E3D All Metal Hotend for Ultimaker

[snowygrouch 1]

Hi Lars,

Which grade aluminium alloy are these calcs based on ?

Regards

C.

 

[lars86 42]

6061-T6

 

Hi Lars,

Which grade aluminium alloy are these calcs based on ?

Regards

C.

 

[sanjay-e3d 3]

Just a bit of an update:

We have (after going through many different brands and sizes) found a really really nice pneufit coupler. It's made of all Delrin (POM) so is super slick and self lubricating, the insides of the fitting are well matched to the diameter of the filament and best of all they have a really nice smooth tapered internal that guides filament smoothly through with no catching or jamming.

They use an awkward 1/8th Inch BSPP thread - but this is pretty much standard on pneumatic fittings. I am having a hard time getting a tap locally, but have one on the way next day delivery.

The heatsink is already drilled and ready for the thread to be cut, all I need is a tap. Also waiting on PFA tubing from a UK supplier, but this should be along in the next day or two also.

I don't have an ultimaker to fit this to, but I should at least have some solid confirmation of it functioning as a bowden extruder in its own right in the next few days.

I have had some really kind offers from the community for testing and helping to fit these to an ultimaker with a printable mounting system of some sort. Thanks to all those who have been in touch.

Will keep you updated as things progress.

Sanjay

 

[kitwashere 1]

So the mount a posted here earlier fits now. Just want to add something on the back of it to grab the fan. All that's left after that is to figure how I'm going to go about the electronics. I sourced a drill to widen the hole for the TC though I still want to see if I can get the supplied TC to work. Excited to get this thing working!

http://i905.photobucket.com/albums/ac254/kitprinklers/IMG_20130416_224053.jpg

 

[magicxman 0]

Sanjay,

I have just placed an order for a 3mm DIY kit. I am from Singapore and looking forward to try out your design on my Ultimaker. My Ultimaker is enclosed in a chamber like setup, with side walls covered up as well as the top and heated bed. Temperature in the chamber is quite consistent except I have a small fan to move the hot air around above when the bowden tube is.

 

[sanjay-e3d 3]

KitWasHere

WOW! Awesome progress man, really nice mount - is the STL something you want to publicly release yet? Or are you waiting until it's all tested? The design looks really sleek and nice. Did you use the original UM Laser files and extrude them to make the basic plate? It looks like a perfect match. How are you planning to secure the bowden tubing? I see that really nice diagonal/upright C-Clip type thing, but is that alone going to be enough to hold it in place?

MagicXMan

Thanks for the order! I am quite sure our hotend will work without any problems inside your heated area as long as you aren't getting silly hot inside of there. Let me know how you get on with making it work and the results you have.

 

[kitwashere 1]

Sorry I thought I put the link in my post

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:73243

Thank you for the kind words

It's still a work in progress right now but everyone is welcome to it as I tweak it. This will probably fit on other machines but the measurements aren't super consistent. I would print out a piece, then measure and adjust the file. My machine is a little out of whack but still puts out usable stuff when it wants to .

I'm using "Alibre" to design it, so if anyone wants the part file in AD_PRT or anything else Alibre can export to, let me know.

I just took the head apart and measured off one of the pieces. I didn't even think of the lasercut files haha that would have been easier. The little neck coming up around the top I figured would be alright to just keep that end in line with hot end. I'm going to be using this: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:11864 to hold it up top, which hopefully will be enough to keep retraction from being a problem.

 

[lars86 42]

Sanjay, did you get a chance to read my last response?

-Lars

 

[sanjay-e3d 3]

Lars

The matter about having a larger surface area vs a better heatsink is quite interesting, but in my mind having less stainless insulating the top of the break is vital. A little heatsink compound would settle this matter I think. However all of this thinking is intuitive, and not tested with simulation. Just my raw thoughts

With regards to temp gradient across the block; How do you find this actually affects extrusion and temperature of the fluid plastic inside the meltzone? Is 5C across a block a significant enough change to warrant removal? Have you thought of lagging the heater-block with glass-fibre braid-tape and or Kapton?

Flexible heaters are being used by makibox. Check out their blog for details.

Instead of using two half wattage heaters in parallel (Half wattage heaters are hard to find) you can just use two standard wattage heaters in series. Half the power will go to each.

Sanjay

 

[kitwashere 1]

Do you know the manufacturer of the included thermistor in this kit? Or better yet, which table of values I would be able to follow from this link: http://www.reprap.org/wiki/Thermistor

I guess if I need to I will make my own table, just curious if you know if any of these match up with what you provide. Trying to build Marlin firmware myself to accept the new thermistor

My friend fell through on the drill press, so it's going to be harder than I thought to widen the hole in the hot end to accept the Ultimakers thermcouple. So this seems to be the "easiest" option.

 

[chopmeister 0]

That's too bad! I have a drill press at home and I managed to widen the existing hole on the alu block to 3mm without any issues, so the thermocouple fits nicely now. The thermistor seemed too much of a hassle and this took 3 seconds to do.

Designing a mount is next on my list, but the damned day job somehow seems to creep towards night time every day.

 

[kitwashere 1]

Rub it in why don't ya! haha

I have no idea what's going on with the firmware, so it might be in my best interest to just bite the bullet and buy a drill press. It would be nice to have anyways...

As for the mount, I posted what I've come up with so far a few posts back in this thread is you want a starting off point. If you want the part files to make it easier to edit, just let me know what format and I'll post it here

 

[sanjay-e3d 3]

KitWasHere:

The thermistor is a really standard EPCOS 100K, that is available as option 1 in the default marlin firmware. No making of tables or hassle needed. Just use the default ultimaker config, but change the -1 to a 1 and you should be good to go!

 

 

[kitwashere 1]

Awesome, thanks so much! Should just be a day or so now until I get this up and running!

 

[chopmeister 0]

Rub it in why don't ya! haha

I have no idea what's going on with the firmware, so it might be in my best interest to just bite the bullet and buy a drill press. It would be nice to have anyways...

 

Hehe, 'sorry bout that!

This is a bit OT, but if you're looking for one buy a Bosch PBD-40. It's an amazing tool to have if you like diy stuff.

 

[chopmeister 0]

I have to ask about something I noticed while designing a mount for this hotend.

Why are the two topmost ring thicknesses 3.75mm and 5.6mm on the heatsink?

It seems like a really unusual design decision as opposed to 4 mm and 5 or 6mm respectively? If it were the latter it would be really easy to lasercut a mount for this (which I prefer to 3d printing for parts like these). With these dimensions however, it's impossible to have lasercut parts and have it flush mounted.

 

[sanjay-e3d 3]

Chopmeister

It's annoying as hell isn't it?

It's like that because the reprap "standard" is based (albeit somewhat loosely) around Groovemount and J-Head hotends, which were designed in the USA where metric is not prevalent. Sigh.

Furthermore - our dimensions deviate from the standard! Because the normal mounting method is two screws going through the body and through the groove in the top of the hotend, and biting into the hotend as they pass. Older hotends are made from peek, which is much more compliant for screws to bite into. However ours in aluminium, so we have to add some clearance to let the screws pass while still biting enough to mount securely.

It's the one part about the design I don't really love. It's also the only part I don't have much of a choice in.

My hope is that people will move towards the hotend having a male M8/M10 external thread, and the carriage having a female portion into which it screws. With plastic the hotend could self-tap quite happily. For machines that arent made of printed parts the use of a nice easy metric thread would be awesome too.

I can dream.

Rant over.

 

[chopmeister 0]

Thanks for the clarification.

Oh yes it's annoying all right. The metric plug-in thread would be a great solution. I feel kinda stupid having to design multiple parts just to mount a hotend. And mind you, I'm designing the whole head from scratch for an experiment I want to try, so I'm not limited to UM's head design. And it's still a PITA. :mad:

 

[am001 0]

I've got mine up and running, and with ABS this head is really impressive. High temperatures, no dribbling, excellent bonding and really, really fast printing.

Posted here with the details for those who are interested. <http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:94678>

Thanks to Sanjay for the support.

THis is also on the google group for those who prefer it <https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ultimaker/nyXIQYvjWls

>

 

[thingster 0]

Thanks for this post about using an E3D with Ultimaker. Your setup really looks awesome.

Can you give some more information about how you attached the bowden cable to the E3D?

[am001 0]

E3D can supply the head now with a plastic 6mm pipe fitting in the top. The plastic fitting was too large diameter though and clashed with the linear bearing so I had to swap it for a smaller metal Festo one I had from some other project.

You could drill and tap the standard E3D head if you already have one, the standard seems to be 1/8BSP. You could also add the Bowden retention into the printed head rather than the aluminium if you preferred. It is nice that the bowden forces are all in the metal though, it reduces the forces in the head mounting.

Andrew

 

[nick-foley 5]

I've got mine up and running, and with ABS this head is really impressive. High temperatures, no dribbling, excellent bonding and really, really fast printing.

Posted here with the details for those who are interested. <http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:94678>

Thanks to Sanjay for the support.

 

This is an awesome head design. I love the simplicity. It looks like it might be lower weight than the original UM head as well? I don't have an overwhelming need to switch from printing in PLA at the moment... but I might move to the E3D hot end just to use this new head design.

 

[nick-foley 5]

Not exactly the replies I was expecting...

(In response to now-removed spam about bridesmaid's dresses)

Anyway... today I broke the brass tube on my stock v2 nozzle while trying to tighten it up to eliminate some minor ooze. Ultimaker is also out of stock on these parts at the moment, so I'm placing the order for the E3D hotend upgrade. Looking forward to getting this thing going on my machine!

About the fan/thermocouple/heater wiring - are these plug and play with the original v2 wiring? Should I expect to reuse the heater and the thermocouple? Should I splice the active cooling fan with the material cooling fan and run them together?

 

[am001 0]

Hi Nick,

They are supplied with bare ends, so not plug and play unfortunately. Not suprising as they are aimed a a wide varienty of printers. I ran a seperate wire from the 12v out on the UM PCB to the fan, this means it runs all the time. You could also use the second thermocouple conenction if you wanted to get this to the head rather than a seperate wire.

You could certainly run it with the active cooling fan but there is a risk that you can have the head hot but the fan not running. I print mostly ABS which doesn't always want cooling, so not ideal. Having said that, my 'best practice' at the moment is 250-260degC head, fan on full, 0.05mm layers in a slightly heated chamber at around 45degrees, and the ABS models are superb.

I also reused the entire UM aluminium block, thermcouple and heater, as I couldn't get either the heater or thermocouple to come out of the block without risking damaging them. The E3D block is fine, but would need drilling out for the ultimaker thermocouple as it is designed for thermistor, which actually I think I will try and move to soon as the thermocouple causes issues in heated chambers.

Do let me know how it goes for you.

Andrew

 

Not exactly the replies I was expecting...

(In response to now-removed spam about bridesmaid's dresses)

Anyway... today I broke the brass tube on my stock v2 nozzle while trying to tighten it up to eliminate some minor ooze. Ultimaker is also out of stock on these parts at the moment, so I'm placing the order for the E3D hotend upgrade. Looking forward to getting this thing going on my machine!

About the fan/thermocouple/heater wiring - are these plug and play with the original v2 wiring? Should I expect to reuse the heater and the thermocouple? Should I splice the active cooling fan with the material cooling fan and run them together?

 

[nick-foley 5]

Great, just what I wanted to know. Seems relatively easy. Can't wait to receive it and get it going.