Damn, had everything in the cart; 10" i3v, 2 couplers, 1 roll PLA, 1 roll ABS, and shipping and it all disappeared!
Might be because I hit the purchase button... Woot!
Really looking forward to this, thanks again for the advice.
Printable View
Damn, had everything in the cart; 10" i3v, 2 couplers, 1 roll PLA, 1 roll ABS, and shipping and it all disappeared!
Might be because I hit the purchase button... Woot!
Really looking forward to this, thanks again for the advice.
Mine is supposed to ship on Tuesday without a hotend. I was going to go with the E3d but since I am unsure of how it is going to mount I am going to email Colin, and get a hexagon hot end because of gmay3 and other reviews. So bummed I am going to be out of town when it gets here!!!!!
The hex hot end is a fine choice. As I understand it, it's just a knock-off version of the E3D. About the issue with the plastic mounting plate and the E3D - what I do know is that with the hex hot end on the aluminum plate and a quiet 5 CFM fan with shroud, I was doing fine with PLA. When I started working with ABS, however, one day I noticed the printed extruder base had softened up and the extruder assembly was leaning over quite a bit. That told me there's more concern for getting heat pulled off the hot end heatsink than I thought.
I assume we're talking about the E3D? I really don't know, since I don't have one. The E3D does come with what appears to be a pretty good shroud - better than the open-style one on the hex hot end. That should help keep the airflow focused on the heatsink fins, which is good. I have no idea how the E3D fan compares to what MakerFarm provides with the hex hot end (which is probably just what is provided by reprapdiscount), but I'm sure both of those put through more airflow than the really quiet fan I tried to get by with on my hex hot end. I guess my best recommendation would be to go back to the thingi guy and ask if he's used it with an E3D running at ABS temperatures, and go from there.
Those printing longer than I would be better able to answer that. I don't recall, however, reading about anyone else having the same issue. The extruder motor can get hot and soften that part of the extruder base, yes, but that's different. To be thorough, I should clarify that I had sort of a perfect storm situation going on. I had installed the quietest, lowest-flow 40mm fan that I could find locally onto the hot end shroud. Then I had blocked some of the hot end fan airflow by mounting the clough42 print cooling duct on top of the hot end fan. Clough42 outright says the duct is incompatible with the stock cooling for the hex hot end, but existing comments on Thingiverse led me to giving it a try anyway and it seemed to be OK. I was printing ABS at 230, and I had been doing prints all day. At the end, I was printing multiple parts concurrently and I think I had the bed cranked up pretty high to help with bed adhesion. Finally, I also have LEDs mounted to the bottom of the carriage. Some of the heat from the bed and the LEDs would have been soaking into the carriage as well as the heat from the hot end.
BTW, apologies to 1stage for continuing the thread hijack.
Got my UPS tracking number today! Printer will be here on Wed. I'm getting excited to start the build now. For once, I wouldn't mind a couple of slow days at work so I can sneak out early starting Wed.
Todd, you will need to use a fan to print ABS and have the fan running at all times. I would also run it during every PLA print too just to be safe. I accidentally had it unplugged and it the heat traveled up melted/ruined my extruder pieces and jammed my printer.
Makerfarm will give you the kit pictured here with your printer order, which includes this fan and fan shroud among other things:
http://www.makerfarm.com/index.php/hexagon-hot-end.html
I had to email Colin and put my order on hold. I originally ordered without a hot end and was going to order an E3d. Since I was having issues figuring how I was going to mount the E3d, since it doesn't come with a mount plate and I just couldn't confirm how I was going to mount it, and since gmay3 and some others have said that they had good luck with the hexagon, I figured I will just go with that for now, and when I get more experience or build another printer will give the E3d a shot. Because of all this, I went to pay the difference, and had issues with paypal, and am now travelling for work, so now my kit won't be there waiting for me when I get back. sooo bummed!