The 1730 Full Metal Hotend came into existence by a unique cooperation between renown filament developer Kai Parthy and the team behind 3D-Printer Manufacturer ReprapUniverse. With 1730 it is possible to print 1.75 mm or 3 mm filament with the same hot end while its innovative modular design is leakage proofed and optimized for printing standard filaments, special filaments and high-temperature filaments.
1730 features:
Optimized Cooling: Optimized thermal barrier. Water cooling is not necessary
Short Heating Zone: Very short heating zone inside the extra-long nozzle
Leakage Proof: The 1730 Full Metal Hotend is physicaly leakage proof and not using any PEEK or PTFE tubing
Multiple Nozzle Diameters: Multiple Nozzle Diamaters available for 1.75 mm and 3 mm filament
Fully Assembled: The 1730 Full Metal Hotend comes fully assembled. Just mount it and start printing
Improved Feeding: Reduced feeding friction which is optimal for soft and brittle materials (e.g. PU)
Energy Efficient: Effective use of energy. Short heating-up time
500 °C Ready: 500 °C tested expert module will be available in future as add-on
Print faster: With the 1730 Full Metal Hotend we have achieved shorter retract values. This greatly improves overall printing speed
Price is currently unknown and the Kickstarter campaign will be launched soon. it looks very interesting and I would like to see some reviews and tests.
OPAM is a new all metal jot end with water cooling from Singapore developed by Leong Khit. It will be open sourced when the Indiegogo campaign finishes.
The design is simplified by:
Combining the nozzle, heater block and heat sink into 1 single piece of SS304
Using water cooling as it is far more effective than air cooling
Removing any PEEK or PTFE material
The benefits of a One Piece design are as follows:
No leaks/jams between the nozzle and heater block's contact surface
No galling of the nozzle's thread (since it is built-in as part of the design)
Key Features:
1 piece construction (the nozzle, heater block & heat sink is combined into 1 single piece of SS304) to eliminate jams
Water-cooled for high temperature extrusion of up to 350°C
Short & Sharp transition from cold to hot portion (just 4mm)
Built-in stainless stain nozzle
Compact design (Light weight of 40 grams) for high speed printing
Diamond hotend is a new attempt to make a hot end capable of mixing three colors from three filament inputs.
Key features from product page:
3 pcs inputs for 1.7 mm filament
Common 0.4 mm nozzle orifice
Smallest possible mixing chamber for minimal waste and fast color change
Cutout for standard 40W heater cartridge and leaded thermistor
3 pcs threaded mounting holes for state of the art E3D v6 HeatBreaks & HeatSinks
Combined mounting bracket and airguide for optimal cooling by a simgle fan
Optional pendant for attaching a 5015 blower fan for extrudate cooling
The key feature of The Diamond Hotend is the diamond shaped nozzle. We have designed the nozzle to have smallest possible mixing chamber, to make color shifts as fast as possible and to avoid unnecessary filament waste. To ensure rapid nozzle heat up we have constructed the nozzle as compact as possible.
Here is the KS campaign video:
Here is Diamond hot end printing in multiple colors on Prusa I3:
Standard extruders are heated by simple resistive heaters and you basically need to push enough 12 or 24 V DC electric current trough a resistor and simple MOSFET.
Induction heated extruders would have many advantages over them: faster heating up, no high temperature insulation is needed and less thermal mass. All of this could make induction heaters light and fast. Main disadvantage is the more complex electric circuits needed to power it and more complex control unit since it is using much higher voltage and hundreds of kHz AC.
Slow convergence to desired steady state temperature at extruder tip, (many seconds, up to several minutes) and
slow feedback loop for temperature control, (from 100's of ms to s)
Lack of fine-grain temperature control at extruder tip, in steady state, the entire metal nozzle is essentially soaked to, or near, the melting temperature.
Inconsistent feeder response due to varying liquid plastic volume near tip and
limits on filament and extruded plastic drop size
The extruder tip with inductive heating coil would be physically similar in appearance, but would have several distinct differences:
Rather than a metal nozzle, it would be made of a thermally insulating, nonconductive material such as glass or boron nitride.
The actual heated element would be buried inside the tip to make direct contact with the plastic
The power for heating is transferred through electromagnetic coupling of a driving coil to the heated element. The heated element, (and the molten plastic around it), are thermally isolated from the rest of the extruder.
By using inductive heating and passive, digital temperature sensing of the heating target at the nozzle tip, significant improvements can be made to the issues above, resulting in faster production of more isotropic/mechanically stronger plastic prototypes. Also, the above problems typically put a limit on useable filament size, something this system should be able to surpass.
Here is the comparison of resistive heated extruder vs. induction heated extruder:
Resistive compared to inductive heated extruder head, schematics made by aka47
RepRap builder SB made a post about his induction heated extruder, here is his work and schematics:
Induction heated extruder, you can clearly see the induction coils
The induction coil heats the sleeve made from mild steel (ferromagnetic) while the stainless steel is not heated directly because it is not ferromagnetic.
There are other people actively experimenting with this concept like Bulent, who made the extruder and posted a YT video of it working (his videos are not in English, but you will get some insight):
Here is a video showing more details, but again language is not English:
As someone noticed in the comments, it would be interesting to see the induction extuder based on filament with metal particles where induction heats the filament itself. Then you could reduce the mass even further.
Another thing to mention is a possibility that the induction coil will interfere with nearby electronics and maybe emit noisy radio waves. It could also interact with build platform or other parts causing heating or melting damage.
If you want to build a serious desktop induction heater for metal melting of larger pieces here is a link:
E3D just released their Volcano super high flow nozzle upgrade that will speed up your 3d printing by pushing more filament trough the hot end. Putting on a larger diameter nozzle and extruding more molten filament also improves strength since the more mass and more heat improve adhesion between the layers.
E3D is well known for their excellent hotends. Now they have released new model: the v6. v6 is next-generation full metal hotend for RepRap 3D printers.
E3D v6 hotend
v6 release video:
Here is v6 video review by Thomas Sanladerer:
How to assemble the v6:
v5 hot end was a success and lessons learned on it influenced the development of v6, Here are desgn guidelines by E3D:
Decrease bulk.
v5 is longer in the Z axis than many other hotends on the market due to significant safety margins in heat dissapation, screw in bowden fittings make bowden hotends even longer.
Our printed fan duct is a little bulky in X/Y which can create issues when space under carriages is restricted.
Make assembly and maintenance easier for the user.
Securing thermistors with kapton works well, but is difficult to achieve easily and neatly, especially for the new user. It also makes changing out thermistors a bit time consuming. Cementing in thermistors with fire cement or similar works well, but is messy and difficult, it also makes changing thermistors nearly impossible.
The printed fan duct is a bit tricky to remove as it has to be slid off the heatsink either up or down which can be tricky with wiring etc in the picture.
Improve support for flexible materials.
v5 works as well as any other hotend on the market for flexible filaments, however this inevitably means printing very slowly, getting messy prints and having to constantly battle with buckling in the extruder.
Flexible filaments are entering the market and have some exceptionally useful properties and we want to enable more people to use them with a better printing experience.
Shorten heat up times and increase accurate control of temperature.
v5 uses a set screw to secure the cartridge which works well, but because of the slight variances in heater cartridges the hole in which the cartridge sits has to have some clearance to allow it to easily slide into place, this affects heat up times and control.
Thermistor placement in v5 is close to the surface of the block, which makes things easier when your thermistor has to be insulated with kapton but this has some impact on the precision of the readings.
Fix niggling reliability issues.
v5 has a great track record of reliability with less than a fraction of one percent of users experiencing issues due to manufacturing issues, however we really wanted to eliminate any chance of future defects.
1.75mm Bowden users were experiencing a disproportionate amount of problems, which was traced back (with much help and hard work from Michael Hackney) to nozzle geometry in certain situations needing high extrusion pressures that resulted in starvation of filament flow.
Make different sized nozzles more suitable for their application and each size more identifiable.
All v5 nozzles share the same shape of tip that lays down the track of filament, we wanted to make the shape of each nozzle more suited to their particular use case and application so people can get the best results from each nozzle size.
Because all nozzles share the same shape they are hard to tell apart, particularly when there is plastic residue remaining on the nozzle. We wanted to make it easy to differentiate between nozzles.
Make it beautiful.
Looks matter! Our machined metal parts look awesome, but with them hidden behind a printed fan duct you can't admire all that wonderful engineering.
v6 on the left compared to v5 on the right. You can also see that the entire Bowden coupling is contained inside the heatsink on v6.
v6 technical specifications:
Compact size: v6 is now 62mm in overall length, and the new polycarbonate fan duct results in significantly less bulk in X and Y dimensions.
Easy assembly and maintenance: All assembly is performed by either clipping or screwing together parts, no messy Kapton or adhesives are needed – The thermistor secures with a neat screw clamp and is insulated with high temperature glass fibre sleeving. Supplied ferrules mean that no soldering is needed.
Fast heat-up and better temperature readings: The heater cartridge is secured with a wrap-around clamp for excellent thermal contact, this reduces warm-up times and increases temperature control. The thermistor has been placed deep into the block and near to the nozzle in a close fitting hole for the most accurate readings and fast response.
Overhauled manufacturing techniques for increased reliability: The HeatBreak has a radically improved surface finish stemming from updated manufacturing techniques. The nozzle has been optimised for easier flow at low pressures.
Improved performance with flexible materials: Internal PTFE tubing runs deep into the hotend and can be arranged so that flexible filaments are constrained in the PTFE tubing right from the drive gear to deep in the hotend. PTFE never enters hot areas and so high temperature capability is maintained.
Maintains Compatibility: By keeping our previous mounting dimensions we have maintained compatibility with our plethora of community created mounting systems. Nozzles have kept their M6 threaded dimensions and so are interchangeable between v5 and v6.
Universal 1.75mm HotEnd: The incredibly compact tubing coupling system that is internal to the hotend means that we are able to eliminate the 1.75mm Direct and 1.75mm Bowden products and replace them with a single 1.75mm Universal product.
E3D v6 technical specifications
Here are cross sections of three versions of v6: from left to Right: 1.75mm Universal, 3mm Direct, 3mm Bowden.
E3D v6 is priced at £43-£48 range for a kit and £31-£33 for metal hotend only.
The objective of the E3D mixing extuder is to get fast color response with homogeneous output. Beside mixing various color filaments, it could also mix different types of polymer to achieve different print material properties.
Here is the last E3D extruder, the full metal Kraken:
Because there seems to be a bit of speculation/confusion surrounding this I am going to let the cat out of the bag. We have on the way a small prototype run of a 4 nozzled, water cooled, bowden fed hotends. We are calling this new hotend "Kraken" - A multi tentacled water borne monster!
The total footprint of the hotend is only 30*40mm in XY plane, the Z height from top to tip is under 40mm, and the 4 nozzles are arranged in a rectangle only 20mm*18mm apart. The weight without electronics looks to be around 110 grams, which is barely the weight of 2x E3Dv5 hotends. Each nozzle to have separate temperature control. Each nozzle can be individually levelled and adjusted in height to be planar with the bed in a very easy and quick way.
The small size and weight despite 4 nozzles is due mainly to the high efficiency of water cooling, even with only a tiny amount of water flow and a small cooling channel we still have a massive excess of cooling capacity. The second reason is a new way of mounting/gripping bowden tubes which has all the convenience and grip of pneumatic push-fit couplers, but with significantly less bulk and weight.
We intend to keep the price reasonable, and below the price for buying the equivalent number of E3Dv5.
But to be clear - Kraken is not a replacement for the normal v5 hotend, which will remain our main product that suits most users. The Kraken is designed purely for multi-nozzle bowden feed applications. Futhermore it is not finished! We will be shipping the majority of our beta prototyping run to trusted testers. I expect problems to occur and tweaks to be necessary. I will start a separate thread once things are ready, and the final version of Kraken will be developed in a public/interactive manner so the community can input what it wants/needs so that we can give you guys what you want.
Universal Mount: Laser-slotted and taped to fit the pico hot-end to various printers Light weight Aluminum for reduced moment of inertia and ease of modifications
Operating Temperature: Up to 300º Celsius (572ºF) Limited by the thermistor
