Nozzle wear when printing with carbon fiber

I've been working on a project using carbon fiber filled PLA. I knew standard brass nozzles would wear faster printing CF, but I had no idea how fast. (I just figured I'd replace my nozzle after the project is finished.) Well after printing about 1.5kg of carbon fiber PLA, I noticed my prints were getting a little ragged and also that my table height was needing re-calibrating. I finally looked at the nozzle closely and realized that the orifice diameter had enlarged from 0.5mm to almost 1mm, and also that about 0.4mm had worn off the tip of the nozzle! This explained my increased blobbing, poor surface finish and the need to re-calibrate the Z axis. I had no idea the nozzle would wear so fast. CF is fun to print with (it has a nice mat black finish that really hides the print lines) but I'll have to invest in hardened nozzles if I keep it up.

E3D did a blog post on nozzle wear and tear with carbon filaments. I'll probably invest in one of these hardened nozzles soon, even though I don't use carbon that much. are there any downsides to using a toughened nozzle?

I got an email from these guys [dddmaterial.com]

Seems the tungsten nozzle project is back for a second try - maybe some of us ought to back it? I just did EUR29 for an indestructible nozzle sounds good to me!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/15/2016 11:26AM by DjDemonD.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

anyone know if these would be useful for CF with less wear than brass [www.ebay.co.uk]
I wonder about how the steel nozzle & steel throat would be then be adversely effected by the temps, is a PID required if there's a nozzle change of different material?

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/16/2016 03:54AM by MechaBits.