Update on the E3D All Metal Hotend (Now finally shipping!) [Lots of pictures]

I can not wait to write SanjayM in discussions.
Today I finally received my replacement part sent Free of charge.
I want to thank in public SanjayM
MANY THANKS

Sanjay,

You need to fix your service side of the business!
It was easy to buy your hot end, but you are not responding to service claims.
I wasted my money on this hot end due to tolerance issues, it simply does not work.

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dsnijders
it simply does not work.

what you mean,find tht hard believe ,at the very least you can push filament though it by hand

Are you asking for help or just publicly venting? If the former, can you provide more information like the filament type (PLA, ABS), the diameter (3mm, 1.75mm), the extrusion temp, the measured diameter of your filament. Also, what tolerance are you having issue with. Mine works so well, I just ordered one from a US distributor for my mini Kossel to replace a leaking JHead.
-Jay

Quote
dsnijders
Sanjay,

You need to fix your service side of the business!
It was easy to buy your hot end, but you are not responding to service claims.
I wasted my money on this hot end due to tolerance issues, it simply does not work.

Hi Everyone!

Long time no talky. Really sorry about that. It has always been my intention to be as active as possible on forums and communities. However recently we've been undergoing huge strains in terms of human time, and the amount of growth we are experiencing. Please bear in mind that only 6 months ago we didn't exist as a business. In the last six months we outgrew 2 industrial units in the first 6 weeks - and we now have relocated again to two decently sized industrial units, one for packing and admin, one for manufacture and research. We've undergone growth that I could never have expected, we are talking growth measurable in thousands of percent, in only 6 months. This is amazing, and a lot of it is down to how much you guys have supported us, and I will never forget that our success is linked to our support from you guys.

The real kicker here is that both me (Sanjay - engineering and customer service) and (Dave - finance, sales, logistics) are still employed as FULL TIME TEACHERS. You will note that my decrease in responding on here coincides with the start of the new school term here in the UK. The fact is that we have kids that we have responsibilities to. We could have quit, and walked away, and probably made more money doing so. However we owe it to these guys to see them through their courses, and not abandon them to supply teachers just as their coursework and exams begin.

It's been a tough time, and we spent summer working 16 hour shifts, every day. We've bought in a new employee (Josh - Web and programming, engineering and research.) to help things out. We're growing and doing very well, but the sheer speed and growing demand has us pinned down.

Milieri
I hope your issue is now resolved with the extrusion/filament grip/rubber thing. We use rubber as the extruder idler tensioner on our printers, and much prefer it to springs. Let me know if things work out for you, if not then I'll look into if it's a problem with our stuff - if it is, then we'll support you.

turutk
That is really odd - what ABS are you using? Changed brand or colour recently? Is your cooling system working properly - the heatsink should not be warm or hot to the touch, even on the bottom fin.

ddseeker
Nice clip duct addon there. We really considered shipping something just like that by default, but decided that because the fit is pretty tight in a lot of carriages already adding extra width might be a poor idea. My latest plan is to add two holes on the side of the duct through which you can thread a cable-tie to clip the wires to with no protruding printed parts.

Jkolo
That hole was put there as a back up in case we had to change thermistor types to an axial thermistor. It's placement is a bit off for optimal thermal response, but it does work. The thermistor hole is designed for the Honeywell 135-104LAG-J01.

If you're interested in water cooling we have just announced the (much belated) Kraken 4-nozzle, water cooled, super compact hotend.


Video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgE7_cTqKoU

We are also looking at a super compact mini water cooled hotend, for just one nozzle. Might name it after some fast sea fish/animal. Marlin is already taken though, suggestions welcomed!

Speedyskilz
I know of one guy who is mounting it to a RepRapPro - http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:165309
It's a huxley, not a mendel, but I think they use a common hotend and mounting system? At the least something to derive or take inspiration from.

gyronictonic
Nice mounting system! Really focussed on being compact but rigid by the looks of things. I'm a real fan of that little cone that comes right up towards the hobbed gear to constrain the filament as soon as it leaves the hob, so it can't buckle.

Willst
As new perfection said, it's not a problem really - if you are using 3mm filament then you can actually get away without using a printed spacer at all. My reccomended method here is to use a small length of the PTFE tube you have to guide the filament from right up in the extruder to right down into the hotend. But a printed spacer also works just fine.

BobC
Ugh - I know.
The groovemount standard is a bit scrappy, and was intened for use with softer peek bodied hotends, screws bite into these as they are screw through. With aluminium it's a different story, so you have to add some clearance/space. We designed it to fit in as many extruders as easily as possible, and broadly we have succeeded in making it work in about 80% of cases. But it's just not possible to do a perfect one size fits all existing groovemount systems in a material that groovemount wasn't intended for.

In the future I would just like to see us using something like an M10 male thread on the top of the hotend, that screws right into a printed hole. (Or indeed a machined tapped hole in other materials.) We are at the point where we can print threads like M10 into parts, and failing that we can just allow the threads to self tap and form threads into plain printed holes.

MaralB
Oh man. I cannot say sorry to you enough, you have been struck by absolutely every misfortune that we have had, bad parts coming in, we lost some data about orders in a server crash. Everything bad that has happened to our little company seems to have funnelled its way down to you. I see you got you parts, I hope you are up and printing as soon as possible. If you ever need any more hotend stuff just email me as you have before, and I will sort something out for you by way of apology.

Karabas
The 2.4*D rule is fairly decent, the idea is to make all the liquid flow laminar, and having a slightly elongated extrusion orifice helps extrudate leave the nozzle cleanly. However polymers do just naturally flow in a very laminar fashion anyway, so you can get away with quite a lot of variance here. I would never go below 1.5*D though.

Bujholm
Proper engineering drawings are now up on the site - it is missing the internal nozzle profile though. These drawings are from my machinist - and he uses a lathe to turn the outer profile, then off to another machine to do the drilling of the inside.
Basically the nozzle is drilled out the the appropriate size for the filament diameter (3.2mm or 2mm) to a depth such that when the final hole is drilled the length of the extrusion orifice (small hole) is around 2.4*D. Our default 0.4mm nozzles have an extrusion orifice length of 1mm.

Isos
Sorry to hear you're having jamming problems. Printing slowly shouldn't be a problem, but I suspect you might have cooling issues? Is your heatsink always cold to the touch, not noticeably warm or even hot?
The heatsink must remain entirely cool during printing for reliable results.

djsniders
Sorry for not getting back to you earlier, as I mentioned at the top we are under a lot of pressure right now. We're doing our best. Things will be absolutely and conclusively fixed next month. Permenantly. We just have to tough out the next few weeks.
Are you sure that the tubing is being pushed right down into the heatsink? You have to get it down into the lowest recess. This engineering drawing may help:
http://files.e3d-online.com/Drawings/E3D_Heat_Sink.jpg
If what I suggested doesn't work, then please do get in touch again via email or on here, and we will support you.

E3D stands behind it's product - and we will support you if you run into issues. It's just over the next 6 weeks we are going to be at somewhat diminished capacity.

Sorry for the essay!

Sanjay

Awesome to see the Kraken finally. I think I know what I'm going to ask for for Christmas

The two E3D hot ends I've been using on my dual-extruder printer have been great, though they are a bit bulky.

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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!

Hi Sanjay,
Since I posted here, I have done a lot of experimenting with my hotend and I have a theory. I sent a very long message through 'contact us' at your website explaining everything to get your advice around 10 days ago. I did not get a reply so I added some updates to my story and emailed you. I you want I can copy paste the email as a pm to you.

About the abs:
I have been using the same abs but also i have been experimenting with 3 different home extruded abs filaments. I had the issue with all 4. In my email I explain how i got all of them to print.

Any idea when this should be available for sale?

Hi Sanjay,
Did you know there is another "Kraken" extruder: [www.youtube.com]? Not sure who was first. It could get confusing as they are both multi head extruders for Reprap.

When you have the heat break and the cartridge heater in a clearance hole with a set screw pushing it to one side you have two cylinders meeting tangentially, so a theoretically zero contact area and an air gap around the rest. Cartridge heaters are designed to be a press fit into a precision hole and rely on thermal expansion to ensure they are really tight when hot. Are you sure you get a good enough thermal connection with your method? I would use a split in the block and a screw to draw it together making a clamp. That way it connects almost all the way round the cylinder.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

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nophead
I would use a split in the block and a screw to draw it together making a clamp. That way it connects almost all the way round the cylinder.

Like this one.

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Detlef

Excalibur Hotend

reprapclean32.png

reprapzone.blogspot.de

Quite surprisingly, the cartridge heater that came with my hot end had to be hammered in (carefully) because the fit was rather tight. Knowing that there had been problems with falsely labeled and oversized heaters, I checked that possibility first, but everything seemed to be within spec except of the fit. Anyway, nice thermal contact, so no worries here

@Sanjay: The Kraken hotend looks good! Are you using only a tapped channel in the middle as heat exchanger between heatsink and water?
Glad to hear that you are planning a watercooled solo hotend. One thing that has bugged be about the all metal hot ends was the increased length (as compared to compact ones like the J-Head). Especially a multiple extrusion method using only one hot end as discussed here (Google Translate Italian->English), here and here (Google Translate German->English) might benefit from an ultra short hot end.

Hello Sanya,
adter two years of looking forward to a 3D printer, I finally made my first steps to go for it. But I'm one of thoose who likes to make things by myself, what goes allways with questions and leaks of basic knowledge.
So now my point is that I don't understand how the hotend is fixed to the working plate (like this one by example: [shop.deltatower.ch])

Now my working plate would look different, but still be for a delta printer. So now my question to you would be first if you have some pictures which would show the mechanical connection.
And could you provide me the dimmensions of the actually sold metal hotend, so I could go forward and make the design my working plate? (Great would be a solidworks file)

Thanks in advance
Dome

Dome,

If you go to Thingiverse and do a search on E3D there are models already drawn of this hotend with many examples of how it's used Thingiverse Search

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Jumperdome
Now my working plate would look different, but still be for a delta printer. So now my question to you would be first if you have some pictures which would show the mechanical connection.
And could you provide me the dimmensions of the actually sold metal hotend, so I could go forward and make the design my working plate? (Great would be a solidworks file)

[www.thingiverse.com]

Pla printing with E3D
I finally managed to print without many hitches
[youtu.be]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/11/2013 10:25AM by maralb.

E3D on mini Kossel - printing 1.75mm white PLA at 65mm/s perimeter 80 mm/s infill 400mm/s travel (commanded not measured).

[www.youtube.com]

Only issues I have experienced:

• The hotend needs a few minutes to finish expanding
• 1.75mm filament is weak compared to 3mm and is prone to jam on the initial warm up. The 3mm E3D I have on my Prusa never jams

Quote
SanjayM
Milieri
I hope your issue is now resolved with the extrusion/filament grip/rubber thing. We use rubber as the extruder idler tensioner on our printers, and much prefer it to springs. Let me know if things work out for you, if not then I'll look into if it's a problem with our stuff - if it is, then we'll support you.

Yes my extruder work now with the rubber tensioner without problem. Thanks.

I think 3mm is really the way to go, after having used 1.75mm for about a year, the amount of issues is simply rediculous, the hobbed bolts are pretty much all designed for 3mm anyways, so when you use them with 1.75mm they just chew it up and then it kinks.

any idea on the price for the kraken yet? ive got a water cooled hot end already but its dying slowly because of the ptfe tube inside of it. but i have the whole water cooling setup already and ive added an inline peltier unit which can raise or lower the temperature of the water.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/12/2013 02:11AM by aduy.

I have been using my E3D for 2 weeks or so, and i am baId right now of pulling my hairs out.

I bought it to print better with ABS and no leaking elements.
It's not leaking.

But constant random jams.
ABS on 240 degrees and tried different colors all the same problem.
The hobbed bolt is eating like hell.

Cleaned the hotend several times in Aceton.
Bored the filamenthole of the eextruder to 3.5mm

What I did notice, when the filament has been eaten. There is a lot of debris on the entrance of the hotend. As I the entrance is V-shaped it wil take chunks in to the shaft.
When I feed filament by hand you feel a lot of friction in the ribbed part.
When I clean it it feels a lot smoother, but you will still feel a hick up when the filament enters the cool down shaft (the part which connect the heater block and Heatsink.)

I hope it's a bit clear.... And some tips would be great.

Edit
@millerii
After reading while thread see you were having same problems. And they are solved?
What size of rubber tube you use?
I can't imagine it will solve this but for sure I try!!

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/13/2013 03:10AM by Justintime.

Justintime:
Yeah, mine works good now without problem. Rubbers are pretty small (~10x4mm), clamped between two washer (look attachment).
Assumably your hobbed bolt worked good with previous hotend? Maybe you can try to get more tension against the hobbend bolt if that makes different.

Why is rubber better than a spring? Seems like a spring will give a more constant force as changes in filament diameter are negligible compared to spring length but less so for rubber. Maybe that is not a significant disadvantage but where is the advantage?

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

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nophead
Why is rubber better than a spring? Seems like a spring will give a more constant force as changes in filament diameter are negligible compared to spring length but less so for rubber. Maybe that is not a significant disadvantage but where is the advantage?

i would have thought the relatively near linear resistance a compression spring would provide would be better for coping with a changing diameter, i suspect that in using rubber o rings they are already under compression and are probably no better than using the no spring fixed distance method,

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-=( blog )=- -=( thingiverse )=- -=( 3Dindustries )=- -=( Aluhotend - mostly metal hotend)=--=( Facebook )=-

I owe this forum a short update.
Sanjay just sent me replacements for the couplers and heatsink.
So i need to take back my statements related to service levels.

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Justintime
I have been using my E3D for 2 weeks or so, and i am baId right now of pulling my hairs out.

I bought it to print better with ABS and no leaking elements.
It's not leaking.

But constant random jams.
ABS on 240 degrees and tried different colors all the same problem.
The hobbed bolt is eating like hell.

I am running PLA at 260C Using the supplied thermistor adn temp_sensor_0 = 1 in configuration.h) so I'm sure you'll need to increase your hotend temperature as well for ABS. Do this, heat your hotend and insert filament in by hend (no extruder attached) to get a feel for the force required. Start upping your temparature until you feel you have no drips and the force required is reasonable. You may have to modify your configuration.h file (look for #define HEATER_0_MAXTEMP 275) if you exceed that amount.

-Jay

Thanks all.....

Before I have read the o-ring solution. I bought rubber fuel hose. I saw that on several Bowden extruders. So I thought that was your setup.
Didn't try yet but I will.

I am definitely sure I don't have to tighten it more because the filament is deeply marked with teeth. And already tried different strengths

And the temperature? 260 degrees for PLA?? What to use for ABS then +310 degrees?
I think it's ridiculous high.

Can others confirm these temps?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/14/2013 01:17AM by Justintime.

I'm kind of confused by these high temps you guys are requiring for your filament. I just got my E3D up and running and am printing fine with 1.75mm ABS at 230C. I haven't run that much filament through it but I've kept a close eye on everything and it's working smooth at that temp range.

I did however, take a diamond file to the inlet of the E3D to smooth the transition of the filament from the extruder into the hotend before I assembled everything. What I noticed during my initial fitting was that the filament seemed to catch (when inserted by hand) at the transition from the extruder to the hotend. I used a very fine and small round file on an electric screw-driver to smooth out that transition.

I'm using this extruder: Thingiverse and it's a very open design so it's easy to see what's going on.

@p40

You mean you feel friction when entering the heatbreak? Or at the beginning of the hotend?

It did came up to me to ream it up with a file. But then I read it was machinepolished inside. So didn't dare to.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/14/2013 09:50AM by Justintime.

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Justintime
@p40

You mean you feel friction when entering the heatbreak? Or at the beginning of the hotend?

It did came up to me to ream it up with a file. But then I read it was machinepolished inside. So didn't dare to.

Right at the top of the Hotend there is a funnel shaped opening that is supposed to guid the filament into the heat-break. I found that when I was attaching the hotend to my extruder body, even though the holes lined up perfectly, the filament would catch on the edge of the hotend before entering the heatbreak. I have a few small round diamond files so i just smoothed out the transition until the filament would slide easily by hand into the hotend. I just assumed I had one that wasn't cleanly machined but this may be part of the design.

I don't have any feed issues.

Can anyone offer some advise?

Been using E3D V4 since launch not a problem (other then the early days)

month ago i homed the printer and head banged a clip holding the glass quite bad and started getting bad prints.

When i had a remove of the hotend and a check over i noticed the copper head was slighty bent so i thought ohh well ill upgrade to the newer style nozzle with a point insead of my older rounded tip.

since getting and fitting the new tip getting LOTS of ooze!

used to run at 0.6mm retraction now even on 1mm im getting goose bumps all over prints also visibly at start of print it leaks plastic like crazy.

im printing colorfab PLA/PHA at 230C if i print at 220C i get jams after a while. (this is also the same temp as i used before changing nozzle for like 6 months+ no problems)

any ideas on why im having such problems guys?

OK......new update....

Fuel hose and rubber O-rings didnt work...... Higher temperatures didnt work either.......

When i push in the filament by hand it goes wel......like i said you feel the transition from the cooling part to the hot end. But when its in the threaded part its okay...

Then i saw a chewed up part of my filament and pushed in the E3D....and there it went wrong....
As i have the Hyena hobbed bolt...wich is a very good bolt but with sharp theeth....it leaves its marks in the filament....
It gets stuck in the threaded part....or stuck....it goes heavy.....

So what i did i drilled the whole hotend to 3.5 mm...... It was gett

And so far so good!!!! keep my fingers crossed...><

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/2013 09:05AM by Justintime.