1 Topic by pirvan (edited by pirvan 2015-05-27 17:37:49)

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Topic: All Metal Hot End (NOT E3D)

Edit:

It has been brought to my attention in a post below, that I didn't mention what type of material used with this hot end.  So for the sake clarity, this "review", such as it is, is based solely on the use of ABS, since this is the only material I personally like to use.  I have no experience with any other materials through this hot-end.

As I previously alluded to in other posts, I've been pretty happy with the standard hot end the SD3 comes with.  The MG plus hot end is a good hot end as long as you don't need to print materials requiring excessive temps (>250°C), or as long as you don't accidentally melt the peek inside.

Anyway, I recently tried some pretty crappy filament, which clogged my hot-end, so I decided it as time to try a new all metal hot end I had purchased on eBay a few months ago.  Since I had already made the extruder and carriage assembly and pre-assembled everything, it was a simple matter of unplugging the wiring from the original extruder and plugging in the new one.

Here are some pics of the new setup.

http://www.soliforum.com/misc.php?action=pun_attachment&item=8734

It's been about two weeks since I installed it, during which time I printed with a variety of filaments which I already had experience with, with the previous hot end.  So here are a few observation made during this short time with it.

It needs to run a little hotter than the original hot end, by about 10°C.
It heats up very quickly, <2min.
The upper barrel stays very cool.
The transition from one color filament to another requires less material (about 50-100mm instead of 200-300mm)
The fan adds noise, and is on all the time.  It would be nice to figure out a way to turn it off automatically when the print stops.
I lost about 15mm of vertical travel because of it.  In fact I had to find a much longer "Z" end stop screw to replace the original.
The barrel cooling fan, required me to redesign & relocate the GCode fan, and the only place I could find was behind the  hot-end.  It seems to work though.

So far it seems to work OK, and I haven't had any trouble printing with it.  So for now it will stay on, but I'm still trying to figure out how to turn off the fan.  I know this is not an e3D, but for $24 it's not bad either.

NOTE:
I re-used the thermistor and heater cartridge I was previously using on my original ho-end, and since I plan on sticking with ABS, I didn't need to make any firmware changes.

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2 Reply by elmoret

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Re: All Metal Hot End (NOT E3D)

Done any long PLA prints requiring retraction?

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3 Reply by jagowilson

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Re: All Metal Hot End (NOT E3D)

Marlin can take care of the fans for you if you have a PWM pin you can use free on your board. Configure the CONTROLLERFAN_PIN variable in Configuration_adv.h. The fan will turn on when the motors are on or a heater is active. You can configure how long it takes for it to turn off also.

4 Reply by grob (edited by grob 2015-05-27 00:48:39)

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Re: All Metal Hot End (NOT E3D)

Actually, there's also a temperature-controlled fan in newer versions of marlin (I think adrian's v1 might not be quite new enough) - look for "EXTRUDER_0_AUTO_FAN_PIN" in Configuration_adv.h (e.g. in current marlin 1.0.2 (which is a bit buggy, I'd recommend Development branch at the moment actually!) it's here). You can set a fan to turn on when the hotend is above, say, 50C. This is what I do to minimise the hot-end fan noise (not that it's large compared to all the other fans I have running haha!).

Save the controller fan for the controller! smile

The controller fan runs when the motors are enabled, and for a period of time afterwards. This may not align with when the nozzle is hot - e.g. when preheating before a print. I'd probably recommend not using the controller fan function for the hot-end fan...
[edit - also triggered by bed heater powered on]

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5 Reply by jagowilson (edited by jagowilson 2015-05-27 00:32:34)

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Re: All Metal Hot End (NOT E3D)

It does turn on when the heaters are activated. I run all my fans on the controller fan pin with no issues. 2 minute timeout for sake of the e3d. The controllerfan functionality was written with the intention of cooling the MOSFETs or SSRs, also.

6 Reply by grob (edited by grob 2015-05-27 00:52:14)

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Re: All Metal Hot End (NOT E3D)

I've had a look at the code:

https://github.com/ozadr1an/Solidoodle- … .cpp#L2165
The controller fan is triggered only by the following:
* X, Y, Z, E, (E1, E2) motor enable pins being low (i.e. "enabled")
* bed heater pwm > 0
Suspiciously absent is any reference to hotend heaters. So I think you're right, it will turn on when you turn the bed heater on, but if you try and turn the extruder heater on without the bed heater on, it won't run I don't think... So in most practical cases, absolutely fine (I too normally only have the nozzle heater on when the bed heater is on).

However, there is already a half-implemented "extruderFan()", which with a bit of fixing could do the temperature control thing... Not sure how well it will work right now, but maybe all it needs is the config parameters added to configuration(_adv).h and a call to extruderFan() in the main loop...
https://github.com/ozadr1an/Solidoodle- … .cpp#L2198

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7 Reply by wardjr

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Re: All Metal Hot End (NOT E3D)

I am with grob on this one, extruder heater does not turn the fans on.  So the question is, what did you (jago) do to make yours turn on with the extruder heater?

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8 Reply by pirvan

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Re: All Metal Hot End (NOT E3D)

elmoret wrote:

Done any long PLA prints requiring retraction?

I think I did mention before on other threads I don't use PLA at all, I really don't like the stuff, but I have printed a few long prints (so far the longest has been an 11 hour print) using ABS. 

Right now I'm about to start a 7 hour print (actually I'll start it just before I go to bed).

And yes, I use retraction by default on all my prints.

http://www.soliforum.com/misc.php?action=pun_attachment&amp;item=8735

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9 Reply by pirvan

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Re: All Metal Hot End (NOT E3D)

I use the RAMPS board, and to be frank, I don't remember where I'm currently drawing the 12V for the extruder motor fan (I'd have to trace the wires).

But I'm pretty sure there are some pins there I can use. Just got to take another look at the RAMPS schematics

I'm, wondering if I could wire the fan to the same output for the hot end heater?

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10 Reply by jagowilson

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Re: All Metal Hot End (NOT E3D)

3mm is massive retraction for an all metal hotend. I doubt you'll need more than 1mm for ABS.

11 Reply by grob

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Re: All Metal Hot End (NOT E3D)

pirvan wrote:

I'm, wondering if I could wire the fan to the same output for the hot end heater?

They're both 12V, so you won't kill the fan.
The problem is the PWM - when the heater is at temp, there's actually not much power going into it - i.e. it's running at quite a low duty. The PWM frequency is quite low from memory (about 10/second?), so you'll probably see the fan run well when bringing the nozzle up to temperature, then run intermittently / poorly when at temperature (which is when you need the most cooling out of it!).

Not recommended. smile

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12 Reply by elmoret

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Re: All Metal Hot End (NOT E3D)

pirvan wrote:
elmoret wrote:

Done any long PLA prints requiring retraction?

I think I did mention before on other threads I don't use PLA at all, I really don't like the stuff, but I have printed a few long prints (so far the longest has been an 11 hour print) using ABS.

That's a pretty big caveat, and it isn't really reasonable to expect folks to dig through all your threads in order to take a guess at what you use. You might want to add to the review that you've only used ABS with it.

Regardless of retraction settings, in all the hotends I've tested I've yet to find one that won't work with ABS - though the surface quality has definitely varied between them. PLA on the other hand - that's a trickier plastic to print, especially with an all-metal hotend that isn't an E3D.

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13 Reply by pirvan

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Re: All Metal Hot End (NOT E3D)

grob wrote:
pirvan wrote:

I'm, wondering if I could wire the fan to the same output for the hot end heater?

They're both 12V, so you won't kill the fan.
The problem is the PWM - when the heater is at temp, there's actually not much power going into it - i.e. it's running at quite a low duty. The PWM frequency is quite low from memory (about 10/second?), so you'll probably see the fan run well when bringing the nozzle up to temperature, then run intermittently / poorly when at temperature (which is when you need the most cooling out of it!).

Not recommended. smile

Yeah, I can see that...  Well, maybe something else.  Back to the drawing board.

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14 Reply by pirvan

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Re: All Metal Hot End (NOT E3D)

elmoret wrote:

That's a pretty big caveat, and it isn't really reasonable to expect folks to dig through all your threads in order to take a guess at what you use. You might want to add to the review that you've only used ABS with it.

My mistake.  I thought that when I said:

"I re-used the thermistor and heater cartridge I was previously using on my original ho-end, and since I plan on sticking with ABS, I didn't need to make any firmware changes."

I implied that I only use ABS.  But there it is.  I clarified it.

elmoret wrote:

Regardless of retraction settings, in all the hotends I've tested I've yet to find one that won't work with ABS - though the surface quality has definitely varied between them. PLA on the other hand - that's a trickier plastic to print, especially with an all-metal hotend that isn't an E3D.

I know,  the E3D is simply the best thing there is, everything else simply sucks.

Oh well...  I'll just have to live with it.

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15 Reply by elmoret

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Re: All Metal Hot End (NOT E3D)

Why the attitude? Leaving the fact that you only used ABS out of the original post is pretty misleading, not sure what reason there is to get sassy about it. Also not sure what your vendetta is against E3D...

Back on topic: have you ever printed PLA in any all metal hotends? I have, and I was sharing my experiences, same as you. If anything, it is adding information to a review that is incomplete, reporting on only a single polymer (the easiest polymer).

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16 Reply by pirvan

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Re: All Metal Hot End (NOT E3D)

Why the attitude....

... because every time someone even mentioned an E3D like, all metal hot end, all you ever done is tried to discredit it, without any real facts on your side. 

I'm pretty sure you haven't tried every hot end out there and statements like this: "PLA on the other hand - that's a trickier plastic to print, especially with an all-metal hot-end that isn't an E3D." are simply an attempt to sway public away from anything that is not a product in which you have a vested interest.

I, on the other hand, was making an observation about my experiences with a low cost all metal hot-end.  How it worked for me, and what I like and didn't like about it.  I didn't post a link to it, I didn't give a model name, in fact I never told anyone to go buy one or follow my example.

BTW, if E3D is THE hot-end for printing PLA, and the only one that really works properly, why is it that it's not widely adopted by the Ultimaker, or Makerbot, or any of the other printers that are primarily sold as PLA printers.

Frankly, from my point of view anything that you do have to say on this subject is subjective and considering your financial interest in the products, it's anything but neutral.

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17 Reply by elmoret

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Re: All Metal Hot End (NOT E3D)

pirvan wrote:

Why the attitude....

... because every time someone even mentioned an E3D like, all metal hot end, all you ever done is tried to discredit it, without any real facts on your side.

Well, that's not true at all. I've given plenty of examples of folks that tried clones and had trouble.

Here's real hard data from the other side: 1.48% of E3D customers report an issue of ANY kind in their use of the hotend. Of these, 9 out of 10 issues are jamming related. Of those, about 5 out of 9 are resolved by guiding the user to change some settings, generally retraction. About 3 out of 9 are due to improper assembly, and 1 out of 9 (or 0.0148% of ALL CUSTOMERS) require replacement parts to replace defective parts. These parts are of course provided free of charge, something you can't count on with Aliexpress/Alibaaba/eBay.

A reported issue rate of less than 2% is pretty good - that's on par with the iPhone.

pirvan wrote:

I'm pretty sure you haven't tried every hot end out there and statements like this: "PLA on the other hand - that's a trickier plastic to print, especially with an all-metal hot-end that isn't an E3D." are simply an attempt to sway public away from anything that is not a product in which you have a vested interest.

How do you know what I have and have not tested? That's just silly. I was trying to keep it simple, but let me clarify - there are really five options for hotends:

E3Dv6
Pico
Promethius
Hexagon
Clones

Pico can't be recommended because it is $30 more than an E3D, and it has an all one piece construction so if you crash the hotend into a print or the bed you'll break the heatbreak and there goes $100 since it isn't user replaceable.

Promethius has a 1 piece barrel/nozzle, which makes replacement nozzles more difficult to install and much more expensive (3x the price!).

Hexagon has a non-replaceable heat break, so it can't be recommended for the same reasons as Pico. It also has questionable build quality from some user reports.

That leaves clones, which generally have extreme difficulty printing PLA well. They also don't support the designer, which is bad since that's where innovation comes from.

So, Pico/Promethius/Hexagon can't be recommended due to design issues, and clones can't be recommended because they can't complete PLA prints. Does this more complete explanation satisfy you?


pirvan wrote:

I, on the other hand, was making an observation about my experiences with a low cost all metal hot-end.  How it worked for me, and what I like and didn't like about it.

As did I, only I gave detailed information about what polymer my experiences have related to.

pirvan wrote:

BTW, if E3D is THE hot-end for printing PLA, and the only one that really works properly, why is it that it's not widely adopted by the Ultimaker, or Makerbot, or any of the other printers that are primarily sold as PLA printers.

That's a great question. Next time I bump into the CEO of either company, I'll be sure to ask. Makerbot for one would stand to gain a lot by transitioning away from their "Smart Extruders".

pirvan wrote:

Frankly, from my point of view anything that you do have to say on this subject is subjective and considering your financial interest in the products, it's anything but neutral.

Well, that's simply not true either. I don't see a dime from any E3D product not purchased through my website. Buy it from wherever you like, I have no way of dictating that. If I was the sole supplier of E3D products (like E3D themselves) then sure, you could say there's a conflict of interest.

I've also recommended other hotends quite frequently in the past, like a genuine J-head for instance - though now with the E3D Lite6 there's no advantage to even a J-head anymore. If I wanted to maximize profit, why wouldn't I sell the other hotends listed above as well? I don't because I cannot do so in good conscience - they are poor alternatives to an E3D.

When it comes down to it, people can buy anything they like - it doesn't bother me... but I spend quite a lot of time testing and using hotends, so I'd might as well share that information and data with others. There's a lot I haven't used - things like spectra line, or Lawsy's carriages, or auto leveling probes, etc. I don't post about those things, I stick to what I know.

Why you choose to bash a product you've never used on the other hand... that's difficult to understand.

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18 Reply by grob

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Re: All Metal Hot End (NOT E3D)

http://www.iridetheharlemline.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/crash-553x345.jpg
Back on track, please. wink

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19 Reply by Gordym

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Re: All Metal Hot End (NOT E3D)

Nice writeup Pirvan, nice looking setup. Thanks for the information.

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20 Reply by IronMan

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Re: All Metal Hot End (NOT E3D)

For what it's worth, I have an E3D set up with a Bulldog...the extruder motor cooling fan vents enough air down through the mounting block and effectively cools the E3D...and I just wired the fan directly to my PSU, so it's on when I flip the switch on my power strip.

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