Extruders from eBay? What are your thoughts?

[Kingoddball]

I ordered an an extruder/J-Head from ebay/China - TERRIBLE.
Was not sized right, hole was off. In the end, I just threw it in the bin and ordered a X3D.
Different kind of extruder to the kit you're looking at, but yeah - Be careful.

This is a brilliant hotend!
http://extrude3d.com/store/index.php...&product_id=50

I used it for ages, it snapped on me after a massive print failure - Pulled the PLA off the nozzle cold - Snapped.. haha..

Cheap fix.

You will need to print parts for it, but its great.
I use it with a ceramic heater.

Edit: AUSSIE MADE! 1

[aWsomeABE]

Extruders from eBay can be great, if you make sure they are not the cheap Chinese made ones that people simply resell from Alibaba or DH-Gate. These are just pure garbage.

[Vanguard]

All recommendations for E3d hot ends is based on HYPE and nothing more, I would give a link to properly performing hot ends, at temps below polycarbonate, except it would be self promotion. If you are that interested in a REAL hot end you can find my self promotion where it belongs.

The reason I am on this forum is because of the HYPE tecniques E3D has used to become THE popular hot end. It has no special features other than being made from metal. It is a direct rip off of the J-head, and most likely mass made in China. The only thing E3d has done is draw a metal J-head, nothing more, all hype, no print.

It will print PLA, IF you mess with it, and mess with it, and mess with it, and... It will not print polycarbonate in the delivered form, it needs help. What is it ? It is hype ! Something a salesman has succeeded at selling !

There are MANY good hot end, E3d, being mediocre, the Bhuddaschnozzle is a fairly decent hot end, the Norcol, is pretty good, and a couple I make that I will not mention. I disagree with DrLuigi, the E3d is not the BEST, barely mediocre.

[KDog]

Wow Vangaurd! You are certainly seem upset about the E3D. There is a megapost (17 pages so far) by the maker of E3D, Sanjay, on another forum and seems like most folks are VERY pleased with it. Sanjay is very open to comment and criticism and has made many tweaks to address issues and is very active on that thread. I have one but have not used it yet. The quality seems excellent. The folks participating on that thread are very active in the field and are all working to forward the field.

I'm not sure how you can say it is a direct rip off of the jhead. Because it has circular heat sink? Because it is round, about three inches long and has a heater at the bottom?

In my work, I never purchase from a vendor that spends my time bad mouthing the competitors. They need to sell me their product on its own merits.

btw..i'm am in no way associated with any 3d printer manufacturers or parts suppliers.

KDog

[Vanguard]

This is indeed a forum, I can say what I think as long as they are with in forum rules. Which by the way, "the other forum" RepRap forums does not follow their own rules, that is why I'm on this forum, not that one. I have my reasons for not liking Sanjay.

His hot end is mediocre at best, but that is no big deal. His sales tactics are what bother me, but then RepRap forums is as much to blame as Sanjay.
Edit;
You fail to comprehend that I am NOT trying to sell you one of my hot ends. I am trying to get people to open their eyes to the fact that there are MANY good hot ends out there, E3D is not one of them. Then if you cannot see that, you would not know a real hot end if it burned your pinky.

[picstart]

Do these work well:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/New-0-4mm-...item19e1dd48bf

I am very tempted to purchase one.

The Chinese 1.75mm clone I got from E-Bay came with a quick disconnect that had a short length ( 15mm ) of Bowden tubing already inserted. Either by a manufacturing error or by jarring during shipment this unpleasant 15mm of tubing became jammed. I did pry it out but a small scraping of the tubing (PTFE) made its way toward the nozzle. The quick disconnect uses a shark's teeth grip. This small scraping ( shard) of PTFE caused the hot end to jam. Another unpleasant feature is the nozzle is machined into the heater block so the nozzle can't be removed making extracting this shard of PTFE difficult. The E-bay seller wasn't responsive.

[ciutateivissa]

An ORIGINAL J-head together with a cooling fan for the tube works also pretty well and is quite cheap in comparison to the hotend from some self-appointed "specialist". Make sure that it is not a Chineese one and that the you´re able to get spare parts when needed. I´ve heard a lot positive about the E3D hotend, but had never one myself so I can´t say anything about it. The J-head was my hotend at the beginning and it is a good starting point. Cheap and relieable. Maybe you´ll buy a more expensive hotend later....

[Roxy]

We are really just talking about Hot-End's and not extruders, right?

Because at the risk of stating the obvious: If you are thinking of getting a new extruder, you should first decide if you care about Auto_Bed_Leveling.

I just saw some photo's of an extruder that one of the high end 3D-Printer companies use in their printers.

It was super elegant how they built the Z-Probe right into the extruder. They just use the nozzle as the probe. Right now... After seeing those photographs I wouldn't consider an extruder that didn't have the Auto_Bed_Leveling directly supported.

[ciutateivissa]

It was super elegant how they built the Z-Probe right into the extruder. They just use the nozzle as the probe. Right now... After seeing those photographs I wouldn't consider an extruder that didn't have the Auto_Bed_Leveling directly supported.

Roxy,

we´re basically talking about hotends because the extruder is often depending on the type of printer you use - and I don´t know what type of printer should be used here.

Regarding the suggestions of Auto_Bed_Leveling... I finally managed to get it ready after 2 weeks of hard work and a lot of support from different forums. This is really not a topic for a newbie. One of the biggest issues with Auto_Bed_Leveling is Marlin software, there are some bugs in it which are not easy to correct. Yes, it sounds nice to have one but consider the troubles and find out if you really need it.

[DrLuigi]

Roxy,

we´re basically talking about hotends because the extruder is often depending on the type of printer you use - and I don´t know what type of printer should be used here.

Regarding the suggestions of Auto_Bed_Leveling... I finally managed to get it ready after 2 weeks of hard work and a lot of support from different forums. This is really not a topic for a newbie. One of the biggest issues with Auto_Bed_Leveling is Marlin software, there are some bugs in it which are not easy to correct. Yes, it sounds nice to have one but consider the troubles and find out if you really need it.

Meh it doesnt seem that buggy on my machine,
Its not like its always perfect, but thats more the servo i am guessing as it isnt made to be very precise.
After that i can't complain, after alot of changing my Z, it finaly works most of the time (Didnt have to change it for 3 days now i guess)