What filaments can be used in Ormerod Hotends?

Hi All...

I am aware that the Ormerod Hotends are fully compatible with PLA & ABS Filaments....

My question pertains to the other filaments out there such as Nylon, PVA, HIPS, PC & ABS/PC etc, etc....

is it capable of the extra Temps needed for these "Other" filaments?

Cheers
Gordon.

The original one-piece hot end that comes with most Ormerods should be capable of around 275C. It has a PTFE liner in it (PTFE maintains it's shape up to around 250C), but the hot end should be a little cooler in the area of the PTFE. It really depends on the cooling of the top of the nozzle working well.

The new Quick-set nozzle is a bit different. While we don't describe the Quickset as 'all-metal', all the hot parts of the nozzle are metal; the PTFE tube should not get hot. This means that it should be able to run much higher temperatures. We haven't actually tried, though! We did some Finite Element Analysis (FEA) on the nozzle, and reckon it could go to 500C okay, though the cooling block would be at around 50C. It's possible the heater block would radiate much more heat and effect other parts at this temperature; we just don't know.

However, our main limit is the thermistor, which is rated for 300C. We have tested the hot end at this temperature, and the cooling block gets to around 35C. It's possibly you could wire up a thermocouple, which would allow you to get to higher temperatures, but that would require extra circuitry and modifications to the firmware to work.

Ian
RepRapPro tech support

Awesome!!.. Thanks Ian..

So I should be able to with a little testing run Nylon (@~275'C) etc... Nothing to Exotic..... Yet...