3D or J-head hotend that was advertised as such. I was curious and emailed the seller that if they were to advertise it as their own thing I’d consider buying one. Never saw it again…
Maybe they’re just using those words without thinking about it.
@Duncan_Gunn @ekaggrat_singh_kalsi @ThantiK actually this doesn’t have any tubing near the nozzel. It stops at the heat break. I couldn’t put tubing in there if I wanted to. It’s part of the reason I got it. I know some of you guys are really serious about printing but I just do it for fun as a side hobby. This was cheap and it’s working great. I just ran a 3.5 hour print last night and it came out looking great. I know the quality isn’t as good but it does what I need it to and I don’t have the extra cash for all the nice expensive stuff. I have bills and other hobbies as well. Plus, I only print with PLA anyway so even if it did have tubing all the way to the nozzel, it wouldn’t matter to me.
I’m using serveral E3D v5 hotends from China with v6 heatblock and nozzle. Never had a single problem with them.
Basically, what I was trying to get across is that I won’t support piracy and that with knock-offs, your mileage may vary. If it works for you then I won’t look down my nose at you as anything that gets people 3D printing and designing is on the whole a good thing.
You still won’t catch me using a China j-head E3D bodgeamathingummybob.
I look forward to seeing creative and interesting prints!
If you’re only doing PLA, a v6 lite will be a lot more forgiving than an all metal hotend.
@Kevin_Danger_Powers it has less to do with being “really serious about printing”. It has to do with E3D, Reifsnyderb, etc putting a lot of engineering work and their own hard earned time into developing these products and me supporting that.
I know if I developed a physical, useful product, only to have china copy it and sell it for far less than I was able to, essentially, my ability to support myself would go out of the window and I’d never do it again.
It has to deal with morality, in addition to the legitimate thing being a much better product.
On the other hand, I believe it’s important to have open discussions on stuff like this - and I’m glad you posted it anyways.
PLA is actually the biggest problem for knock-off all-metal hot ends. For PLA with knock-offs, you WANT the PTFE liner. It’s more forgiving. This hot end might work just fine until you do a 20 hour print with a lot of retraction and short extrusion moves near the end, or it might work fine as long as your house is below X temperature, or the filament has less than Y% pigment load… In the long run you’ll probably burn as much money on filament doing reprints while troubleshooting it as you saved on the hot end…
@ThantiK On a related note, I’m real curious how many people are going to pirate my 3D printer engineering book (will be out soon!) and not care that I spent four years and thousands of dollars writing it. Real hesitant to produce any kind of e-book option at all, since this community is often actively hostile to people protecting their IP.
@Ryan_Carlyle what kind of material is in that book? Might be right up my alley.
@J_Drake engineering principles for 3D printers. Intended for people designing or upgrading printers. Volumes 1-3 are written, Vol1 is in layout with the publisher right now. It covers architecture selection (eg i3 vs CoreXY etc), frames, and motion hardware (bearings, rails etc). 340 pages with lots of illustrations. Vol2 is steppers and gearing, Vol3 is belt and screw drives. Whether I write volumes 4 (extruders / build plates) and 5 (electronics) depends on how well 1-3 sell 
@Ryan_Carlyle I just want to say… I very much want that and will definitely buy it should I know about it when it comes out.
@Ryan_Carlyle I may have missed something here (maybe you are just spamming?) , but the e3d hardware is open source and hence this isnt pirating its totally to licence ie legal to re-produce it. What usually happens however is the “chinese” cut corners and you get an inferior product. PS All my 3d work is open source even though I spent hours on them ie you get the stp/f3d source file as well as the stl file as per GPL.
I have bought a triangle labs v6 and the upgrade to it ie titan aero upgrade as kits. I will be buying the genuine e3d aero assembly as well. I am going to be curious just how much and if any better the genuine e3d is. The critical part(s) seem to be the heat break tube and the extruder gears from my experience (assuming the design and dimensions are accurately followed). The big thing could be how long the parts last which many ppl seem to over-look. I have a dual gantry machine so they will run side by side to find out.
For what its worth, I have made my own copies of the E3D stuff, except for the nozzles, and never had a problem. So it is no surprise to me the Chinese ones are almost as good. I am all for supporting the original manufacturers, but be honest, who has not bought a cheap Ramps board in the past, or something similar? The prices of some original manufacturers are just way too high in comparison with Chinese products.
I could not afford this hobby if I had to pay those enormous prices.
(Rant warning!)
The last time I spent serious money on a original board, I was able to get the magic smoke out of it in minutes. My next purchase was a Ramps-FD, and, after some modifications, runs like a champ, for a much lower price, and without the aggravation that came with certain open source nitwits, like, not responding for weeks, or responding like a zealot with OCD.
@Rien_Stouten surprised you had a good experience with RAMPS-FD, I found it kinda difficult to get mine working. Curious who the nitwits are, but I won’t ask you to share in public