UM2 Nozzle deteriorating and desintegrating

[andwew 0]

Um, I think my UM2 nozzle is deteriorating?

I am confused. I've been printing 40 hour ish prints with colorfabbs glow in the dark, My prints are getting worse and worse and I noticed my nozzle is getting flatter and flatter at the tip?

I don't know how it's happening but looking at pictures of other nozzles, mine seems busted.

Anyone know what this is about? Do I need to buy a new nozzle?

 

Sorry for the bad quality pics

 

[illuminarti 18]

That's really weird. The tip is very flattened and the opening itself looks to have widened. Some sort of chemical reaction of the material and the brass?

How does the inlet of the block look? Are there any signs of the inside of the nozzle getting eroded?

[valcrow 144]

That's crazy, it's like it grounded itself down like 1-2mm.

 

[andwew 0]

@illuminarti - Yea, it's a weird one for sure. I only noticed it when I was doing these long prints with the glow material. I wonder if anyone else has done 40 hour prints with colorfabbs glow material and also experienced some sort of chemical reaction?

As for the inside, It's difficult to tell but it looks relatively normal to me.

The only thing that makes sense to me is the tip squishing the material creates some sort of reaction and erodes the tip?

I have no idea. I guess I've got to buy a new nozzle :(

 

[andwew 0]

Also, the best way to replace this is the Ultimaker store for replacement parts? Getting the little nozzle shipped to the US all the way from the Netherlands?

 

[Labern 774]

Hi

I remember reading a post not long ago and they were saying Glow-fill is really abrasive.

Cant find it now but it sounds like you are not the only one.

 

[Titus 170]

I've been printing with glowfill too a lot lately. But I haven't seen anything like this on my UMO. I'll check when I'm at home though.

 

[colorfabb 3]

Anyone know what this is about? Do I need to buy a new nozzle?

 

Hi Andwew, that is some extreme wear on the hot-end tip! We haven't seen extreme wear like this on our 3D printers when testing glowFill.

We've been printing a few 10-16 hour prints on the Ultimaker Original and Makerbot without obvious signs of wear. The Ultimaker 2 nozzle should be much more pointy, so this one most likely needs replacing.

Was the nozzle still pointy before printing glowFill? Do you have any specific methods of cleaning your nozzle? Perhaps with a iron wire brush?

Have you been printing other exotic materials?

 

[svanbennekom 0]

We are aware that the nozzles wear down when printing materials with hard fillers. This is due to the nozzle currently being brass, which is unfortunately fairly soft.

Whether this is what happened here, and the result of the glow-material, I cannot say, but it seems the most likely explanation at this point.

Unfortunately it isn't possible to design something as an open system and foreseeing all possible use-cases, but we'll keep trying anyway

 

[gr5 2,167]

If you order a new nozzle, hopefully it will ship from Memphis, and not Ultimaker. You could contact fbrc8.com directly and see if they will ship from there.

That nozzle is basically ruined. I've seen this on other nozzles on this forum and that large flat area will drastically hurt quality of prints.

 

[Anders Olsson 136]

I managed to ruin a UM2 nozzle in a very similar way when printing abrasive material.

What I printed was something I would expect to be much more abrasive than glowfill though, so I am a bit surprised your nozzle look lite that after just 40 hours.

When my nozzle was ruined, I put it in a drilling machine and turned it using a file until the flat surface was reasonably small again.

You can get decent printing quality even if your nozzle diameter is like 0.7-0.8 mm, as long as the flat surface is not too large.

You have to measure the true nozzle diameter and generate new files with that one in Cura though.

By the way, I am working on a UM2 heater block with interchangeable nozzles for printing abrasive stuff: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/7689-custom-heater-block-to-fit-e3d-nozzle-on-ultimaker-2/

Things are taking more time than I expected though, so I can not provide this heater block yet.

 

[andwew 0]

Thanks everyone for taking a look. I didn't know abrasive materials could do this.

You can see in my print that over the course of 40 hours it got worse and worse, which is clearly evident of the nozzle wearing down over the course of the print.

@colorfabb I only used the atomic bob method of cleaning the nozzle. Heating it up, cooling it, and then pulling out the filament. Before this, the bronze fill and glow fill were the only special filaments I used, but neither for as long as these last two prints. I wasn't planning on doing such a long detailed print with the glow fill but it was the only filament i had left :-|

@gr5 Thanks! I'll look into ordering from Memphis instead

@Anders Keep at that interchangeable nozzle. I imagine if i printed a life size torso with the bronze fill, I'd use another kind of nozzle. And things always take longer than expected

I'll just to upload a couple of photos of my last two prints so you all can see the deterioration in quality

 

[Titus 170]

Holy cow! I just checked my nozzle with a replacement nozzle next to it, and from the looks of it the diameter is significantly larger, and the shoulder is also way bigger then the new part.

 

That being said, this nozzle is in use for a month or 2, perhaps 3 and has not been printing glowfill exclusively(also a lot of bronzefill and some other colorfabb colours). But this is quite an issue, if diameters start changing and shoulders start growing

 

[andwew 0]

Shoot! I'm sorry to hear that you can confirm yours is going bad too. This is just a big bummer since a new nozzle is going to be so difficult for me to get :(

 

[valcrow 144]

Yikes, that is kinda scary. I have some crappy glow in the dark I think I'll stop using that...

also @ titus, your new nozzle looks like it has a big shoulder too..

 

[andwew 0]

Hey guys, I have another concern with the short sided-ness of these "special" materials.

If we're just now realizing that they're damaging to our printers, how do we know whether or not they could be incredibly toxic to us? Worst case scenario 20 years from now people look back and think it was so stupid we were experimenting with these materials when we all have cancerous mutations from our 3d printing.

I see these new experimental materials coming out faster and faster and I'm sure everyone wants an edge on the market.

Something thats been in the back of mind mind. I don't know what fillers are in these new PLAs but I imagine burning whatever is in there could be potentially bad. The lack of research is a concern.

I'm sorry, Colorfabb. I love what you guys are doing but I just think this is a discussion worth having.

 

[ultiarjan 1,223]

Ahhggg.. I'll only use the glowfill on my "old" 0.6 nozzle from now on ....

@colorfabb, from the "metal" fillaments I would expect the extra wear, but I think you should really do a UM2 endurance test on the glowfill ...

 

[valcrow 144]

I think it warrants more testing for sure. I don't want to jump to the conclusion that it's the colorfabb glowfill at fault but If it does wear down the nozzle THAT quickly, I think it should be pulled from the shelves.

 

[Anders Olsson 136]

Did you inspect other components for wear yet?

I am curious since I did not print that much with glow fill yet, but my custom made abrasive filament had effects on several components:

- The nozzle was worn down by about 1mm in height and the diameter increased to about 0.7mm after similar printing times as you reported.

- The inner diameter of the teflon insulator increased to about 3.5-3.6mm (which actually seem to have reduced retraction related problems)

- The knurled wheel got a bit rounded and the ball bearing has a rough surface where the filament is moving.

- There might be some wear of the bowden too. I did not measure the diameter yet but the problems with oversize filaments I had initially are gone after I printed the abrasive stuff.

 

[Titus 170]

I believe Colorfabb did extensive testing with regards to safety and micro particle 'pollution' and that they published the results that their PLA/PVA and XT were way safer than ABS etc. Though I'm not sure if they did this for glowfill and special filaments, although I'm sure they did.

Given this observation of our printheads, I'm not sure what to do, what settings to change in order to compensate. I wonder if this can explain the recent feeling that my printer was performing suboptimal. I'll have to swap to the new nozzle to verify though.

 

[veedee 4]

Well, I have the same problem on al three of my UMO's! Printing colorfabb's glow in the dark with 1.0mm nozzles for 3 days non stop made the nozzles wear out very very very fast. From a sharpish point to a quite flat nozzle.

I searched google for 'worn out nozzle ultimaker' and this was the first topic I clicked on. I think glow in the dark definitely has something to do with it.

More people having this problem with glowfill?

 

[Titus 170]

Yup. They also stated that it may deteriorate nozzles a bit faster due to abrasive parts, but this is really going quick...

 

[leonardo-aguiar 1]

This has just happened to me. After a week of printing with glow in the dark filament (not colorfabb) I switched filaments to another ABS. I was getting a lot of under extrusion so I decided to take the nozzle apart. The glow in the dark filament had already caused various clogs so I figured I had another one. I printed maybe around 70 hrs with it. I ended up using a full 1kg spool.

I uploaded a picture of my nozzle to Flickr. The damage on the sides is from when I was holding on to it with plyers while I cleaned the insides with a pick in an acetone bath. The filament would gunk up and latch on to the inner walls. It would take a good 40min of jabbing at it to make the burnt filament snap off. I was running it at 230ºC, well within the 220-260ºC range specified on the packaging.

Here's the link to the photo:

If glow in the dark filament can do this to brass what can air born nano particles of it do to our lungs?

Does anyone know where I can get a replacement in São Paulo, Brazil?

 

[area0404 0]

And this is precisely the reason I am constructing myself a encasement + carbon, hepa dual filtration system. Started worrying the moment I started printing with ABS.

 

[nowy-plastik 0]

Exactly the same problem happend with my nozzle with Glowfill from Colorfabb after 90 Hours print, yet I am priting large parts without troubles (ABS, PLA) eventhough the flatter nozzle, of course I adjusted the bedplate to the new height, let me know If you wanna see a picture of the flatter nozzle.