The J-Head Lite will blow your face out

J-Head Lite

No sugar added!

The main difference in this design is the use of off the shelf products and technology to build a more economical hot end. For example, the heat sink is actually just a simple plumbing cap with a hole through it and mounted with a brass nut. The holder uses 1/2" reprocessed PTFE instead of the 5/8" in regular j-heads. The difference in price between 1/2" and 5/8" is substantial. For 1.75mm filament only.

Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 12/15/2013 07:36PM by ohioplastics.

J-head does not use PTFE as a structural part like yours does, it uses PEEK which is much harder and stays harder when hot. Hotends that use PTFE like that are known to fail. You need to have some sort of structural material to support the heater portion like [geometricobjectdepositiontool.blogspot.ca] which uses the same components with the addition of a support material and even then it only lasted a few months before leaking and failing.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/15/2013 06:30PM by Sublime.

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Your hot end design is failing because of poor thermal management and an inefficient design. This extruder uses a stainless steal barrel, which has much lower thermal conductivity than the brass one in your blog. On top of that it has a copper heat sink which dissipates the vast majority of the heat before it gets to the PTFE. Putting a piece of copper on a copper barrel does absolutely nothing. Maybe you should examine your own design before critiquing mine.

You can buy one and test it out for yourself for $27.50.

Also this isn't a J-head, it's a J-head Lite

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/15/2013 08:56PM by ohioplastics.

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ohioplastics
J-Head Lite

No sugar added!

The main difference in this design is the use of off the shelf products and technology to build a more economical hot end. For example, the heat sink is actually just a simple plumbing cap with a hole through it and mounted with a brass nut. The holder uses 1/2" reprocessed PTFE instead of the 5/8" in regular j-heads. The difference in price between 1/2" and 5/8" is substantial. For 1.75mm filament only.

I like the use of material available in hardware shops. The use of the plumbing cap is KISS.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/16/2013 01:22AM by Xabbax.

I love the fact you can buy most of the things you need for a 3D printer at a shop down the road. Thanks for the input.

How much plastic have you run through a J-head lite without troubles so far? I just bought from you and am looking forward to using it!

About 7 kgs of ABS I think. It's still a very new design.

Bump, I'd like to if anyone has ordered one of these yet to confirm how well they work.

Well I just pulled the trigger and bought one. I will report back here with my findings.

I'm trying to print PLA with it, but am having problems getting it to go through. What settings do you use for PLA? Do you use a fan on the mount? Thanks

I've had alot of complaints with people using it with PLA. I think it has something to do with the steal barrel. I'm working on trying to get the 2mm hole smoother, although I have limited machining capacity.

I'll try another drill bit & we'll see how it goes. @ $13 a drill bit, I'm hesitant to make the leap, but I guess it's gotta be done. I'll send replacement barrels for anyone who is having difficulty with PLA. Just hit me up on Ebay.

Quote
ohioplastics
I've had alot of complaints with people using it with PLA. I think it has something to do with the steal barrel. I'm working on trying to get the 2mm hole smoother, although I have limited machining capacity.

I'll try another drill bit & we'll see how it goes. @ $13 a drill bit, I'm hesitant to make the leap, but I guess it's gotta be done. I'll send replacement barrels for anyone who is having difficulty with PLA. Just hit me up on Ebay.

Well I bought it because your eBay listing said it would do PLA. I don't currently have any need to print ABS. So I really hope that I don't have any problems. I will be posting back here with a review (good or bad). I have a genuine J-Head and a few other extruders to compare it to.

PLA works OK at the higher temperature range, but the print quality diminishes at those temps. It's a double edged sword. Should I raise prices to pay for the more expensive tooling, keep the status quo, or do I eat the cost?

Buy the $13 drill bit if you think it might fix it. Find a makerspace that has a lathe or other tooling if necessary. But most importantly, be honest with your customers. If you've not done enough testing with PLA, say so from the beginning rather than boasting about how good it is Hope that's not too harsh. I like where your hotend design is going as the genuine J-Head is very expensive. The Mk7 nozzle compatibilty is nice as well, and the copper heatsink is clever. But you need to make sure it has consistent flow for both PLA and ABS (or rename it as "ABS only") before anyone will take it seriously.

This design looks very interesting. I'd like to give it a try but since I only print in PLA the issue with the barrel makes me hesitant. If I order one is there anything I can at home that could help me smooth out the barrel myself?

It works with ok with PLA. Just not at the ultra low temperatures some people run it at to get higher gloss. Just crank up the heat a little and it works fine. I've got some bits on order. All I'm sayin is it's hard to keep the price at $2 a barrel with a $13 drill bit.

That's understandable that's why I was curious if there was anything we could do to improve them ourselves. I typically print at 190 and 195 does that sound OK?

I usually run it at 210C or higher. But I don't use it alot. My testing was focused on the important stuff, like not burning someones house down.

It'll be in a couple of days but I'm pretty sure I'm going to get one to try it out.

I'm in a similar boat as some here... I ordered one to try out but will only be using it for PLA. The hotend arrived this week but the wiring is still waiting to be finished on the printer so I haven't had a chance to try it out yet. Got my fingers crossed though. The PLA I use from Revolution Printers likes to run around 205C with an Ubis and 40 to 60mm/s speeds, so hopefully those temps and this head work together also.

Aparently, you can polish it with a toothpick in a dremel tool, and some kitchen stainless steel scouring cream.

Hmm... makes me wonder if it would be possible to use an olive oil soaked toothpick. I've used olive oil to polish stainless steel before.

I picked up some ajax and some pipe cleaners today. Polished a couple with a power drill. They look really shiny! Whether or not it helps PLA extrusion, couldn't say, but at least I'll sleep better knowing that the inside of my tubes are polished. There could be 50 things that can cause a hot end to jam. The tubes are just my best guess. I'm skeptical that it really makes that big of a difference, but what do I know.

I pulled the trigger and bought one today. I'm pretty excited to try it out.

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ohioplastics
I picked up some ajax and some pipe cleaners today. Polished a couple with a power drill. They look really shiny! Whether or not it helps PLA extrusion, couldn't say, but at least I'll sleep better knowing that the inside of my tubes are polished. There could be 50 things that can cause a hot end to jam. The tubes are just my best guess. I'm skeptical that it really makes that big of a difference, but what do I know.

Could you run some PLA and let us all know how it comes out?

Will do.

Hi, just noticed this thread and think it would be worth to have mentioned in the ebay description that better work with ABS! As I spent hours trying make it work with PLA first
When mentioned on ebay it is not working with PLA already got message with replacement barrel sent to me. Thanks ohioplastics, but could do polishing myself if this improve things.

My guess of what happen (nearly believe): plastic start melting and fill the chamber sticking to the walls of the steel barell and not possible to push as the plastic is too soft at this point. I tried using toothpick to push it out and that works but the next plastic would stick again.

My other thought was that there are viriaties of stainless steel there - is it possible that some of them is better in this use as would not stick to PLA?
See I'm not a material specialist and have no easy access to materials.

The nozzle I've got had a central hole shifted slightly. Was thinking would it be any benefit of drilling it with say 1.5 originally and drilling 2.0 when assembled through the stainless tube?

If it's melting in the chamber you can use a small fan to lower its temperature. That might help with some of your jamming issues.


Edit: Since this is literally a threaded rod washers and bolts could be added to act as heat sinks.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/21/2014 01:13PM by jaeg.

I know 316 steel is available, but I don't know how much of a difference it makes. The benefit of stainless steel is it's low thermal conductivity compared to brass. The draw back is it's poor machinability. I've tried dozens of drill bits, but I'm confident in the quality now. I'm using a .076" bit followed by a 2mm reaming bit, then polishing. I never had any complaints before a week or two ago, but that's possibly because a lot more people have been buying lately and it's reaching a wider audience. Thanks to all who communicated these issues to me BTW. It's really helped improve the quality of my product moving forward.

Hi jaeg, I've tried fan cooling, even better is to add the aluminium block. Did that but with the same results.
It is nearly impossible to cool at the point of contact inside the heating block anyway.