I have several 40-80 watt 880 nm CW infrared lasers kicking around, fiber coupled, and capable of pulse width modulation. Has anyone ever tried a laser heated hot end? I'm not thinking of laser melting the filament itself at the nozzle, but dumping the laser output into a very small heat block, holding just the nozzle, platinum thin film sensor, and the laser fiber. The fiber is 0.8mm in diameter, or roughly half the diameter of a typical printing filament. It would be like asking the printer to move one more wire, while removing the two now going to the heater, and the heater itself.
Heat blocks are are as large as they are just to hold the resistive heater.
Thoughts, other than it's a very expensive way to hold a match to a nozzle? Best IR absorbent that will tolerate being threaded for the nozzle, etc., etc?
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/03/2022 05:52PM by rq3.