I was thinking about heat exchange, as I frequently do, and I was wondering why we need electricity routed into a hot end. Can't we just move heat into a hot end through antifreeze? The whole heater block can be transplanted away form the hot end. We can route hot antifreeze through a heat exchanger, which would melt the plastic. The heater block can regulate the temperature of the antifreeze, which can be pumed into the heat exchanger on the printer hot end.
This is basically the opposite of a water cooled hot end. Instead of cooling the hot end from an external source, we can heat the hot end from an external source. Since the boiling point of antifreeze is about 200C, it may work well with PLA. All you'd need is some ptfe tubing to transport the hot stuff. In conjunction with a bowden drive, we can eliminate electricity from the rapidly moving print head. The benefit would be stopping electrical fires caused when wires come loose. Just an idea.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/14/2014 08:27PM by pbrstreetgang.