Looking for some advice… This is my old MakerGear hotend. You might notice there is only one wire attached, well, the other one broke off, and it’s not getting reattached.
So, what should I get for a replacement?
The “MG Plus Heater Block Assembly” from RP1 Labs looks like a simple option, but what else should I consider?
The E3D hot end. It’s more expensive than just a heater replacement, but the ease of use and quality of print difference is night and day. I had headaches continuously with the makergear style hot end until I finally gave up and replaced it with an all metal one.
I’ve had good luck with j-heads on that same printer @Pete_Prodoehl , but my next one will probably be an E3D.
@Jason_Gullickson , heater cartridge or heater resistor?
Pete Prodoehl, everybody swears by E3Ds these days (I am waiting for mine!), but another functional extruder will not hurt. There are modern variants of your heater block sold, with heater unit and thermistor, and screwable in place of your faulty one. Easy to make as well, you need a piece of aluminum, three drills and tap (M6 I’d guess). Heater and thermistor, of course…
The E3D looks nice, but I may just go the cheap route for now to get up and running again. It looks like this one (around $20USD) would work. http://www.ebay.com/itm/221181798222
On the j-head, both :). The problem I’ve had is blowing out the resistor, so after the second one, I used a cartridge scavenged from a QU-BD hot-end. It works, but it’s kinda big.
That said, I’m looking forward to moving to an all-metal hot end like the E3D’s. Teflon liners and stuff have caused me problems.
Check the size of the main threaded part of your extruder - the one this block should wind on. If it will fit on the 6.5 mm dia. / 1.5 mm bore hole of that block it’s perfect. Or like I said, drill 3 holes in a piece of aluminum - that will leave you purchasing just a heater cartridge and thermistor. These guys on Ebay ask a lot of money for this piece of aluminum with 3 holes in it 
It’s absolutely repairable. Just take the ceramics off with pliers, solder the new wire and either apply a new layer of ceramics (or any other heat-resistant material and wrap with kapton).
I have an E3D and it is absolutely 110% worth the price.
I dug some of the wire out and used an extra crimp and crimped that dug out wire to the green. A bit of the ceramic that hadn’t cured in the container got glopped on. It’s more fragile than it was before, but i am printing again with no problems.
3D baling wire and bubblegum…
That happened to the @Make_Lehigh_Valley rep rap this week. We went with the rp1 labs hotend. I have a j-head which works great also.
It depends what you currently print, and what you want to print.
From memory, the E3D’s good for anything except PLA and maybe PET. If you’re printing PLA/PET then you probably want a J-Head.
Note: With either, you really want a fan cooling the barrel. You can at least print with PLA and sometimes with ABS on the J-Head without one, but it makes sense to just go the whole way and get a fan on it.
I print ABS, though I may play with PLA in the future… I still haven’t added a fan. And yeah, I should probably do that.
In most areas I’m all for experimenting with low-cost options, but after wasting about six months trying to get the “great deal” QU-BD extenders to work, I threw in the towel and bought a j-head. Since then I’ve had maybe one or two hot-end related issues, mostly due to the resistor going critical. Since I switched to the heater cartridge, it’s been pretty flawless in the hot-end dept.
It’s also worth mentioning that not only was the j-head more reliable than the MG, but my print quality improved substantially.
FWIW I do currently print exclusively with pla, but I plan to experiment with t-glas and some others once I have a spare printer available
I loved MakeGear’s stuff, but after my setup failed I bought an RP1 hotend. I am very happy with it.
Today, given the choice I would lean towards an all-metal hotend just because it’s fewer things to go wrong. But budget and setup are criterium too.
I converted to MG plus stuff from ebay. Works great and lets you reuse your MG parts.
Hah! We just had that same problem. Worked great for years. You can rebuild the heater if you want. I’d consider checking out the newer makergear heat block. You can swap out the heater on there for one. It uses a cartridge heater and the strain relief is significantly better.
I’ve ordered the RP One Labs parts from ebay, figuring it will get me up and running quickly, at a low cost. The E3D looks very nice, but it’s about 4 times the price and right now I don’t care to spend that.
There’s a lot of dislike of MakerGear stuff, but I’ve had almost no issues with my existing setup for the past 20 months, though almost every RepRap owner I know in the are using different stuff has told me of all the weird and assorted problems they’ve had.
I also remember that I left a QU-BD extruder at @Milwaukee_Makerspace for a project and thought of scrounging parts for that, but instead I may try to re-engineer it to be better, which is what @Mark_Rehorst did with his.
