Hottest Hotend Available

With the recent increase in interest when it comes to recycling plastic to make our own filament, I hope someone can answer my question about which hotend supports the highest heat in a stable manner.

My household uses at least 20-30 water bottles per week, in addition to Gatorade bottles. Both are made of PET(E) plastic (recycle code #1) which has the following properties:

Melting Temperature: 250°C-260°C
Boiling Temperature: 350°C
I was not able to find the "extrusion temperature" of PETE.

Source: Wikipedia

The hotend I currently use has a PTFE disk about 1/3" thick which using two 50mm M4 bolts to connect to the extruder. Apparently (I haven't tested this for fear of having to replace the hotend) PTFE has some strange reactions to temperatures >250°C which includes toxic fumes and lack of being a sturdy support material.

So this brings me to my question:
What is the highest temperature rated hotend available? I would love to be able to use self made 3mm PETE filament to eliminate the need for buying filament.

We produce an all metal hot-end that is soon to be on sale.

We have taken it to 350C and the cooling is still happy, there is no PTFE/PEEK in the design so the theoretical temperatures it can reach are above what we are able to produce with a simple resistor heater, and should certainly be enough for any thermoplastic.

The design is detailed here [forums.reprap.org] (Be sure to read on in the thread as the design has morphed considerably since the first post.)

Edit:

Once available you will be able to buy from our webstore here: [e3d-online.com]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/13/2012 08:42AM by SanjayM.

Thanks for your reply Sanjay, I read the entire thread and visited your website. It looks good, and it's definitely a solid leap in the right direction. However, £55 is equal to about $86, which is more than I want to spend on a hotend while on my college budget. Keep up the good work, I hope you have many sales.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/13/2012 09:07AM by Lodorenos.

Hi Lodorenos,

The 55 is just a provisional placeholder price for now on the site, we hope to get much lower than that, if you want to be a beta-tester of the design we can probably go even lower if you write a review on the forums with your feedback and thoughts, PM me if you are interested.

[store.qu-bd.com]

Its a preorder for the seconb run of them so you would have to wait a bit, but its cheap and should be able to reach those temperatures with the cartridge heater option with no problems.

Lodorenos Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What is the highest temperature rated hotend
> available? I would love to be able to use self
> made 3mm PETE filament to eliminate the need for
> buying filament.

The Arcol V4 hot-end from arcol.hu also has full metal construction and handles 300+C temperatures just fine. I think I ran it at 320C when I was experimenting with polycarbonate and there were no problems.

I have been meaning to try an Arcol for some time, very good feedback from people using them.

Also -

Josef Prusa's new all metal hot end is almost ready for release -

300 degreees C operating temp with a Thermistor

500 degrees if using a thermocouple!


Picture by Josef Prusa

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[richrap.blogspot.com]

richrap Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have been meaning to try an Arcol for some time,
> very good feedback from people using them.
>
> Also -
>
> Josef Prusa's new all metal hot end is almost
> ready for release -
>
> 300 degreees C operating temp with a Thermistor
>
> 500 degrees if using a thermocouple!
>
>
> Picture by Josef Prusa

500'C? That will certainly open some doors to new materials, beyond just plastic even. I see a wonderful future in the RepRap project, and I'm glad to have jumped in at the right time, as I feel many changes coming.

Google is not helping me, could you give a link to his post about the all metal hot end?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/16/2012 10:09AM by Lodorenos.

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Charles S.
Software Engineer
Prusa Mendel I2, RAMPS 1.4, Marlin 1.0 R2, Pronterface, Slic3r

... if you need higher temps, then think about heating the tip with a laser or melting/fusing a thin wire to the surface directly.

We had some talk about such ideas and concepts over the last years - look here: [reprap.org]
... and in the discussion tab: [poolHead" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reprap.org]

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Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

I just have to ask but how do people keep from dieing or getting terrible lung diseases when melting plastic to make filament? I know when I was really young I would burn the plastic off of copper wires to sell the copper (was all legal as some would give it to you others you paid say 50 dollars and get paid 150-200 for it at the scrap yard after the plastic coating was melted off of it) but the smell was bad and you better stand up wind. Sort of like melting one of those clear plastic bic pens and the black soot goes floating up in the air. That stuff is bad for you 100%.

We try to maintain the temperature so the plastic is melted, not burned

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Most of my technical comments should be correct, but is THIS one ?
Anyway, as a rule of thumb, always double check what people write.

1.75mm filament only? looks too small for 3mm.


> [yfrog.com]
> Picture by Josef Prusa

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- akhlut

Just remember - Iterate, Iterate, Iterate!

[myhomelessmind.blogspot.com]

That would be a tough one and doesn't the melting and remelting of the plastic break down its integrity? Remember that bottle, or bag, you are melting has already been melted, potentially, numerous times as most are recycled these days.

Dark Alchemist Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> That would be a tough one and doesn't the melting
> and remelting of the plastic break down its
> integrity? Remember that bottle, or bag, you are
> melting has already been melted, potentially,
> numerous times as most are recycled these days.

As long as the plastic is never taken above the decomposition temperature, the degredation and outgassing will be minimal.

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Help improve the RepRap wiki! Just click "Edit" in the top-right corner of the page and start typing. Anyone can edit the wiki!

Dark Alchemist asked: ""I just have to ask but how do people keep from dieing or getting terrible lung diseases when melting plastic to make filament?""

NewPerfection responded: "As long as the plastic is never taken above the decomposition temperature, the degredation and outgassing will be minimal."

And anyway, even though I'm pretty sure I'll get a reputation for being a boor for saying it yet again

We should all be ventilating our printing areas!