Header Upgrade-Ideas

[mendells 55]

While I love our Ultimakers (2 and Extended) I still have some issues with the hot end. The brass nozzle doesn't hold up well against carbon filled filaments and the PTFE thermal barrier is a source of much headache. My idea is to machine an grade 5 titanium nozzle and heater block as well as a new aluminum heat sink. The nozzle will be a single titanium tube and will be to change over using the front facing set screws. My hope is that the all titanium tube will dissipate heat fast enough to prevent jamming inside the tube while being hard enough to use with carbon filled filaments.

Let me know what you think!

[gr5 2,234]

The biggest challenge by far is that PLA sticks to pretty much all metals. I don't know about titanium for sure but I strongly suspect PLA will stick to it. Therefore the teflon coupler (or the part made from PEEK in the UMO).

So instead 3dsolex has 2 of the 3 solutions you need. They sell an Olsson block which makes it so you can make your own nozzles out of titanium without making the entire heater assembly out of that material. Plus you can change nozzles quickly. Plus 3dsolex sells stainless steel nozzles which last a bit longer than the brass ones. And besides they are pretty cheap. And finally they have the i2k which keeps the teflon part at 110C when the heater is at 260C. The i2k is small enough so the PLA doesn't have much area to stick to it.

Now if you print ABS only, then you can use an all steel head such as the ones from e3donline. But those don't work so well with PLA. Also if you are going ABS only then even better just by the IPM part from 3dsolex.

[neotko 1,417]

Titanium sticks to pla yes. WS2 coated titanium doesn't stick but normal coating can be removed by 'scratch' (I tested this). I never was able to test a smaller hotzone of titanium connected to a ptfecoupler like um2 with cooling fan hitting.

About Carbon filled filaments killing the nozzle, Anders Olsson and Swordriff soon will offer a new nozzle that can hold the damage from abrasive filaments and it also improves the print.

Also check (very interesting parts)

They talk about hot zones, etc.

[zoev89 73]

That is a nice overview on what E3D is doing. The noisy background does not help but the info is very good.

[mendells 55]

Thanks for the feedback and the video. I do plan on printing PLA but my main concern is higher temp filaments like ColorFabb XT and XT-CF20, Nylon, PET and TPE. We have multiple machines so we may just keep one or two as a dedicated PLA machine and switch one over to the all metal hot end. I plan on making a number of different nozzles and heater blocks out of different materials, brass, stainless and titanium for testing.

I did update the design a little to make it easier to manufacture the nozzles and provide better heat dissipation in the heat sink.

[neotko 1,417]

I would really use 2 materials. Titanium with ws2 coating (72€ bath for a pack of units that where 10 heat break isolator barrels) and aluminium in contact with the titanium to disipate the heat faster. Titanium has low thermal conductivity so it's great for an area like the heat break area and the upper area could be surrounded with aluminum dissipation for good cooling. Anyhow if you don't want touseit for pla you could just install a E3D V6 to use it for 300C+ and avoid all the trouble and the costs. E3D now sell 24v versions with heaters that use pt100 like um2/umo+. With the advantage of interchangeable nozzles.

This user bought a china version that it's all aluminium and comes with the hole for um2/umo linear bearings

https://ultimaker.com/en/community/view/2877-e3d-all-metal-hotend-for-ultimaker?page=last#reply-117819

Edited September 9, 2015 by Guest

[zoev89 73]

Interesting nozzle design having the nozzle extend through the heater. I was thinking about the same idea some days ago..... Not that I was in the position to ever make something like that.