Wanted to throw a question out there to you all. I teach and have two Ultimaker2 in my classroom. I’m thinking of upgrading the hotend to the E3dv6. Any idea which voltage and if I need to modify the firmware, etc. Anyone with experience or know how, I’d greatly appreciate it. Thanks.
Printing PLA? Dont go E3DV6. Go E3DLite. V6 and Bowden and PLA is not fun at all… I think, thats the reason, they released the Lite…
Isn’t the lite only available in 1.75mm?
That’s true. I still do not recommend the V6 for PLA.
Thanks…Still looking for info if anyone has experience. Is there something better?
I think I have to disagree on that one. My E3DV6 works very well with PLA, ABS, Nylon, and PETG. Not a bowden extruder though.
@Rien_Stouten Yeah, I know. Like I said: V6 and bowden and PLA is not fun to print with. I am as of now owner of 2 V6 and one Lite and the Lite is just made for PLA. Any bit more than 2mm retract on a V6 is likely to cause trubble or tends to jam.
Yeah retraction needs to be tweaked for sure, but the v6 is certainly capable of a very wide range of materials including PLA. I use v6 hot ends on both a Mendel and a Mini Kossel Delta, both Bowden driven. On the delta, with a 500mm Bowden I get great PLA results with the retraction at 3mm, and on the Mendel with a 250mm Bowden I use up to 5mm retraction with no jams. I do all my prototyping in PLA, so I know this is reliable. The trick is to keep the retraction speed to 30mm/s minimum. For me the versatility of the v6 for virtually any material available is worth an extra bit of tweaking.
There is a 50+ page long thread in the ultimakerforum, all users telling about problems with bowden and PLA with the V6. In german reprap-forum there are at least 10 people I could call by name, including me. I like the V6 a lot and it is still my favorite, but even the manufacturer knows about the problems with PLA and tells about it in his FAQ :-/
There are sure workarounds with oiling the filament or using slow firmware-retraction or something else…
Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it’s not an issue, only that for my setup I’ve managed to get around it with some tweaking. I guess print speeds, temperature and slice settings all play a part to. Another thing which I forgot to mention which played a part in my fix was the addition of a sponge filter with a drop of vegetable oil on it which I pass PLA through before it goes into the v6. I only did this on the Mendel but it did make a difference. I don’t use an Ultimaker currently, so I don’t know the specifics of that machine, but I wanted to share my experiences in case they help anybody.
get 24v, nothing has to be done in firmware, as I think now, just autotune hotend PID
The UM2 uses a PT100 RTD temperature sensor, so get a hot end that is compatible with it, so you don’t need to fool around with firmware much; I also think the UM2 is 24V