3D Printer Nozzles - Everything you need to know

[@Vector3DP]

This video is a test for a series on informative fundamentals of 3d printing. Let me know any other topics you'd like covered in this format, and thanks for watching :)

[@SusiBiker]

@Vector 3D Hi Adam. Nice idea for vids, but they need a bit better scripting/preparation! (Ha-ha! I'm a fine one to talk!! 😁 You've probably heard my S3D stuff that I did for Ed?! 😥) How about extruder drives? Things like Titan vs. Bondtech vs.Flexion. Issues with clones of these - engineering defects. poor quality, etc. Looking at issues with the actual hobb gears supplied on these - hardened steel vs. stainless vs. brass. The latter being a major bugbear of mine on the Creality printers (don't know if the recent releases have fixed this yet). Filament pathing through extruders - why the cheap drives really suffer when it comes to the more flexible filaments. Hope that helps. Happy New Year! Susi xx

[@Vector3DP]

Hi Susi, thanks for the suggestion, that's a great idea for a topic. Interesting that it seemed like I needed better preparation, it was quite planned, what gave the impression it wasn't? Did I miss something? Thanks for the honest feedback, it really helps. Adam

[@SusiBiker]

@@Vector3DP You were trying to cover items you did not have (Super-volcano) and there were a couple of occasions where you paused to speculate on things you weren't sure about. Personally, I like the style (conversational - makes you come across as 'human' like the rest of us), but some folks want "just the facts, ma'am", if you know what I mean? This is a quick reply, so it might be better if we talk via email for the deets?

[@ualdayan]

I would like to know more about nozzle geometry’s effect on a print. Some like E3D/J-head have a very large flat at the tip, while others like Microswiss/Mk8 nozzles come to a sharp point. Does that result in a smoother top surface on the E3D style? Does that cause less wear and tear on the MK8 style? (Also, there are aluminum nozzles too, p3-d makes some out of 7075 aircraft aluminum).

[@danielhertz7266]

Different extruder types explained would be a great "series".

[@RentableSocks]

nice video. A little bit of a nitpick on the heat capacity of tungsten/tungsten carbide vs brass.. These values are using mass as part of the unit (how to say this?), and since tungsten/tungsten carbide is about 2x the density of brass, the amount of heat energy that the tungsten nozzle (assuming the same size) can hold is actually MORE than the brass, meaning the temperature will be MORE stable for a tungsten nozzle compared to a brass nozzle of the same size/shape/etc. Not arguing with the numbers you've provided, just that the tungsten nozzle will be more than 2x as heavy as the brass, and therefore will be able to hold more heat than the brass. Assuming regular tungsten metal, the tungsten nozzle will be able to hold about 1.35x the amount of heat energy as the brass nozzle.

[@jolly0000]

Tack!

[@iskandartaib]

From what I've been reading (and looking up on shopping sites), there's mainly FOUR sizes of commonly used nozzles. There are THREE types with the M6 thread. The "Mk8" (I've always thought of this as the "Mark 8") has a conical tip and is used in the Ender 3 and a lot of other Creality printers, there's the V6, which is used on E3D designed hot ends and clones (it's got a sharp cone coming out of a flat surface at the tip, and is NOT compatible with the Mk8), and there's the "Volcano", which is a lengthened V6, and is so-called because it originated with the E3D designed "volcano" hot end, which is really good when you need to print with a large nozzle orifice to print large objects on a big-bed printer (as a result most big printers come with this type of hot end these days). The fourth common nozzle which uses the M7 thread, and is called the "Mk10" (Mark 10). In online stores, if you search for "Mk10" or "M7" these will come up. My Wanhao i3 Plus uses these, I'm not sure where these originated but I suspect it's something that caught on early when people were inventing hot ends. Not sure what other printers use these but there must be a lot of them, since the nozzles are common. There are doubtlessly other types, but they don't seem to be commonly available on shopping sites. I've never come across those M10 threaded ones in the video, for instance. One odd type of nozzle I'm very curious about are those long, pointy "airbrush" nozzles - they're actually in two parts, you have a small nozzle that screws into a V6 nozzle body. I've only seen them available in the V6 size. Not very much information about them, or videos on KZbin about them, either.

[@SianaGearz]

V6 has a longer thread than MK8, and very similar overall length, so you can usually substitute V6 in an MK8 hotend without issues - excluding possible compatibility issues with the sock. The other way around doesn't work. However i have noticed that various MK8 manufacturers have different ideas on how large the MK8 hex drive needs to be. Other M7-threaded hot-ends besides your Wanhao are several of the Geeetech models. The first printer with MK10 nozzle that i can think of would be Makerbot Replicator 2 from 2012. MK8 is the original Replicator. You can keep rebuilding and running those old Makerbots with various Chinese parts. The V6 airbrush nozzle adapter was invented by René Jurack around 2017 for his DICE printer, and he was manufacturing and selling those and various other parts. This was a very small, rigid, high movement speed printer, and he wanted to create some distance to the brass body to reduce print curling from radiant heat, and to allow him to do nozzle sizes around 0.2mm for very high detail prints. But there had been earlier uses of airbrush nozzle, like the 2012 Merlin hot-end, which has a permanently mounted brass throat with replaceable airbrush nozzle. Very early DIY printers used M6 and M7 gas stove nozzles.

[@iskandartaib]

@@SianaGearz Interesting. Two years later and things are changing - quite a few proprietary nozzles are in use, the Elegoo Neptune 4s and the more recent Artillery Sidewinders, for instance, use new nozzles. Chinese industry being what it is, third party suppliers very quickly came up with copies.

[@grosserboss]

About the ruby nozzle. Isn't the idea here that the metal first transfers the heat to the plastic and only at the end does the ruby nozzle narrow the diameter? This means that the ruby no longer plays a significant role as a large heat conductor. By the way, should heat-resistant heat-conducting paste be used for the thread?

[@eelcohoogendoorn8044]

Not sure about keeping the flow rate the same. Assuming a fixed amount of pressure that your extruder can put out, and thus the same pressure drop over your nozzle, and a laminar Poiseuille flow in the nozzle, volumetric flow should be able to scale to the third power of nozzle diameter. Thats ignoring some other things like your stepper torque-speed curve or how the material flows under the nozzle (probably want to scale layer height along with diameter); and then there is the melting; perhaps with a thicker nozzle you are dealing with higher viscosities in the center. So its not all that easy; but ive recently measured my volumetric flow until skipping going from 0.4 to 0.6mm; and I could easily double my volumetric flow.

[@mindsofgreatness]

Found this video to be helpful for a newb, waiting for my printer to arrive and geeking out on the basics. Slicer, tools, filaments, nozzles, CAD etc subbed.

[@Vector3DP]

Glad it was helpful!

[@m3chanist]

Wear on the inside of the bore or aperture of the nozzle is as much an issue as its dragging across the surface, wearing the outside of the tip. You also didn't mention the differences in thread pitch 0.75 and 1.0 in the 6mm nozzles and the proportional length of threaded section vs the rest of the nozzle that differentiate swiss/CR10 ender and V6 styles.

[@Mechanoid]

so what about stainless steel?

[@iskandartaib]

I've always wondered why no one used 2.85mm filament anymore, it seems it was a lot more popular back in the day. I imagine it'd be better for large sized prints with big nozzles. That size of filament isn't easy to find.

[@BigHonkinGoose]

I bought some 3mm filament by accident last year. Figure I'll just use it for plastic welding.

[@iskandartaib]

@@BigHonkinGoose Yeah, this almost happened to me, too. I have found more information about this - in the Dark Ages (which really was only 7-8 years ago.. ) when there were NO hobbyist FDM printers available as kits, let alone for commercial sale, and the only printers were being built by the Pioneers of Reprap, who bought materials off McMaster Carr, depended on earlier-built printers to print parts for newer printers, when hot-end heating cartridges and ready-made nozzles didn't exist yet (people were hand-winding heating elements for hot ends out of nichrome wire), there was no such thing as spools of filament you could buy. But the likes of McMaster Carr DID sell long 3mm (probably most were actually 2.85mm) rods of plastic, and this is what they used for printing. So 2.85mm hot ends were common in the beginning - a lot of those early hot end designs were specifically designed for the material that was available, and have since faded into the mists of obscurity. 1.75mm filament has a lot of advantages, the main one being accuracy of measurement. It's easier to achieve high precision in extruded volume of plastic with 1.75mm filament than it is with 2.85mm.

[@BigHonkinGoose]

@@iskandartaib Thanks for the history lesson! That's fascinating. I've got some nichrome, maybe I'll so some experiments after the holidays.

[@iskandartaib]

And that's why all the popular larger printers (Sidewinder X2, Bluer Plus, Sapphire Plus) come with Volcano type hot ends with the long nozzles, so that you can use large diameter nozzles to print large prints faster.

[@sandertu8366]

Can you give an example or what to search for? Sounds interesting but also sounds like it dosent affect it amazingly.

[@nisirob1]

what difference does the tip geometry for a given nozzle size make to print quality? does the internal geometry of the transition from the bore to the tip make much difference to how easy the filament is extruded?

[@Vector3DP]

A good and very niche question, I don't have any answer for you at the moment im afraid.

[@PrintEngineering]

Of course it does. Smooth transition and superior surface finish are better

[@bob84409]

Great video, I learned a lot about the nozzles :D

[@infoelekblog9688]

super interesting, I have 1 question. I have a few nozzles and I notice they have a different shape of input hole, all of them are for 1.75 filament,but some have a flat surface, while other have a small indent while other have a larger hole (for a ptfe tube). wonder if those can be used with a particular heat-block / heat-break element. If anyone knows the answer please share :)

[@Borockful]

Whats the filament used at 2:50 ?

[@metallicaandchimaira]

What would you use for flexible filament?

[@Acheiropoietos]

I’m very interested in non-planar 3D printing. Can you recommend any suppliers of long nozzles?

[@sakhriom9995]

Do you know what nozzle type is used for Creatbot (F160\ F430)

[@Vector3DP]

No idea sorry. Could be proprietary since its industry level.

[@thanhavictus]

Are there any brands that have input diameters that are closer to 1.8-1.75mm instead of 2mm?

[@zakaroonetwork777]

Can I put a V6 nozzle in An SK8 head? But Not an SK8 Nozzle in a V6 head…

[@JeffDM]

What is the color being printed at 2:45 and 3:00, etc.

[@Vector3DP]

Prusament Mystic Green, pretty nice eh?

[@TheAndyroo770]

Very well explained, best video I've found on the subject. I've seen nozzles that take a screw in nozzle as the tip of the nozzle - the tip being I believe an airbrush nozzle. You didn't cover these but I'm guessing they would not be great. I was wondering whether you could use a volcano style (long) nozzle in say a Geeetech A20 or Ender 3 stock hotend as a combined nozzle/heat-break if you left a gap between the heat block and heatsink or if it is not that long?

[@Andy-rq9ni]

They are OK I've been using one at low speed and they print detail really well, but at high speed it tends to pick up the extruded tail of the plastic, speeds in excess of 100mm/s at 3k accel,

[@Infantry2008]

So why is there not a Rockwell rating for the nozzles above brass and copper but the makers claim that they will never have to be replaced and charge a premium for them with absolutely no rating for the hardness?

[@Vector3DP]

I can't say why certain things have happened or not but if you refer to the Mohs scale if hardness you'll get a good picture of how these materials relate to each other. Different types of materials are often tested in different ways too.

[@hodbod41]

How is the ender 3 with the 32bit board?

[@Vector3DP]

Honestly had no time to use it since the live stream. So no idea 😅

[@hodbod41]

@@Vector3DP I just wanted to ask because I have it on the way

[@fredriklarsen5968]

@@hodbod41 I just upgraded my ender 3 to skr1.3 with tmc2208, e3d v6 and titan extruder. Works amazing!

[@SusiBiker]

@hodbod41 Running an SKR v1.4 (basically a v1.3+) on a FlashForge Creator Pro with a Titan Aqua. Apart from the still-awful documentation (for both the 1.3 and 1.4) that really slowed me down, it's going really well. Using TMC2130 sticks in SPI mode. IMHO, well worth the money.

[@willpolicarpio141]

With constant heat applied, will all these nozzles be the same temperature over a period of time? For sure how quick the heat will be transferred on each will be different, but I wonder if at the given time it will be all the same.

[@Vector3DP]

You need a control system to keep a consistent temperature But it would be possible for all nozzles to keep a consistent temperature of 200c for example. Worth noting though that 3d printing is a dynamic process not a static one.

[@willpolicarpio141]

@@Vector3DP yes sure it is a dynamic and I can observe that with the lcd that the temperature is fluctuating but trying to maintain the target temperature. I hope you can make a video that will show how these nozzles keep the temperature, say 200degC for a period of time like as in printing. Really interested to know the results. Thanks for the reply. I am now a subscriber to your channel, very interesting and informative. Well done.

[@reasonsvoice8554]

@@willpolicarpio141 pid tuning is what does it Look it up for best explanation

[@longshot789]

Heh, that intro joke

[@TheBitterBeard]

LoL @ 9:05 but would you buy one?

[@MissingLinkMTB]

My million dollar question: Why not just buy hardened nozzles instead of brass if they're so much more durable?

[@Anyone700]

You failed to mention the importance of the threaded length. If it is too short, even if the nozzle is the correct length, you will be unable to screw it down the the heatbreak. This can cause the user to screw the heatbreak too far into the heaterblock so that it touches the cold-end. This is particularly evident when using a cheap chinese 6mm hex nozzle on a v6 heater block.

[@Vector3DP]

Correct, if you buy the wrong nozzle for your hot end, it won't work correctly.

[@Elein967]

Take a shot every time he says nozzle

[@reasonsvoice8554]

As your in uk......how comes you put prices in $😂

[@JuanPablo-wg9bk]

😂