Upgrading hotend: Airwolf HD2x to E3D V6 + Volcano (Page 4 of 6)

0.8mm nozzles produce excellent surface finish in my experience.

It is possible the two sensors are reading a little differently - different sensor placement, different sensor types.

Very nice!

That would be awesome!!

There are a few small things that would need to be changed before anything went public.

-Spacing on the zipties for the Y rod bearing (rear, horizontal) needs reducing
-The back piece needs a larger fillet to clear the acrylic in the back left corner
-Certain holes are too small for the screws
-Overall cosmetics can be improved some

Also, I would need to come up with a solution for the part fan. I left it off because I probably won't be using it for PC.

BTW, I told Airwolf what I did to their printer to see what they say about the warranty. Maybe they will let me keep the warranty on everything but the hotend.

Looking forward to seeing some Volcano prints with Filastruder polycarbonate

Pics coming soon!

lol

It sounds like you have some CS tech, not the founder (Erick Wolf)... so I doubt disputing it will get you very far, he's probably just doing what his boss says.

I vote let it roll, and share with folks that ask about Airwolf. Or try to contact Erick:

Contact Information:
work email - [email protected]
office - (949) 478-2933

Let it roll it is. Who needs a warranty anyway when I have you guys?

Here's my first few prints:

My calibration cube

First object; I chose this one because of it's combination of thin walls, curves, etc. The lighting makes it look bad, but it really looks pretty good. Certainly just as good as anything I had before.

Just a note; I ended up changing down to a 0.6 nozzle to get some little details back. But boy am I going to miss those speeds. As of right now, it's printing about twice as fast as it was before and still looks great! I basically copied some of AZERATE's slicer settings, but with .6mm line widths instead of 1.2 because it was skipping some smaller details.

Rodger -

I've been really happy with the print quality. My main reason for doing this, as stated in another thread, was because we had problems with the hotend not staying hot enough for PC printing. The guys here helped me conclude that it was because they are trying to heat the hotend with an underpowered heater.

I haven't considered going to direct drive because it weighs down the hotend. I feel like bowden decreases vibration and helps with print quality.

Since the upgrade, I've been really happy with it.
- Print quality is just as good, if not even better. Even with the larger nozzle sizes.
- I've seen a noticeable increase in print strength (this is especially important for what I do)
- The original hotend snapped onto the rods. Over time, and with heat, this got stressed and became slightly loose. My solution was to use zip-ties instead. This holds everything much more secure.
- It heats up a TON faster. From cold, it will heat up to 300 degrees in less than two minutes. This was a much welcome change compared to ten minutes or so before.
- Overall cost will be around $300, but it was worth every penny!

That's right, I forgot about that. I also got some spare nozzles.

You could definitely cut the price down a lot if you didn't need to go over 290C.

Yea, I'd be happy to post them. They're on my computer at work, I'll post them tomorrow.

I never measured the temperature but it's very possible because I don't have to run the hotend as hot now. I can run it 10-15 degrees lower.

The firmware is pretty easy. There are guys here that can walk you through it better than I can - they helped me. If you have the time, read through this entire thread as it covers the firmware.

Wiring is also not an issue for myself or someone else to walk you through.

Maybe this would be a good time to write up that printer-specific E3D conversion guide that elmoret mentioned.

Sure, what are you wanting to print? I'm printing at .4mm layer height and .7 or 1mm width depending on what i'm printing.

What are you wanting to benchmark? Speed or quality?