I don't print any abrasive materials at all. Pretty much only normal PLA and PETG.
I noticed, that my print quality gradually went down quite a bit, especially in the last few prints. I had a lot of stringing, weird blobs, and scarred surfaces.
Now, the print quality is as good as it should be!
They are dirt cheap. You can get a set of 10-15 generic ones, in different sizes, for only a few bucks. Don't forget that they are consumables.
And if you do print aggressive abrasive materials, remember to either get a super expensive hardox nozzle, or just throw them away after each print. Woodfiber will murder any nozzle.
Gotta say though, your nozzle mostly looks dirty, not worn out (much)
This solution to abrasive filament is a tungsten nozzle or one of the ruby tip ones. The cost is a bit expensive but with a tungsten nozzle you might be one and done
Yeah, 70 bucks buys a LOT of disposable ones though. It's probably worth it at some point, but not at my amount of abrasive filament use.
Yeah, you could get hundreds of cheap nozzles for $70. I've bought packs of 10 nozzles for 74 cents. That's almost a thousand nozzles I could get instead of one $70 tungsten one. Or maybe "only" 800 nozzles if I factor in a pessimistic shipping cost too.
EDIT: Checked the price I paid and it was even cheaper than I remember. Edited my calculations.
The time and care required to changing the nozzle (unless you've got a good mod or fancy system) isn't worth it IMO.
Quality > Quantity
And after a while, you can melt all those nozzles into an ingot of whatever it is made of and show off the weight to others.
Brass pot metal most likely. Don’t expect to be able to sell it for much though.
Might be neat to learn sand casting and make a huge commemorative nozzle trophy, or even better, a container for the future spent nozzles!
Or get it machined into new nozzles by a friend who added a CNC Lathe to their setup.
Obligatory we already create a lot of waste 3d printing. Please keep that in mind.
If you need to replace a cheap nozzle after each medium-sized print with abrasive filament, then I'm thinking print quality will suffer towards the end of a larger print (like >250g, but definitely >1kg). Not having to replace nozzles mid-print makes the $70 nozzle seem like a better deal. Depending on what you print and how much you print, of course.
Forget about tungsten, get yourself a Diamondback nozzle They're pretty much indestructible regardless of the hardness of the filament! Ask our boy Zack over at Voidstar Labs
Bought one of these a while back, and it's been great. Yeah, you can get hundreds of cheapo nozzles for the price, but not having to deal with increasingly shitty prints and nozzle changes has made it worthwhile for me, at least. I don't even use abrasives, mainly just matte PLA.
Ackschually
PLA is not abrasive by itself but it's additives might be. Titanium dioxide is a common colorant for example which might end up eroding your nozzle slowly.
Not sure if I see a difference but it's more expensive.
The link I sent does have material property comparisons with most other nozzle materials, including tungsten carbide.
But, given that they're trying to sell the Diamond nozzles in the first place I would take all those values with a grain of salt.
From their information it's like super amazing but that's not always translated to actual use. I tried finding more reviews but couldn't find anything.
Do you have one of those? Have you used any other hardened nozzles? I'm still under the impression that the ruby tip is king for the cost and reputation
I personally haven't used tungsten carbide or ruby nozzles to have a point of reference.
For all I know the Diamondback could be overkill, with little real world benefit compared to ruby nozzles and just more expensive.
So take that as you will ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
EDIT: arms
The tungsten carbide nozzle that I use is pretty good. I have only ever had one clog and I was using old filament. I just heated the head to ABS levels and it drained the clog simple enough. When I have had clogs with brass nozzles it can be a chore to clear it. Sometimes requiring taking the whole thing apart. So the tungsten does it all from what I can tell. I havn't changed it in over a year and my prints come out looking great. The quality of the filament is a big factor. I use the prusa recycled filament for most of my first runs. The heat expansion is splitting hairs on their part. Maybe for science or industrial level uses its an important factor but in home hobby use, its probably next to impossible to tell if it does matter. The optimal temp is always different depending on the users environment.
I'd probably try this diamondback nozzle if I need to replace the tungsten and I can find more independent reviews. It just feels like they are banking on the diamond part being OMG its the hardest material but the ruby is almost as hard and has more field tested and reviewed history to it. Plus its got the pretty red tip while the diamonback has a gray graphite look to it.
This is what I did. I have not had to change nozzles since.
I will say, however, that this will definitely prompt you to git gud at cleaning nozzles, and inventing jigs and tools for doing so, because you'll no longer just want to shrug and throw away your current nozzle if it clogs badly.
Stainless steel nozzles work well enough and aren't that expensive
Periodically, not sporadically
Change your nozzle randomly and without warning
Gotta be unpredictable, the nozzles can smell intent.
Gotta sneak up on them, slowly and carefully. Just like that damn snail.
Nah, that one is a decoy.
Hold Ctrl while moving and Press F to change nozzle.
What if I'm inhouse instead of intent?
Then you're camping!
So mid print, pause and resume just like with replacing a filament roll.
Thanks for the notice! It's now changed in the title.
I'm no native speaker and thought it was a synonym to "From time to time, when you feel the need to".
Sporadically means more like, "At Infrequent but random intervals"
All good I figured that was the case
Changing nozzles is important as they are consumables, but all of your high quality close up shots are showing a practically unscathed nozzle under a lot of gunk (the picture of the back end of the nozzle has a big chunk of cooked plastic that will pretty easily scrape off), if you cleaned it you'd probably be just as well off as with the new nozzle
The larger photo shows a lot of wear on the end compared to the new nozzle (the flat area on the top is larger). It's hard to tell from the photos but in my experience this generally correlates to a widened nozzle diameter and decreased print quality.
Wouldn’t it be better to replace them regularly by some metric, uses, time, etc?
Yes, but that is also going to require a ton of extra effort to track and assumes the nozzles themselves wear consistently. There would probably also need to be modifiers based on materials used, and even brands. For a professional print farm or a business trying to squeeze every last dollar out of the operation, this might be worth it. For a hobby where we expect a lot of waste? Eh, fuck it, just replace it when prints start going south.
If you're a Klipper user, odds are you'll have easy access to both print hours and filament length extruded. Some marlin printers also track this information as well.
Granted, nozzle wear is also filament specific, but it's better than nothing.
My point was that "sporadically" could mean after one use or three weeks. There is no rhyme or reason to it and it wouldn’t be helpful.
I just experienced this for the first time. I has having to print slower and slower to get the filament to flow enough not to print skippy and stringy. Finally, the gears in the print head started skipping. I took the whole print head apart and found nothing wrong. Switched to the spare hot end that came with the printer and its printing like new again.
I've been using a oxbidian nozzle and printing wood and GID occasionally. Seems to be holding up very well. It's a more expensive option but might last as long as 3 or 4 normal nozzles and I think it's also notable that you're not dealing with as much of a downslope in performance on your way toward a new nozzle each time as you are with traditional brass.
Just don't fuck up your printer !!!
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