Pure Silver Heat Block - Beware

You can see my previous posts on this topic. A pure silver heat block works fantastically well, until it doesn't. I have been using my pure silver block for over a year, with a brass mounted diamond nozzle, and the VDE-100 extruder.

Today, the entire nozzle blew out of the silver heat block. Even though gold plated, the silver block slowly alloys itself with the tin and copper in the nozzle, until the nozzle threads are gone. The silver heat block is fine, and would likely have worked with a nozzle that was anything but brass.

I'll be trying again with an OFHC copper heat block, also gold plated, but I believe it's important to report failures, as well as what may appear to be to be successes.

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rq3
You can see my previous posts on this topic. A pure silver heat block works fantastically well, until it doesn't. I have been using my pure silver block for over a year, with a brass mounted diamond nozzle, and the VDE-100 extruder.

Today, the entire nozzle blew out of the silver heat block. Even though gold plated, the silver block slowly alloys itself with the tin and copper in the nozzle, until the nozzle threads are gone. The silver heat block is fine, and would likely have worked with a nozzle that was anything but brass.

I'll be trying again with an OFHC copper heat block, also gold plated, but I believe it's important to report failures, as well as what may appear to be to be successes.

Correction! The nozzle threads had "dissolved" about 0.1mm, but the silver heat block threads at the nozzle end were completely gone, over about 3/4 of the circumference. Note that this seems to be due to alloy migration across the dissimilar metals, and NOT from mechanical stripping of threads during nozzle tightening. The heat break threads in this case are Grade 5 Titanium, and there was no apparent issue with either the titanium or silver threads in that area.

I would also like to state that the manufacturer of the DiamondBack nozzle stepped right up and are replacing the nozzle at no charge, and they are eagerly awaiting the "failed" nozzle for forensic analysis. Way above and beyond the call of duty. I can heartily recommend DiamondBack nozzles.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/20/2022 07:50PM by rq3.

Interesting. Time to add an iridium nozzle to your collection of exotic elements?

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dekutree64
Interesting. Time to add an iridium nozzle to your collection of exotic elements?

Nah. Almost 3 times heavier than copper with at best 1/2 the thermal conductivity. But this OFHC 101 copper just arrived for the latest heat block!