How to find the best HotEnd? - Ultimate HotEnd Testing - Episode #1

This is the first video of a series in which I will test many 3D Printer HotEnds using the methodology described in this first episode.
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Thank you very much!
MirageC

[@giusn]

FINALLY someone is testing all hotends with a consistent method.... we badly needed this. THANK YOU!

[@patprop74]

Have an idea of the cost involved in such testing, hope you consider supporting the task at hand. supporting is not just for onlyfans girls lmaooo

[@giusn]

@@patprop74 actually I sent a small donation as soon as I watched this video and I'm planning to do the same after each episode of this series. Because companies do not publish useful benchmarks anymore we need independent testers in order to make informed purchase decisions and award the companies who actually do valuable r&d. We have benchmarks for PC, cars, phones, audio equipment, even vacuum cleaners but not for hotends. Without them we are at the mercy of marketing and this is unacceptable.

[@Kalvinjj]

@@patprop74 I suggest the combination of hot girls and fast printers to achieve the maximum money throughput to keep the crazy fast printing going.

[@Kalvinjj]

Agreed, there's only so far subjective tests can go, the "Look how pretty this disposable trinket is, good hotend!". CNC Kitchen does good tests as well, there thankfully are a few engineering minds out there that help it when it comes to pushing limits or getting the best consistency on results.

[@dcold]

Well, it took him over 3 minutes to get to the point,

[@XeroShifter]

Very excited for this to continue. This could end up being one of the most important series of tests/videos in 3d printing. It serves at least 3 purposes. 1 it could help people tune their existing hot ends. 2 it could help people select what hot ends to buy, and 3 it could serve as a huge source of information for future development of hot ends attempting to improve maximum printing speed.

[@marcus3d]

Yes, I've never waited more for the next episode of any series!

[@MattSmith-ud4nn]

100% this is a huge deal. Thank you for advancing the art of 3D printing!

[@jaimeleboeuf]

5 years ago I introduced 3d printing to MirageC and now THIS!!!! I'm very proud of what your accomplishing and keep up the work, you are well pushing the boundaries of 3d printing!

[@MirageC]

This is so true!!! It's all your fault that I am now stuck in this rabbit hole! Lol! Thanks man!

[@OriginalAirsoftGasser]

Was he as much of a narcissist then?

[@MirageC]

@@OriginalAirsoftGasser Of course not! I was much worse back then!

[@247printing]

One of the best videos on 3D printing I’ve seen in a long time. No oink.

[@MirageC]

Thank you mate! This means a lot to me coming from you! :)

[@247printing]

@@MirageC naaah, just a big fan here waiting for videos like this 🍻

[@VladOnEarth]

So much work has gone into this! Love the outcome! Was worth this! Crazy amount of data and detail! Hats off! 🤠

[@CircsC]

I'm very excited to see you doing a video series like this. You're the kind of thorough the community needs.

[@free_spirit1]

Thank you Mirage, from the bottom of my heart, for letting the data be free, as it should be! Long live open source innovation!

[@vladl990]

This video is amazing in its quality of engineering thought! Such a great value for 3d printing community. And great example of how to organize engineering research process and glimpse into what physics is about - learned a lot from this video! I’ll be rewatching this time over time. Great job MirageC!

[@gabortoth3300]

Finally, I was looking forward to someone to do such a standardised and detailed comparison for the hotends. My compliments. Please allow me to point out, that every filament type has it's own rheological behaviour characterised with the melt flow rate (MFR) or also called melt flow index (MFI), which is a standardized industrial method to test the flow capabilities of the plastic. As I have done a flow comparison between filaments myself with the Flowtesttool from CNCKitchen Stefan (and being in the plastic processing business for all my life) I know, that the MFR is one major influencing factor for the flow capabilities of the hotend. My advice is, that during the olympics it is important that you use the same filament, even the same batch if possible, as the MFI is changing between plastic batches as well. Otherwise the test results will be not comparable. Can you please indicate the actual MFR of the plastics you used for the test, just out of curiosity? PLA filament MFR values we can buy are ranging from ~5 to 15 g/10min. The difference in flow between MFI 5 vs. 14 on a Prusa Mini hotend with 0,4 nozzle is 11mm3/s vs. 22mm3/s when they reach 10% underextrusion.

[@MirageC]

I bought large amount of spools from the same brand. Ill have to check if they are from the same batches. I will investigate about the MFR. This is unknown territory to me as of now. Any literature I could educate myself with?

[@VinokDesign]

Can you not donate him a MFI meter :P , its not that difficult to use. Used it daily at petrochemical company that was making LD-PE. anyhow i donated you some money, it could definably be a very good improvement/investment to you research

[@VinokDesign]

@@MirageC to keep it very simple: you have a cilinder with at the end a very precise hole. you put a plunger on top of the melted pellets. you ad a precise weight, I think it was 1 or 2kg. and then the meter will start to count how long it takes to extrude 10 mm. that measurement is then converted to MFR. you just have to watch that there are no airbubbels trapped when extruding in those 10mm he is metering.

[@gabortoth3300]

Actually you can misuse your own hotend setup to be a MFR comparison machine: run the same test with different spools of the same filament and you can verify, if the result is nearly the same. Then you can be absolutely sure, that you compare apple to apple. Not like Jeremy Clarkson with "Car time - xx:yy (wet lap)".

[@gabortoth3300]

@@MirageC en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melt_flow_index

[@MalvixStudio]

Excited for this series! Would love to see how a CHT nozzle changes the flow potential for hotends that could take it, to see how much could be pushed without an entire upgrade

[@MirageC]

Yes, once I have a few hot end tested, I will do one episode on the CHT's impact on those already tested hotends.

[@miklschmidt]

I have been waiting for this! I cannot emphasize this enough, this is AMAZING. The amount of work here is crazy, i can't wait for the rest! I'm sure i speak for many in the community when i say: BIG thank you for all your continued contributions! Awesome work, will be very useful for all of us going forward!

[@MirageC]

Thank you Mikkel! It means a lot to me coming from you! See you around :)

[@marcoferrari4285]

This is the most scientific thing related to 3d printing I have ever seen, amazing!!!!

[@MirageC]

Thank you! I am still working at making this project happening.

[@VinokDesign]

Amazing what You are doing, you are just answering all my questions i have with high speed printing, making a vez3d clone and im struggeling with the heated end. I donated some money for doing awesome science, thanks for your time and keep doing great work!

[@MirageC]

Thank you very much for your support! This means a lot to me and its helping me big time!

[@marsgizmo]

excellent video! 👏😎 looking forward to your next discoveries!

[@MirageC]

Thanks for the encouragements man!

[@GuilhermeTorelly]

Wow, your work is amazing! This analysis is more complex, complete and well explained than many scientific articles. Thanks for such a great job. The relationship between temperature, flow and pressure is really complex, but your analysis explains it very well

[@MirageC]

Wow, thank you!

[@slightwave]

Man, you're just crazy. I can't believe you made and filmed all this... UNBELIEVABLE!!!!

[@Solipsfilm]

Wow, this must've taken a crazy amount of work! Super interesting, I'm curious to see future results and tests 👌🏻

[@ericlotze7724]

Absolutely Amazing Project. I think this kind of data like the "Filaween" Series by Thomas Sanladerer, or all the testing done by CNC Kitchen, or the "#SpeedBoatRace" "Speed Benchies"; even just all the amazing calibration/diagnostic prints people have designed and posted online are seriously what push the movement forward. Seriously Amazing Work, This is Pushing Your Channel to Another Level, and no need to rush things, This Will Be Well Worth The Wait !

[@MirageC]

Thank you!

[@175griffin]

I would love to see a klipper feature which uses a rotary encoder for some kind of active flow compensation. I guess the hot end could be characterized, but it would be really tedious to do that at every temperature with every filament and flow rate.

[@rmatveev]

I think that it is a wrong approach. If you need to push the filamen hard through the nozzle, that means that it is too cold which will result in bad prints. Klipper could make accelerations depending on a speed (more acceleration at low speed and less acceleration at higher speeds) which would make printing significantly faster. To make filament melting faster you don't have any options but to increase the contact area between hot end surface (nozzle internals) and the filament. Volcano does this by its nozzle elongation, CHT with its complicated surface curvature.

[@175griffin]

@@rmatveev it wouldn't allow for extruding past the max flow rate, but it could compensate for under extrusion while approaching the limit and prevent over extrusion when going slow. And you would never need to tune your flow rate multiplier for different filaments or extruder tensions.

[@aharkey1077]

I'd be more interested in a filament runout sensor that could also detect jams with an encoder

[@175griffin]

@@aharkey1077 it could do both. Maybe even detect potential nozzle jams before they happen.

[@aharkey1077]

I plan on doing an encoder to detect runout and jams as that seems like low hanging fruit, closed loop control, while interesting, is a completely different can of worms.

[@JulianMakes]

Very cool. I’ve been looking for help setting up flow rates for my mosquito magnum, can’t wait for that! Cheers

[@noanyobiseniss7462]

Rewatching this now that I know a little more about the tech and I gotta say the shake you added to the "Dong" was a hilarious addition that totally flew over my head the first time I watched! :D

[@userblame632]

holy crap. I LOVE the amount of detail youre putting into these tests. This is MORE than a 3d printing channel.

[@maharbatc]

My god you're taking this in a serious and scientific way, such a good work, you earn us a lot of work thank you so much for your intense work

[@justinmoritz6543]

I thought your analysis of the cross section was really interesting! Very good idea to easily examine the elastic deformation of the filament post extrusion.

[@kylelongstaff]

Ayo as a french Canadian I congradulate you on the script. It shows you really spent time to spell check and get the proper definitions

[@MirageC]

I know it is far from perfect, but I am working quite hard on my English from Abitibi! :) Thanks for the encouragements!

[@danobot12]

This is great work. Love the insane attention to detail, data capture, visualisation, analysis and explanation. Really great work man. Subscribed!!

[@arlomaguire7363]

wish i had talked to you before, ive been working on an extremely similar design/testing for over 2 months now (although very slowly due to time limits). Great work!

[@rmatveev]

Actually - measuring the force needed to push the filament into the hotend is one of the objective which is really reflecting what is going on into the melting zone. Most of the studies available here on KZbin uses wrong approach of the skipping extruder (which can be a result of million things but the processes ongoing inside the hotend).

[@arlomaguire7363]

@@rmatveev yes, ive been using a load cell for some parts of this, as well as an lgx which makes skipping harder.

[@us7876]

Dude I'm getting into 3d printing and this has been one of the first videos about the matter I've seen. Is the community always like this? Focusing on variables that affects the printing, getting loads of data... Are you guys secretly building a 3d printed rocket to take over the world or something?? Impressive stuff👏👏

[@GoldenJaguar3D]

I’m looking forward to see the result of all these hotends, great job thus far

[@notmyrealname1335]

The quality of this video is incredible! So much info presented in an extremely clear and logical way. Just the 3D models alone, goodness. Well done!!🎉🎉🎉

[@BlownUpp]

This is incredible. Too often people point to intangible aspects of a part when recommending it or not - you’ve brought it back to my wheelhouse of introducing a consistent and repeatable process with data to back up the answers! Can’t wait for the Next one!

[@ResistanceLion]

The best video quality in the topic, i hoped so much to see a real tests to be put out in any review and finally i saw them. Also, i laughed a lot from jokes about 2m/s extrusion and 1g conversion for average "3d printing" auditory. My respect for yours work. Definitely remember to donate smth after the war

[@lam_xyz]

Hey Mirage! what a thorough methodology!! Is there a chance for further episodes? I would be eager to see my Vorons Dragon HF in comparisions to rapido and revo... Additionally, it would be great to have a glimpse at real prints of the different hotends, maybe a benchy for each? Thanks a lot for your great work!

[@doron910]

amazing video explaining important phenomenon in 3D printing and crucial to understanding bottlenecks.

[@jimmym2719]

A very professional test comparison work done👍👍👍. Awesome details, remarkable CADs, lots of data & graphs 💪. Thank you very much for sharing your wonderful work💕

[@yotortellini]

Been waiting for this to come back for the past year!

[@confusedtx5]

This is exactly what I've been looking for that the internet didn't seem to have. Lets Goooo!!

[@Etrehumain123]

Im new in 3d print and in 5 mn you provided me all the vocabulary I couldn't understand elsewhere. Hotend hotsink, ect, thank you !

[@MirageC]

Glad it was helpful!

[@dirkmiller9872]

This is the most important 3D printing series in a long time. Thank you for doing the legwork!

[@MirageC]

Glad you like it!

[@laguel336]

I'm looking forward to seeing the next episodes! Your projects and videos are amazing! Thank you for your contribution to the 3D community!

[@zez000]

Excellent content! Would be nice to include the humble cr10 too, with so many Enders out there it would help many people know exactly how much performance they'll gain for each of those upgrades

[@heyspookyboogie644]

I was just looking for some mosquito hot end alternatives or what was the latest innovations I should be looking at. I don’t normally check reviews from random channels I’ve never heard of. And in the rare cases I do, I almost never watch the whole thing, and don’t think I’ve ever subscribed. But I was so thoroughly impressed by this video (aside from the opening that almost made me leave from the overlapping audio) that I had to subscribe. Very well thought out tests and an incredible amount of thorough and considerate work went into this and that certainly earned a sub from me. Well done!

[@danielfeil8232]

Great test! Excited to see the next one

[@Abyssaal1]

A very professional movie and it's a pleasure to watch, lots of graphics effects added and explained very well. You do things right got a lot your experience and you put a lot of work into making this movie, thanks for it.

[@MirageC]

Thank you very much, glad you liked it.

[@MatrixRay19]

Here's an ideia: Supervolcano nozzle, 2 CHC Pro's and a standard CHC. These are heating cores made by Triangle Labs that are similar to Revo Cores, except V6 standard dimensions. If you want to spice things even further: CHT Nozzle + Supervolcano Extender(haven't seen on yet, but the concept is there). This has to be the most powerful hotend with off the shelf components(not considering the extender version)

[@MatrixRay19]

PS: You can also take advantage of the 3 independent heaters to have different temperatures along the meltzone, like in industrial extruders.

[@MirageC]

Agreed this would make a quite powerfull hotend in terms of meting capacity, But having used Super Volcano a lot in the past, I suspect retraction and pressure management would be the downside. Without speaking of the unsupported length that would be dangling under acceleration. But definitely an interresting concept.

[@TheTechnicGuy1]

actually so excited for this series, nice to have some really care and approach it in a standardized scientific manner

[@alanb76]

This is a very thorough data intensive approach to the subject. Thank you and looking forward to this and learning more about this critically important component of 3d printing.

[@joshua43214]

I have long contended that not only is the moment of the hot end mounting critical, but also the limiting factor for printing is the dwell time of the filament allowing it to melt to the center. I have one criticism of your methodology: the max pressure should be scored statistically, not by observing the print quality. Pressure will increase more or less linearly, so for each step, you calculate a linear regression using all the previous steps (you probably have to discard the first steps). This regression is used to predict the next step. When the next step is significantly different from the projected value (t-test is probably appropriate here), you have reached the maximum acceptable pressure. Since you have all the data, you can do this anytime you wish :) Really appreciate this. I am a bio-informatics scientist, and it is nice to see someone doing tests that do not suck.

[@TheAnoniemo]

This is gonna be AWESOME! Best of luck and I'm looking forward to the results!

[@wktodd]

Qudos for the hotend manufacturers for supporting this,.Most firm avoid direct comparison wherever possible.

[@brianwgDK]

this is going to be the gold standard for hotend testing 👍👍👍👍👍💪

[@thatautomotiveblog]

Top Gear reference is all I needed to trust this. Thank you!

[@jrep]

Thank you very much for doing this for the community.

[@andrasbenke2577]

There are no words for that how amazing work you did!

[@properprinting]

Awesome! I'm looking forward to the rest! I mainly focused on the extruder, but the hotend is at least just as important, nice setup!

[@memsu06]

I can't wait for the test results, I'm having to find out the hard way now that my printer can print faster than pla+ can melt. And this is with a high flow nozzle.

[@802Garage]

My man, this is an insane amount of work. Fantastic.

[@karlosss1868]

Love IT! This could be the definitive quide on which hotend to buy for a particular use for quite some time.

[@LightwalkerN7]

It's been a long while since your last hotend test. When can we expect a new video?

[@Vez3D]

Incredible video man !! You da best !! Thanks for doing this for the community. I know how much time and work you have put in this one... It is very well done and documented and very professional, bringing science in. Hats off to you my brother. You deserve a big bottle of rum!! Everyone should be buying you a paypal beer :)

[@MirageC]

Thank you man! Thanks for all the motivation talks you gave me while I was down under with unsorted raw data output. You gave me the courage to finish this one! Now that the train has left the station, it should be a bit easier to produce the other episodes.

[@johngriffin618]

You should get a patreon up. I would donate monthly for valuable information like this.

[@philtobin9510]

That is a huge amount of data, I like you level of accuracy.

[@jezclark4882]

Me: Olivier's channel has been quiet for a while. Olivier: I've been testing absolutely goddamn EVERYTHING Love your work; as a fellow data nerd, I cannot wait to see more results.

[@MirageC]

Cannot wait me neither! lol! Now need to find a way to automate some stuff to speed up the process.

[@SunshineDude]

Dude, that level of data gather and analize. You get yourself a subscriber!

[@thorgraum1462]

13 min into the video. this content is insane! i really appreciate you as a content creator

[@andrewfazio7330]

Are there any published results yet?

[@matthewlloyd956]

this is great series as I am just looking at upgrading my hotend and extruder for faster printing

[@Kaliumcyanidful]

Thank you for your time! Take a look at design of experiments, especially taguchi plans to save some runs:)

[@amoose136]

I like the methodology of this and appreciate the empiricism. Looking forward to the next in the series.

[@MirageC]

Thanks for teaching me a new word! love it! EMPIRICISM all the way!!

[@changer1403]

What an amazing series. I loved every second of it. You're going the extra mile in every aspect and we (the community) can't thank you enough for your hard work.

[@MirageC]

Glad you enjoy it!

[@DianosAbael]

Good lord this video is the sacred graal of extruder videos and has only 40k views. Gj, that’s awesome!!

[@cimjohansson4878]

THIS, is the kind of videos im looking for when planning out my build. very well done.

[@chris26921]

Amazing!!! Im just working on exactly the same Topic, but i cant check the pressure on the filament. Really helpful, thank you!!!

[@Inventorsquare]

That filament rotary encoder is real nice.

[@dva_kompota]

What a return! Great to see you back, Olivier!

[@GreySectoid]

Insanely useful information, I have never hit the subscribe faster.

[@VidiotGeek]

This is spectacular! I'm eager to see the results and how this all shakes out. A huge resource for open source 3D printing.

[@NicksStuff]

What an incredible amount of work you're setting yourself up for!

[@bitosdelaplaya]

A big thanks for this share 👍👍👍 What an important thing (for me that i'm a 2 years beginner in 3d print) : the center of gravity. I'm trying to make my proper 3d printer and it's an important thing to take in account.

[@jspikeball123]

We need more of these episodes!

[@davethetaswegian]

Great stuff, looking forward to seeing the results. I think this could be a valuable resource even for those not chasing ultimate performance. For that reason it would be nice to see some other more modest hot ends included. For example, the Revo would be something I would like to see run through these tests, although I know it wouldn't be near the top of the leader board.

[@twoheadedpanthr]

Hell yeah. I'm a sucker for comprehensive testing using a standard method.

[@knoopx]

great to see some proper study behind this. now I know for sure 220 is the sweet spot for PLA and that PETG prints faster, things I had observed but wasn't completely sure. Cant wait for the next videos!

[@tomaszszczepaniak2101]

Cant wait untill next episode !!!! First time when im donating someone for this crazy job you had done

[@klab3929]

Oh my god, litteraly my dream to get this down into data! thank you!

[@manr.9106]

So cool to feature at the end Simons LSD! Awesome!

[@cyrikdnamps]

j'ai pas d'autre choix que de te lever mon chapeau pour tout ton travail ouffff et hop un petit Don... continue comme ça c'est des personnes comme toi qui font avancer le 3dprinting!!!!

[@MirageC]

Merci cousin ;) est-ce bien toi? ou on partage simplement le même nom de famille ?

[@cyrikdnamps]

@@MirageC On est pas cousin du moins à ce que je sache ... mais il se peut que nous ayons des liens... je suis de la région de Lévis à la Base ... Bref, Keep Going, tes videos sont écœurant et très instructif. Bien aimé celui de la gear de l'Extruder ....

[@gafrers]

Fantastically Detailed and Nerdy Kudos for TopGear reference

[@allted]

So much data!!!! Thank you, I love it. Very excited to see the trends that start to form.

[@christianbureau6732]

Best scientific review ever!

[@trix4rix]

Crazy excited. Love most of your methodology, I'd be interested to see differences with wattage changes in heater cartridges.

[@MirageC]

Wattage will mainly affect heat up time and will allow crazy cooling solutions. Given we are not exceeding thermal output capacity of a low power heater and that both units have been properly PID tuned, there would be no extrusion flow gain from installing a more powerful heater.

[@gordon6029]

So cool that you take the time to do these tests. I really appreciate it, thank you.

[@jamesdangercarpenter]

Just discovered this! This is awesome. Cannot wait to watch more of these

[@MacroAggressor]

Excellent format, looking forward to additional episodes.

[@bluemonxterDIY]

Great stuff. Cant wait for the next part. I am starting a new printer build and this will really help me in selecting the hotend.

[@rmatveev]

Hello, MirageC! Do you have any plans to continue your hotend study? I believe that your aproach is the most scientific on the Web. I hope you to investigate Volcano and other highflow hotends :)))

[@draco_2727]

Pretty awesome 👏 props for the scientific approach.

[@benclimo461]

Hey, absolutely brilliant video! I can't wait until new episode release, can't come soon enough! Brilliant presentation and I can understand it pretty well as I'm not an engineer. So many different data points your using and that's incredible for finding out different hotends for our needs, the amount of time and effort this requires must be pretty intense. Just wondering what schedule are you going to be releasing these videos? Once a week, month, day etc? I suspect you've done the vast majority of the data collection now and it's just the presentation to do now?

[@FinalFight08]

Let the Games begin 💪💪💪💪...dammm this is insane 😉😉😉🍺🍺🍺

[@Leo_Wolf_the_engineer]

The swelling that happens is also related to "die swell" which happens because the polymer chains get get stretched out in the hole and after contract again which makes the whole thing short and thicker.

[@MirageC]

Yup ;)