Hardened steel nozzle vs brass nozzle - the layer adhesion test

[@peterleblanc661]

Interesting note on interior smoothness. I remember an interview with Sanjay(original founder of E3D) where here was talking about tests they ran on internal smoothness of the nozzles. They found that making it too smooth could actually make it worse. I can't imagine how that works, but E3D was doing lots of internal testing and adjusments in their machining processes. They even went so far as to use liquid nitrogen to instant freeze hotends while it was printing and then cutting it open on a mill to try to see what was happening at particular moments of the printing process.

[@Roobotics]

If it's too smooth it's probably similar to a boundary layer effect, all the molten filament stays on the outside edges and doesn't as readily mix with the warming up core area due to lack of turbulent flow. But that's just a guess. CHT's work by immediately splitting the core as the curvatures inside make it more turbulent as well.

[@runklestiltskin_2407]

Can't wait for a even more in-depth look at this topic, very interesting.

[@teitgenengineering]

I'm so glad you're researching this it would be really cool to see it for other filament

[@OleksandrKolyvushko]

that's very interesting topic! This means that filament doesn't ets less heat energy when in the steel nozzle, so printing with steel slower could also help. If you would get a no-name ruby nozze that would be another comparison point ? would it allow to print colder or faster than brass ?

[@MyTechFun]

Looks like I will have some nozzle tests in near future, somebody suggested bozzle nozzle too. I will see..

[@aberodriguez4149]

Very techy, thank you for sharing.

[@frankdearr2772]

thanks for sharing about that topic 👍

[@dinosoarskill17]

Definitely didn’t expect that delta to be so high for the .06mm nozzle But like you said up said maybe it’s the difference in manufacturing.. Thanks for the results!

[@diegovd7215]

Thank you for your work!

[@HayabusaRydr]

Id like to see testing with tungsten carbide since it is very close in thermal properties as brass.

[@MyTechFun]

Actually it is better than brass (thermal conductivity). I just tried to buy Bozzle nozzle or deez nozzle, they are unavailable in all EU webshops. Not sure why.

[@WhereNerdyisCool]

Very interesting. I have a 0.6 Nozzle X on a machine that does filled material like CF. So far doing temp towers I hadn’t seen the need to bump up the temps but your data is very persuasive. Thanks !!

[@Roobotics]

I think you are likely seeing a direct result that the HS can't transfer the heat as quickly as brass, so at a constant flow the region inside the nozzle sees a severe drop(compared to the heater block temp) once you get it going fast enough, an IR camaera would be good for this, just doing one of those blob flow tests and seeing what temperature the blobs extrude as! Also with something like klipper you can directly see the PWM of the heating element, I suspect the HS isn't working as hard because it's extruding colder, but also because that drop isn't propagated back to the thermistor as effectively! By having a high resistance metal the closed loop of the feedback system starts to break down in effectiveness, if you had a way to thermistor the HS nozzle itself, then it would also incur overshoots, but at constant flow it could theoretically maintain a perfect temperature for the filament. Technically brass nozzles have this issue also, and things like how far you screw in the nozzle to the block vs the filament tube opposite, change it.

[@Dramaican88]

I think you are right that it is about internal surface finish of the nozzle, but I have used E3D hardened steel nozzles and nozzleX and I think even for the high quality E3D HS nozzles because of the lack of the coating internally that is thermally conductive and makes the internal surface smoother (by the way doing cold pulls reduces the lifespan of the coating in nozzleX as you slowly wear it off) the heat conductivity is still worse for simple E3D HS nozzles. Glad the bi-metal CHT nozzles are worth it. I recently bought a 0.6mm one and planning to print ASA GF, PA6 CF and PC CF when I am back from my summer holidays.

[@bitosdelaplaya]

some month ago, i've buy the new creality spider ceramic hotend. It was sell with hardened steel nozzle. And like you said in the beginning of your video, i never get to have good first layer adhesion. So i have replace nozzle with a brass nozzle and since all is ok

[@potteryjoe]

Good information. Thanks for doing the research!

[@polycrystallinecandy]

You don't have to add a cylinder. There's a Cura setting called "lift head" where instead of slowing down, it will move the print head away and wait. Also would be nice if you could check if CHT provides better layer adhesion at higher flow rates, compared to normal nozzles at same temp.

[@daliasprints9798]

Lift head oozes badly, which will mess up your layer adhesion tests.

[@MyTechFun]

Good to know, thx, but in this case, I don't like the oozing of the material from the nozzle.

[@dbmandrake]

@@MyTechFunAnother thing you could try to slow down layer time of sections of a part that have a small cross sectional area which would finish the layer too quickly like the middle of your test pieces is to print with draft shield enabled even if you're using a material that doesn't have warping issues or need a draft shield. As it adds a fixed time overhead to every layer (but still keeps the print head busy extruding to avoid oozing) it slows down layers with very small cross sections a lot and gives them time for natural cooling but doesn't affect layers with larger cross sections much. It can increase the total print time significantly of course but the extra material used isn't that much as a draft shield is only one line wide. (Just make sure you have a small brim enabled on the draft shield so it doesn't fall off during printing) I started using a draft shield with ASA to try to avoid warping (open bed printer) but found it very useful even on small parts that won't warp to increase the layer time of small cross sections such as the smoke stack on a benchy. ASA doesn't like too much parts cooling fan, (it will warp/crack, cause poor layer adhesion, and produce a rough top surface finish) but little or no parts cooling fan will cause something like a Benchy smoke stack to come out very blobby and messy as the previous layer hasn't cooled enough with the short layer time of that small cross section when the fan is set very low. With the draft shield enabled and only 10% fan I get a pristine Benchy in ASA including the smoke stack due to the quick layers being slowed down enough to cool sufficiently to prevent blobby results, but without trying to cool them rapidly with a high fan speed that would ruin the layer adhesion and surface finish. I tend to print nearly everything I do in ASA with a draft shield now and very low fan even if there is no risk of cracking or warping as the longer layer times for small cross sections really help the print quality, and ASA does not suffer from stringing between the part and draft shield at all. Although I haven't tried it specifically with PLA, printing a "wasted" draft shield seems like it would be a good way to slow down and make layer times more uniform on your test prints without using a lot of extra material. In theory by increasing the minimum layer time this way you could drop your fan speed quite a bit and get better layer adhesion while still getting good performance on small cross section fine details.

[@michaelhanzal]

I would love to see a diamondback nozzle tested & compared!

[@Ben_EH-Heyeh]

I would have liked to see Tungsten in comparison to the Brass and the Hardened Steel. Thank you for testing.

[@MyTechFun]

I wanted to buy bozzle nozzle or similar, but from some reason out of stock everywhere (in EU)

[@alycapo3391]

I wish you could do this on a corxy/p1p or something faster. As temperatures actually definitely need to be raised on higher speed printers with a steel nozzle. Both combined have a multiplication factor and you are the only man I trust to bring these results

[@xjet]

Anyone using the MicroSwiss A2 plated toolsteel nozzles? Any observations?

[@playmaka2007]

Woudl love to see a test of the newer hardened steel CHTs that are out there.

[@MyTechFun]

Hardened CHT? (BiMetal) It was one of my previous video

[@marcus3d]

I'd love to see how much higher temperature is required for different flow speeds.

[@MrTiranei]

i know this video is couple months old, but would you be able to do similar test with heating blocks? regular aluminium block vs brass vs copper. possibly with copper nozzle aswell

[@toepunch001]

Wonder about the Diamondback nozzle

[@fabianluethi03]

Could you do that test with the brass and hardened steel cht clone nozzle? Would be nice

[@mesutsomuncuoglu695]

Most probably due to wrong/rough M6 thread profile on the no-name nozzle. Limited heat transfer from heater block to nozzle..

[@rilker]

Great video! Now I have new concern about "high Quality" nozzles! I'm using Triangle Labs DLC (Diamond Like Carbon)., and no tools to test:) We would love too see tests on it! Brazilians cheears! Congrats for the channel!

[@barmacg30]

Why wouldn't you do PID tuning on the hardened steel nozzle once you put it on the hot end or did you?

[@Jack5822]

Curious, of you printed slower on the 0.6 mm would you get better later adhesion? I'm guessing the 0.4 did better because the filament moved slower through the nozzle, giving it more time to melt.

[@frankbauerful]

What's missing is an actual measurement of the nozzle temperature. Is the increased temperature set at the printer actually arriving at the nozzle tip or is the thermal conductivity so bad that the higher temperature at the heater block is needed just to get the nozzle to the same temperature as brass. In the same vein I'd like more information about the preheating time. Maybe with a steel nozzle you don't need higher temperature, maybe you just need to wait a few minutes for the temperature from the heater block to transfer to the nozzle. If that's the case raising the temperature would only work for small pieces like the test objects, but hour long prints might suffer.

[@MyTechFun]

I just simulated real-life situation, I just raise the temperature and measure the layer adhesion, what is between is considered as a "black box". I know the input and the output.

[@EP-xm9kt]

Nice work. What kind of filament did you use for your tests?

[@MyTechFun]

Prusament PLA

[@salvatoree.2109]

It would have been nice to see the same tests on the KLP1

[@MyTechFun]

Yes, KLP1, it has hardened nozzle by default, I noticed some underextrusion lines form time-to-time, since that I am increasing the default temps. Kingroon also offered, that they will send me their CHT-like nozzles (like those from Aliexpress, with inserted part).

[@salvatoree.2109]

I will get my KLP1 tomorrow. Do you suggest that I buy the cht nozzle or a brass one?

[@BloodyIron]

Thanks!

[@huntliba]

Interesting... I use SliceEngineering Vanadium 0.6 nozzle as my regular (use to use Vanadium 0.4 but prints pretty much look the same, but I win in time) and I raised my temp only 10C because Vanadium... nozzle size didn't play any roll in my experience... sure I did not do any tests, but just regular printing and support removal would not made me raise temp 20-30C... maybe you can test Vanadium nozzles some day...

[@MyTechFun]

Thermal conductivity of vanadium is approx 31 W/(mK), steel 20, brass 111. Tungsten would be interesting, better thermal conductivity from brass (bozzle nozzle is Full Tungsten Carbide)

[@garagecedric]

Most of the time i forget to change the temps from prusas standard profiles when i have a hardened nozzle in there, e3d ones. Surprisingly minor differences in the results. But i will try to remember the 10dwgrees with structural parts :)

[@baderalafghani4564]

Try bondtech bridge master hardened steel it’s best of both worlds

[@GiantRobo77]

Can confirm ....even good quality .6 nozzles in steel are pitiful. You will get some minimal adhesion and aesthetic quality fast but everyone using these is selling brittle garbage....every 1.0 nozzle vase mode trash can ....is trash. ....and the heat-creep ....don't get me started....there aren't enough 5015 blowers I'm the western hemisphere to keep your cold-end cold. I wish I could get Inconel heatbreaks but you can buy a lot of brass for that price. Too bad tungsten hasn't caught on ....far more machinable than diamond but so too is steel cht style....even with the added complexity.. Seems like nozzle tech has plateaued. We need heat creep thermocouple telemetry and better cooling like semi-solid forged heatsinks with turbulent air flow or liquid cooling and AI that maintains a MINIMUM volumetric flow instead of caring so much about max flow volume. Eternally grateful for the content on this channel.