Print core for each material

[John_Mag 0]

Hi.

I have been informed by my material supplier that Ultimaker are recommending that we get a seperate AA0.4 print core for each material that we use. We have a Ultimaker S5 and currently use PLA, TPLA, NYLON AND TPU along with fibre reinforced nylon (CC0.6 for this). It seems a bit strange to need a seperate print core for each material.

On a seperate note does anyone know how to tell when the core needs to be renewed due to wear? 

Regards

 

John

 

[Smithy 677]

The recommendation is in principle ok, because different materials have different pressure temperatures and there can always be a rest in the nozzle.

 

But if you clean the PrintCore regularly or after every change from one type of material to another, i.e. with hot/cold pulls, then I don't see any problem.

 

I don't use dedicated PrintCores and also don't do a Hot/Cold Pull very often and don't have any problems with it. But that doesn't mean that this is the correct way. I think this is rather a question of faith how to handle it. With dedicated PrintCores for every kind of material you certainly don't do anything wrong, if it's really necessary, I can't say, but I personally haven't noticed any disadvantages after one year.

 

When a nozzle is worn out, you can see from the print quality, as the nozzle no longer has the intended diameter and has become wider. So far (1 year) I haven't seen any wear on my PrintCores.

[gr5 1,451]

First of all PLA and TPLA are 99.99% the same thing as far as I'm concerned.  It's like water versus water with food coloring.  They have very similar temperature characteristics, same melting point, same softening point, they act the same in almost every way except the TPLA is slightly more flexible and slightly weaker.  This makes it quite a bit tougher.  So definitely one core for both of those is fine.

 

So I swap between nylon and pla with the same core all the time.  I already swapped twice today.  It's really not a big deal.  When I switch to PLA however I don't tell the printer that it's not nylon right away - just slide out the nylon, slide in the pla, then do "move material" and wait until all the nylon seems to be gone.  Only then do I select "pla" as the "current" material.  I do this because I feel you need the higher temp to get most of the nylon out of the nozzle.

 

I don't print much TPU so I can't really speak to that but changing cores all the time seems a bit silly.  I have used the same core for maybe 8 different materials including PP, ABS, PLA, TPU, Nylon, CPE

 

As far as I can tell the cores last forever.  I've had a few cores that I've used for I think about 2 years now?  They are build very well and will probably never wear out - they just might snap at the heatbreak some day - other than that I expect them to last years.

 

[John_Mag 0]

Thanks for the information. Ae will stick witht he print cores we have at present and keep them cleam. A couple of spare print cores in the drawer just in case.