Good info Tom. Loads of useful information packed into another great vid. Though: remember, you don't have to sit on the fence anymore. It'd be great to get your opinion on what is 'best', or at least your preference. A build-log/guide with the reasons you chose each component would be ace! I recently converted a cheap CTC printer from their generic hot end to an E3d by using the smooth chimera style heat breaks, drilling the heat bar and using the CTC thermo-couple. At first the all-metal jammed all the time until I used thermal compound between all the components, and linishing the mating surfaces to get better contact. That solved all issues and now I can print all sorts of different temp materials. Your video doesn't mention the importance of a very sharp thermal gradient at the transition zone for preventing jams... Am I correct? Jai
Great video :D Love the intro LOL It should also be noted that if you are a heavy printer ( like me ) with a PTFE based hotend, you will be changing the PTFE liner eventually, (seems like i end up having to change them every couple thousand hours or so)
Speaking of clones. Original V6 last time I checked was $70-$100, which is beyond ridiculous for what it is. If they set a fair price they could get much more business, but for me, throwing a $100 for each hotend is a thinkless waste of money. For example "original" heatsink costs around $20, Chinese is $2 and they are absolutely identical. You don't need original for that, at all and overpay so much. the only parts that actually need to be of high quality is nozzles and the heatbreak, but again, they can be purchased elsewhere for a fair price.
And how many hotends have the Chinese actually designed? As opposed to waiting for e3d to work out the engineering and then copy it? End result? e3d go out of business. No more innovation. Also you seem to have misspelled 'are absolutely identical' when you clearly meant 'look pretty much the same to my untutored eye' :-) do you know the grade of Al used in the knockoff parts? or the stainless in their equally cheap heatbreaks? what exactly is the finish on the inside of that cheap heatbreak? How accurate was the lathe, how sharp the tool... or the operator for that matter? I would have though that 90% of why anyone was into 3d printing would be about innovation, and innovation costs, and innovation on the bleeding edge costs even more! Why was my BMW more expensive than a trabant? both cars, both German.... go figure.
Probably it's true, you will not get the exact quality but OP is right, 70€ for a metal tube is just ridiculous and imho the creators developed a good product and now are just riding the money wave.
@@naughtyhorses My friend's Triangle Labs V6 "clone" has worked just as well as my genuine V6 directly from E3D. The only way I can see e3d improving their design further would be to make it more compact and find a better design for the transition zone.
I purchased an e3D clone of a v6 hot end. I didn't pay a lot for it, and it worked just fine at first. It got a bit unpredictable at times. I had an issue where I would have to pull the filament each time before a print, and chop semi melted end off to get it to print. I ended up buying an original e3d heat break that was all metal and I haven't had the issue since. The funny part is the price I paid for the clone and the heat break, for a few more dollars I could have got an original one.... But it prints like a champ now.
maybe it wasn't able to srew-on the radiator part to the necessary distance? Not sure. I agree, Jared, if you trying to complaint, you ought to tell it in details and not showing like "meh... you must know the difference, right?" :)
I bought a E3D V6 Clone, it was around 7 Bucks with all the exteriour parts as fan hater and thermistor and PTFE tubing and fittings, disassembled it and didn't find any downsides, will buy a real one too to support the company but in the moment I have to keep this hobby on a budget
I have to disagree with the Chinese Hotends. My first 3d printer, which is a delta, consists of almost all Chinese cheap parts. (Only the 1515 alum frame and the heated bed was from local suppliers). Assembly went fine and it prints very well. The Chinese E3D-v6 i got was like almost 4 times cheaper than the one I would have to pay If I buy it from the local 3d Printer shop. (Excluding tax)
+Calxx Try non-Chinese parts, and see if you still think yours "prints very well." Even if they are cheaper, I'd rather pay full price and send money to E3D for research than to some clowns in China who just make knockoffs and contribute nothing to the community.
+Brandon Fesser Interestingly the prints are very much on par with the ones printed by a friend, who purchased the full kit (the whole printer) from local 3D printer supplier. The main reason I decided to bet on Chinese parts is the price. So, for people without deep pockets, the Chinese Hotends can be a really cheap and useful start. You can safely experiment with it without fearing you'll break something expensive.
Brandon Fesser surely Chinese firms do bring something to the community? Generic knock offs with similar performance characteristics as the real thing. Yes QA is questionable but they still bring something to the community and enable many who cannot afford to own a 3D printer built using high priced parts designed in the US or UK. Embiggening the community as a whole and bringing folk into the hobby, and that's the biggest contribution. They help create the 3D printing community.
Brandon Fesser I've seen creality ender-2 3dbenchies that are real good quality.. I've printed several myself. My ender-2 makes impressive 3dbenchies that are only 17mm tall. I'm only a beginner who pick random settings in cura.
Taken into consideration that this is 4 years old as of this writing and my mechanical/engineering knowledge of 3d printer hot ends is rather limited, but is there a reason no one uses a graphite liner instead of Teflon? Being exceptionally slippery and nearly heat proof, the only downside I can think of is its relatively brittle nature. I'm sure someone could figure out how to drill out an inserted rod though.
I dont see the issues people get with small nozzles. I use a knockoff e3d v6 lite, with knockoff 0.2mm nozzle. The clone has worked great for like 8 months, outlived two of my printers. All I did was replace the thermistor and heater cartridge. $1 0.2mm and $1 0.8mm nozzle all work great. Ive done 0.5mm and 0.06mm layer heights, fun stuff.
Hi Tom, thanks for your great efforts in making things sound simpler and easy to understand. Could you please review the diamond multicolor hot end as well please?
I've never had a problem with a $12 e3D v6 lite clone. 6 months in and the only thing i've had to replace is the heater cartridge, because I twisted the hot end during a print and the wires shorted. Not so much as a jam has happened. The only thing I don't like is that it's a different size, so no already made designs really fit it, so i'm on my own trying to figure out how to active cool it
Hay tom have You ever think about Designing and making a 3d printer and selling it? You gonna make enough money to support yourself and your Chanel and you will make a kickass machine that I know so many people would be interested in buying it. Just a little thing to think about ;D
Thank You for replying and continue your amazing work your content is very high quality and very informative at the same time and I have no doubt you will be a great success at the end of the road.
good info for the starters I bought a cheap all metal hotend in the beginning and tried to print pla with it I still can't get it to work pla. I haven't tried abs yet though
To anyone who wants to get into 3d printing, I would suggest sticking with PLA at first. The J-head hot-ends (the original ones from hot-ends.com) are probably the best option for printing PLA reliably. Disclaimer : I am not affiliated to them in any way.
Nice video. I have a Lulzbot Taz3. The hotend just stopped working. Any idea where I can find a replacement for that? It looks like Lulzbot has gone out of business. I'm assuming it's the hot end that is the problem, the bed still heats up, I put a heat gun on the nozzle and the temperature goes up too. Not sure what else to check to confirm the problem.
Awesome video Thomas, guess you've got few dislikes from China xD Tbh, they do have good clones of E3D, just aim for reviews with pictures and most sells on aliexpress, but its still pain to find a good one.
Tom, all your videos are always lively and interesting. All but this one, sorry. I know it may be the topics fault (hotend is _the_ most complicated part in the printer), but I've lost you on the minute 1. I loved the music, but that's because I like piano tunes in general, but it does not quite fit the discussion topic. I'm sorry If I sound rude, didn't mean to, I really do enjoy your videos, Thomas!
Considering the positive feedback on clone hotends, they can't all be that bad. Sure, there's always a risk you'll get a bad one, but just buy a couple and you'll probably be fine. I'm all for supporting genuine, but I also think that the brand name parts are way too expensive for budget printers. I for one would've probably never started with Arduinos if it wasn't for the cheap knockoffs. Now it's just a matter of time before I send some money their way. Everyone wins. This is why I think you shouldn't dismiss non-genuine parts like you did.
Tom, I have a custom 3d printer running Marlin on the Azteeg X3 Pro with Arduino IDE 1.6.12. I am using Repetier and having problems setting up my Geeetech Mk8 dual extruder. Hot end 1 works fine and reads accurate temperatures with the thermistor connected to TEMP_SENSOR_0. The thermistor for hot end 2 is connected to TEMP_SENSOR_1 and also reads accurate temperatures. I have run PID autotune and changed Kp, Ki, Kd accordingly. If I turn on hot end 1, it heats up fine. When I try to heat hot end 2, it does not heat at all and eventually times out with a heating failed error loop. When printing, with hot end 1, everything works fine until around the second layer, hot end 2 randomly starts to heat up and eventually stops the print because it reaches maxtemp. I was wondering if you could shed some light on what may be going on here, and possibly recommend a fix. Also, I am not sure this is the appropriate place for such a specific question. Maybe you could direct me to a better place to ask things like this? Thanks a lot!
Problem solved! After taking a closer look at the pin assignments, I realized hot end 2 (on pin 9) was defined as a fan, which explains why it would come on after the first layer.
Speaking of "bad clones" in 2019 is somewhat questionable. Nowadays you can find good clones for a very affordable price (because let's face it, the "genuine" part sometimes has a laughably insane price and not everyone wants to pay it if he can buy the same thing for a tenth of the price). PS: just got a few all-metal v6 hotends to replace a damaged genuine v6 and for my newly built printer and they look pretty legit.
But hey , Chinese manufacture aren't ALL that bad. For eg. I've found one that has a decent hot end cylinder milled out, but the PTFE tube inside of each one wasn't all cut to the same size. Not that it was a problem since I could fix that easily. But then you get to the hot end nozzle bit, which wasn't 0.4 , just by looking at it I could tell. Finding another manufacturer online was easy , and got some 0.4 replacement nozzles in the mail last week, and they were perfect. It's just a matter of finding a decent manufacturer of these "Cloned parts". Cloned as in , a hot end's geometry is simple and as a result, many hot ends tend to look the same. Well they are all the same in some sense right? :D All that can truly vary is the quality in which they are made.
Hi. Have you the links? I mean your hotend+nozzle, because I al worried to choose the wrong option. I see on aliexpress this:3D Printer Wade extruder All metal E3D J-head Hot End with Heater s.aliexpress.com/RbINBNV7 (from AliExpress Android)
+Riyaz Mohammed Lubricant, for the filament? In the past when I had a bowden setup I tried sunflower oil when I had trouble with the friction (due to a very long bowden tubing). Since I use a direct setup (I ordered a Printrbot metal direct extruder (v.2), which is awesome) I have no problems with friction anymore. For the bearings I use normal machine oil.
What kind of extruder cog would you recommend for a flexible filament? I plan on sticking to the same diameter, but am unsure of the curvature needed to grip the flexible filament.
There was no bare surface on the top, and the transition zone was threaded stainless steel, which means that more heta will be transferred to the heat sink
Do you think the printerbot plus is a good printer? im looking into getting my first printer and it seems like that one is the best bang for buck and it has some nice features, well at least they seem nice to me but im a noob still lol
+daniel murray Why do you want to go for the Plus? The Simple is a great printer with a lower price. It's also easier to mod. Unless you need the larger build volume, the Simple is a great printer to start with.
im open to any other suggestions, the resin im leaning towards the plus is because its way cheeper then some of the other large build plate printers iv seen. I could probably manage putting together a kit but i really know nothing about this as of now.
Hey Thomas so I purchased a all metal 12v E3D v6 clone for my Tevo tarantula to upgraded me stock Hotend. However it is incredibly underpowered..in fact it only reaches 200c when it is supposed to reach around 280c easily. Any ideas?
Hello Tom I am wanting bigger build space. Can I connect more than one heated bed together. So I can get the build space I need. Or does anyone know the answer. kindest Regards, Jessica
A few words about "improved" designs: it looks like Chinese manufacturers are taking local chinese patents for the variants of Prusa I3. As a result - all chinese kits have various stupid mods to the original design to avoid infringements. Yes, those kits do need additional work to overcome engineering idiotism introduced by the manufacturer as an "improvement". And some parts needs to be replaced right out of the box, f.e. power supply. They usually provide a cheapest underpowered unit - it literally blows up after a while.
zu viel tifen im intro.. womöglich warst du zu nahe am mikro. finde aber lustig dass du neues probierst auch wenns diesmal etwas kontrastreich zum technischen thema wirkt
E3D V6 All the way, you can't beat it and it always gives awesome prints,... plus, we shouldn't be supporting any Chinese company that builds a clone, clearly, it's stolen IP and therefore shouldn't be supported, End of.
i have a prusa i3 clone with an mk8 extruder and it works 100% perfectly fine. In china they have no laws against stealing other people's intelectual property.. so when american companies have their stuff made in china (which a huge percentage of them do) those plans and parts are now cloned and sold for way cheaper. this is NOT always because the quality is lower than a genuine part. MOST of the time the ONLY difference between a clone and an authentic part is the name they stamp on it. a lot of the times the same machines and factories that made the authentic part is also making the clone. aka, there is literally no difference between the clone and the authentic part. or sometikes when you buy a "clone" its not a clone at all.. if a company makes a v1 product and makes way too many of them, when they release their v2 product, that factory still has a bunch of v1 parts left over with nobody to sell them to. So someone somewhere will slap em on ebay. If were talking about advanced electronics, then yeah you always want to get authentic parts that have high quality components in them.. But for something as simple as a hot end (or MOST of a 3d printer) you will get identical performance from a clone as you will with an authentic. the only difference is do you pay 40$ for a part or do you pay 7$ for the exact same part? Granted with an authentic you KNOW youre getting a good part, and with a clone you only will Probably get a good part. There's always that risk you will get something trash because theres no quality control on chinese pop-up factories. But in my experience, 100% of the clone 3d printer parts i have EVER bought, they have worked 100% as good as the authentic parts.
