I wanna say if anyone has been considering an E3D hotend, from http://e3d-online.com/ or Filastruder.com if you in states, stop thinking. Just buy it. I could have bought at least 3 of these for the time and money trying to make my own. Gorgeously machined and worked out of the box. The only thing that bugs me is my fan mount vibrates like mad, but thats vibration translated from the machine. May try to print a tighter one.
Also Tim at Filastruder kicks ass. Answered my emails on christmas of all days. http://e3d-online.com
That’s why this community has a link to them. Couldn’t recommend them more, and they’re future-proof because being all-metal they can extrude stuff like Polycarb which requires 300C+ temps.
@Joe_Spanier I just got one and love it! For vibration, I saw a few people using kapton or blue tape to attach the fan mount to the top of the heatsink, that may help keep it in place. I also printed a replacement, hoping it’s a tighter fit.
I’ve been planning on getting one for some time, but the shipping from the UK was nuts, I didn’t realize that they had a US distributor, that should cut down on the shipping costs.
I don’t have one, so grain of salt here, but Carl Ubis worries greatly that over time the polish will wear and cause extruding issues when using stainless steel. Plastic is extremely abrasive. Joseph Prusa told me in person that his design struggled with getting the inside polished properly. He said he thought he had it licked though. Time will tell. I want one just for food grade extrusion. And they are so beautiful!
One nice thing about they way they did the hot end is that ss barrel is very easy to replace. Even if I had to do it yearly I wouldn’t mind for the cost and small amount of time to replace it.
I don’t really understand why the internal surface would need to be polished if you had a very short melt zone and the majority of the HE was kept below the GT temp of the filament…
In any case, I’ve been running a V5 E3D for some time now and it’s not shown any sign of performance degradation.
Yea! I’m running their pla now and have 2 kg of abs with a roll of a special present sitting on my doorstep now.
I agree with you guys about the polish. I’m not sure you would need a polish about the surface roughness a ream produces if you melt zone is small enough
My first E3D struggled a bit with getting the plastic through. Think it got worse over time. Ordered a new one that works great, and yesterday ordered a new heatbreak for the old one. Could be that it (the heatbreak) got roughed after a while or maybe I managed to get it a little bent. 1.75 mm version. Still think it´s a little hard to push filament through compared to my earlier hot ends, but as long as the extruder/hobbed bolt is up to it it extrudes beautifully.
Yes, crumpling was my biggest issue. Tried different extruders and the nozzle was clean. I set up the hot end in a vise an pushed filament through. It needed a lot of force. Did the same with my new E3D, it was a little bit easier, but still a lot harder than it was with my prior hot-ends. I think that was the reason for the crumpling. Have not had issues with my new e3d, but have not printed much during the holidays.
Also depending on what time some of these people got their E3Ds, they could have a little more problem with PLA than others. There was a point where Sanjay did some rapid-fire improvements (which is why it’s currently the v5 after such a short time!) because of the issues some were having with PLA. PLA is rather “sticky” when melted, and is a little difficult for an all metal hot end to push. @Diego_Porqueras_Deez even ended up gold plating their heat breaks to give PLA better performance through their all metal hot ends.
To be clear - the heat break is not polished or post-processed in any way on an E3D heat break. So @Brook_Drumm the matter of a degrading surface finish isn’t really relevant to way the E3D operates, I’d love to get one sent over to you guys at Printrbot if you want to play with one?
We do carefully manage the way these parts are manufactured however, ensuring certain levels tolerance in runout and machining finish.
The simple reality is that while something like a prusa-nozzle seeks to imitate a traditional PEEK/PTFE design by having a highly polished internal surface that is supposed to let material slip by, the E3D hotends are designed around the theory that if you reduce/nearly eliminate the amount of sticky, semi-molten plastic then you are not going to have to rely on your walls having low enough friction to let material move. The problem of sticking is designed out, not polished out.