Your thoughts about the new PICO hotend

I received mine OK. Looks nice but I haven't done anything with it. So B3 are certainly not fraudsters.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

After "remembering" the guys at B3 innovations of my order, they shipped it yesterday and apologized.
Now I'm waiting for my Pico to arrive...

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/01/2014 09:48AM by RobertKuhlmann.

[not sure what happened to my old account - had to re join to post .. so not really new]

Wow - a total surprise Thursday, a pico arrived at my doorstep.
I just about forgot I had ordered it.
after wrangling with a e3d hotend, and not being able tor solve jamming issues with it (ongoing for a long time ... and I've simply given up). this comes at a nice time.
well packaged, and presented upon opening, comes with a color booklet, ... thing looks beautiful. and i'm not just saying that.
I've almost considered doing an unboxing video... but there's some already out there
very professionally done, the packaging alone screams they are proud of their work.
I hope to get this installed this weekend and give it a go.

Currently test running a Pico, no issues at all so far, no jamming, very compact design. Will be running some Nylon thru it this week.

So this thing can go upto 500°C??

What kind of higher performance materials can be processed at such high temperatures?

Richard Horne's review in the 3rd issue of reprap magazine wasn't very glowing (pun not intended).

The Pico folks surely wowed a lot of people with their pretty "FEA", though.

So I have the pico now running on a makergear m2.
using the makergear marlin firmware M2Marlinx1619Vwith24v40W.zip.
(thermistor type 1)

Overall, I am impressed. B3 did this right.
very clean prints so far.
no jamming or any issues what so ever running ABS

while setting it up I had a few unrelated mishaps with my drive system while dialing that in, and was able to clear the hotend easily.

So as far as out of the box performance, the pico is hands down better then the E3D hotend
as there has been zero jamming.
also the build quality of the hotend is just much higher.

Cleaner prints then and the stock m2 hotend.

prints were very clean, when I say clean, I mean no bubbles etc on the outer shell.
which admittedly likely the fault of some cheap filament I am running, but all the same filament on this hotend has no issue.
retracts also worked flawlessly which was problematic on the E3D.

i'm getting as good or better results then I can get from my makerbot replicator 1, which is saying a lot.

I have some nylon, I plan to give that a try when I get some time.

So far I cant find fault with the hotend, performs as expected.

I truly cant express how happy I am. my M2 really has been basically unusable till now... for my m2 its been a long road to get here.

The drive system was the weakest link on the M2, which was finicky to get working well.
The makergear hotend is a classic, but I never could get the stock m2 hotend working 100% with the m2
with the m2, it jams occasionally and could never get a overshoot/undershoot issue resolved...and was likely a connected issue.
I had to preheat manually per makergears direction and even then I would sometimes have that issue.

I replaced the drive system with an all metal drive system. that worked reasonably well with the makerger hotend..
but still had the overshot/undershoot issue. to get around it maker gear actually instructed me to not use the pre-heat settings in gcode but to remove that, pre heat the hotend and allow it get stable before kicking off a print. .... needless to say, when doing many prints, this is not very practical.
so the m2 sat gathering dust and I just used my makerbot replicator 1....

the E3D hotend was a total disaster for me, even after replacement parts and quite a bit of back and forth. it kept jamming. I never finished a print with it.
it didn't work well no mater what drive system was used. it would jam near the transition point. seemed the tolerances were off. I gave up on it. even revisited it recently with similar results.

I am using now the all metal drive system that gives me reliable filament drive , and the pico which, so far, is jam free and works as it should, warm up via gcode...
Seems ready for some heavy use. time will tell.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/16/2014 06:13PM by innkeeper.

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So I have the pico now running on a makerbot m2.

Should that be Makergear M2?

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m2 sat gathering dust and I just used my makerbot 1....

I assume you do mean makerbot here?

Must be easy to mix up if you have one of each.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

RichRap takes an extended look at the state of Hot-Ends.
[issuu.com]

Quote
nophead

Quote

So I have the pico now running on a makerbot m2.

Should that be Makergear M2?

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m2 sat gathering dust and I just used my makerbot 1....

I assume you do mean makerbot here?

Must be easy to mix up if you have one of each.

yes exactly, I've corrected the names, and made it clearer on makerbot calling it makerbot replicator 1 thanks!

I got a look at one last night, reminded me of 50's art deco styling. Very nice.

I still have yet to see it print, but the manufacturing on it is superb.

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A2
RichRap takes an extended look at the state of Hot-Ends.
[issuu.com]

interesting read, though, I should send him my v4 E3D to test with.
i'm sure though he would get a better reply / response with getting it fixed / replaced then I did.

on the Pico, I noticed he is running 3mm beta with Bowden version and I am running 1.75 production version with slot mount.

My long term comfort level with it is yet to be seen - So I am cautiously optimistic.

I've not run any pla thought it, nor anything else other then ABS.
I don't particularly like pla, but for the greater good, I can give it a go if anyone is interested.

I also have some nylon, tglass and wood. plenty of stuff to try when I get time.
tglass I have seems oversized, and might not work.

I can say, at least for abs, I had no problems doing high speed printing right off the bat.
running 230c, so my experience is different then his with high speed print.

another observation, on ooze, I don't agree with him, it dosn't ooze anywhere near as much as the makergear or makerbot hotends, so I don't see where he gets that.
in fact, I thought there was a problem before my first print as it really was not oozing much , relatively speaking, on preheat, something I am used to seeing on my other hotends.
and on print the retract was not set high, and worked flawlessly. I happened to have retract already set low to try and get around the E3D jamming.

id not go so far as to make any claim how the Bowden setup works as i simply do not have that setup.

currently running a .4 tip, I also have a .35 but may not install it unless I have some need.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/16/2014 06:58PM by innkeeper.

The smaller diameter 1.75mm filament is less likely to jam because it's moving through the hot end at a faster rate, i.e. less heat is creeping up through the filament, and into the cold end.

Bowden extruders require a longer retraction, and pulls more of the molten plastic up into the cold end, which increases the chance of a jam to occur.

Smaller filament diameter, fast extrusion rate, larger orifice diameter, and thicker layers help to reduce jams in the cold end.

I don't own a 3d printer yet, just my take on it, ymmv, but I have spent a fair amount of time reviewing all the designs. I am presently waiting for a ~10yr old 3d printer (never assembled, probably missing parts), I think it's one of the original ones.

I haven't tried Bowden but surely the amount of retraction needed at the hot end is the same. At the other end of the tube it will need to retract further to achieve that due to slack and springiness.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

Quite curious to see about 1.75mm PLA.

It's always so cute to see a hotend get a *GREAT* rating when it's tested. Usually it is because the test was performed with 3mm ABS, which is the easiest filament I've printed with so far, very forgiving.

However, when printing 1.75mm PLA through bowden, has given me the best end-results as a filament. So it's really important to me to find out if this Pico also prints that well. I'm currently very happy with my Merlin, but I am always open to new designs as I am currently building a new printer from the ground up (doesn't have a name yet, but is inspired on a cube/corexy system).

The bottom line is, I just don't want to be a guinea pig as I am a student with a finite amount of gold in my stash

I hope someone can tell me about printing 1.75mm PLA through a bowden setup Pico hotend. Probably needs a good cooling fan on the insulator part?

- Marinus

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http://www.marinusdebeer.nl/

Quote
nophead
I haven't tried Bowden but surely the amount of retraction needed at the hot end is the same. At the other end of the tube it will need to retract further to achieve that due to slack and springiness.

I agree that the retraction should be exactly the same at the hot end for a Bowden, or extruder mounted above the hot end.
I think one scenario that causes jams in a Bowden is probably due to not properly tuning the exact minimal amount of retraction. It's over retracting causing the jams, pulling the soften, or molten filament into the cold zone.

Problem in Paridise

ok had my first issue with the pico, was working well, then started acting up.
turns out the heater element is loose. ... which I didn't thing was possible,

I don't see a way to tighten it. anyway, got a message out on the goggle support form .. see what they say.

oh on retraction, if anyone is interested .. I am using a retraction of like .4 seems to work well.
haven't gone lower yet.

(First post, I keep finding this post when I search for Pico hot end and thought it was worth giving some real world experience)

I initially had problems with printing PLA but the B3 guys were very helpful in pointing me to the concept of seasoning my hot end. That resolved those issues and now I am happily printing both PLA and ABS without problems. In fact, side by side prints of my heavily modified Robo 3D with an UM2 create indistinguishable print quality. I know that 's not only the hot end as I've gone to great lengths to improve this printer from it's as-delivered state!

What I love about the hot end:
1. Built in flats for using a wrench to change nozzles.
2. The one piece construction for enhanced rigidity.
3. It's compact size.

What I dislike:
1. The need for active cooling but, that's no different than the other good hot ends so I'll live with it.
2. The fact that the two I've ordered to upgrade my new Boots Industries v2.5 delta printer have a 3-5 week lead time!

This really is a very nice piece of kit for someone with the skills to mount it and design the active cooling scheme for their particular printer.

I got my kickstarter one a while back, just finally installed it this week. It's a 3.0mm model that I'm attempting to run via a direct extruder. I added the 500ºC thermistor table to my firmware, hooked up a spool of Monoprice white PLA, turned on the cooling fan aimed at the fins, set temp to 220ºC, pushed through about 20cm of filament coated in Canola oil, set up a print job, and somehow very quickly ended up with a jam that could not be pulled out of the Pico.

I tried pulling the filament out of the print head with it heated to 250ºC for 6 minutes and no cooling on the fins, so it'd spread upward and hopefully loosen the blockage, but the filament just stretched and ultimately broke. It's lodged in there solidly. I've now disassembled the hot end and will be trying the heated-wire method to remove the stuck filament.

The Pico sure is pretty. With any luck I'll manage to get it unclogged and be able to try printing something.

Perhaps I'd run into the same issues with every all-metal design, but I'm finding this to be a very frustrating hotend to figure out.

I finally cleaned out the jam using a heated section of coat hanger. Then I went through the laborious process of putting my extruder back together and mounting it on the printer. I heated up the hot-end, greased up a section of PLA with canola oil, and fed it by hand into the hotend. It took more pressure than I'd have expected but plastic did extrude. I pulled back on the filament to remove it, and it was stuck solid. The whole adventure lasted less than thirty seconds, and once again the filament was completely stuck inside the thing –and this was a super-greased bit of filament. I tried to pull it out with pliers, and it wouldn't budge, it'd only break. So I turned off the whole device, swore, and will think twice before I bother spending more time on it. This thing just has a talent for getting insta-jammed. Maybe this particular PLA (which printed fine in an Ubis) has an affinity for sticking fast to the metal tube, or maybe the design of this hotend somehow tends to form an instant plug above the heat zone if conditions are unfavorable?

I've got an actual e3d v6 on its way, I may just wait for that to arrive and see if I have better luck. Granted I'm working on a modded hobbyist machine and can be expected to have to spend time tinkering to make things work, but I have less and less time these days to spend.

Tried cleaning it all out again, including burning out the nozzle just in case it was blocked. Then reassembled the hotend, heated it up, and pushed some filament through without mounting it to the printer. It does extrude but it sure seems to take an awful lot of pressure to push the filament through -- seemed like a fairly ridiculous amount of pressure, maybe I should have chosen the larger nozzle (I've got the .35mm). No jams this time, but I do wonder if my extruder is even capable of consistently feeding with sufficient force.

Onward.

Have you got a fan cooling it? I am pretty sure you will need one on an all metal hot end.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

You said you got the 3mm model and you're running it with a direct extruder. Is that 'direct' in the not-bowden sense, or direct in the not-geared sense? Having recently been through the 1.75 to 3mm transition and making my own extruders and hotends, I'd say it will be fairly difficult to get a non-geared extruder using a typical nema17 motor to push 3mm filament through a .35mm nozzle. You can make life much easier for yourself by running a geared extruder and a .5mm nozzle, and 1.75mm filament makes the whole deal easier too. It's also worth noting that pla seems to be by far the most difficult plastic for a hotend to deal with.

What's the size of the bore on the pico? If it's tight on the 3mm filament you might want to try a different roll as a slightly oversized section of filament could cause problems. Getting some of the new 2.8mm filament might make life a lot easier. With the nozzle off, it's worth running a piece of filament back and forward through the hotend, using the tip to feel for any rough spots. If there are any burrs in there you can remove them either with an appropriately sized reamer, or with a bit of 400 to 600 grit sandpaper stuck to a wooden dowel. Once you are sure that there are no burrs you can polish the bore to a high shine using a dremel and cotton buds (Q tips) and something like autosol metal polish.

The pico is a nice looking design, but using stainless for the heater block seems a bit contrary to me. I can see why they like the idea of single piece construction, but they haven't functionally reduced the failure points (the joints in the filament path) beyond a more normal stainless heat break, aluminum heat block, brass nozzle setup. Using materials with the appropriate thermal conductivity for the task seems like a no brainer to me, and as far as I can see the e3d V6 layout looks much more rational.

I'm glad I went with Eric's Prometheus V2. Has never jammed.

Direct in the 'not bowden' sense. It's a geared extruder. I've had no trouble printing with .35mm nozzle on an Ubis hot-end, but when I tried by hand the Pico really seemed to take a lot more pressure to push filament through than I remember being the case with Ubis and .35mm. The Pico seems like a nice-enough hot-end that I'm not giving up. I've ordered a .6mm nozzle and will give that a try when it arrives.

My "3mm" filament measures out to 2.8mm and fits through the hot-end's heat break just fine. I just call it 3mm because everyone does.

That Prometheus v2 hot end looks like a very nice design. If I don't have luck working with the Pico, or the e3d v6 that I've got on order, I'll give it a look.

All of this is happening because my last Ubis, which had worked dependably for 3 years, finally gave up -- and the fact that Printrbot no longer makes hot ends that accept 3mm filament made this an opportunity to branch out to use other hot end designs. I'm sticking with 3mm for now just because I have a small stockpile of filament to get through and it'd be a shame to waste it in a switch to 1.75mm.

The Pico looks like a nice hotend, Promethus looks good too, and might fit my setup better, just wish it was black, whats difference in weight?, interesting to hear the feedback, I just got a small linear rail...did I say small, this things is tiny, 240mm long I wasnt expecting it to be this small, heads about 20x20, with 3mm holes on rail & head...So the pico could be the ideal combination for it, just got to figure out if I can fit everything to the carriage.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/09/2016 12:06PM by MechaBits.

For what it's worth, the Prometheus is tiny compared to most. Aluminum w/ steel one piece nozzle and 25mm fan.

I did eventually get the pico running, for a short while. I ordered the .6mm nozzle. It took forever to make its way from Ohio to Los Angeles (ordered 3/6, "pre-shipped" 3/26 [paperwork filed?], accepted at origin facility 3/29, received 4/4).

I installed the .6mm nozzle, cleaned out the pico, oiled up my PLA filament, and the hotend actually functioned for me pretty well. I got a few benchys printed out while trying to dial in the right amount of retraction and whatnot. All was well. But then I ran out of filament and had to unload the small length of filament that remained and load up a new spool. I heated the pico, hit reverse on the extruder, and I saw that it moved the filament for a few mm –and then the hobbed bolt lost its bite on the filament and the whole thing just spun aimlessly. I pulled on the filament by hand, it was stuck good. I got out the pliers, and again could not make the filament budge. It was locked in place. I swore a whole bunch, which didn't really help but made me feel better.

The little fan was blowing at 100% at the cooling fins from the time the printer was powered-up, I started trying to retract filament as soon as the hotend reached temperature (i.e. it didn't sit in the hotend in a melted state for more than a couple of minutes), I really don't see anything I could do differently in order to avoid having to disassemble and clean out the entire hotend every time I want to change filament.

I cast the pico aside, and assembled and hooked up an e3d v6 with .4mm nozzle (ordered 3/1, shipped 3/2, received before 3/15 -- England thus wins the prompt shipping award). It printed beautifully right off the bat without issue, producing the most precise and beautiful surface I've seen from PLA on my printer. I'm done with the pico for now, probably forever. I'm just not interested in struggling to use a beautifully milled hotend that has an incredible talent for jamming.

edit -- I should add that I don't mean for this to come across as a statement of fact that the Pico is a bad hotend. It's just been a source of frustration for me. It seems that many other people are doing just fine with their Picos, and it should also be noted that I never contacted B3 technical support about this jamming to give them a chance to try and address the issue. I did see in their support forum that they recommend oiling filament (they now ship the pico with a little inline filter that has a piece of foam that applies oil to filament on its way to the extruder), so I did do that.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/26/2016 01:57PM by zachnfine.

what's this oiling the filament? all the filament as it runs through? what flavor?
I had heard about it nut not sure why, doesnt it contaminate?

For info on oiling PLA, see the comments in this thread in the B3 support forum:

Confusing PLA troubles

In any case, I couldn't get the Pico to print reliably until I started oiling the filament. I wonder if the particular alloy of stainless they're using just has a propensity to stick fast to PLA.