Aluhotend
Release status: production
| Description | Aluminium and Stainless steel hotend for general purpose printing with ABS and PLA , designed as a drop in replacement for the jhead
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| License | NC
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Contents
Introduction
This is the Aluhotend in it's most current format currently it is a 4 piece design:
Heatsink - all of these are manufactured with a 2mm hole in the entry is drilled out before shipping to cater for 3mm use, the mounting point is dimensionally identical to the jhead and should mount in anything the jhead does.
Thermal Barrier - these have taken a few forms before this one most of them have been turned and reduced in diameter from the outside leaving no room for a ptfe liner, the latest version the thermal barrier is a 35mm length of stainless steel threaded rod with a hole bored through it at 4mm , then either a 2mmID 4mmOD or a 3.15mmID4mmOD ptfetube is inserted.
the advantage with this configuration is that not only is the liner held captive by the heatsink the large diameter on the thermal barrier provides a great deal of strength and protect against crashes into the bed which would cause damage to previous versions.
Heater Block - the design is based more on machining capability in the early stages than anything, it has 4 holes 2 of them are threaded the M4 threaded hole takes an M4 grub screw for retaining a heater cartridge or a resistor in the 6.5mm hole, the 6.5mm hole done at 6.5mm due the problems with heater cartridge diameters, which while they are sold as 6mm in diameter that isn't actually the case, some of them are oval in shape and will get jammed in a 6mm hole, making replacement impossible with damaging the heater block the hole for the thermistor is 2mm which allows the use of a through hole type of thermistor the reasons behind this were mainly safety, the thermistor cannot physically fall out leaving the hotend to overheat.
Nozzle - the nozzle is a fairly standard M6 threaded nozzle, you can use just about any of the commonly available nozzles for the up! or makerbot and various other hotends which use an M6 threaded nozzle.
Assembly
(step by step guide to be written)
Usage
can be used normally just like most other hotends, one suggestion for easy feeding especially with 3mm filament is to cut the filament at an angle so that the pointy end wants the curl into the middle of the tubing, this will allow the filament to slide all the way down instead of a 90 degree curly end digging into the ptfe liner, this is somthing that should be done on any ptfe lined hotend to maintain the integrity of the ptfe liner and make it last as long as possible
Drawings
(to be added)
Suppliers
3d Industries Australia: [1]
Summary: V3 Aluhotend.
