What’s the best nozzle?  

It's a meaningless question, it depends entirely on what you print through it.

Cheerio,

RE: What’s the best nozzle?

I was curious to know people’s experiences printing whatever they were printing with these nozzles. Presumably, the Diamondback and Obxidian nozzles would have likely been used with more abrasive filaments, and the brass nozzles with less abrasive filaments. However, I also appreciate that some people may have printed less abrasive filaments with the hardened nozzles. Hence my question being open to knowing whatever experienced people have had using them. 

With regard to the differences between the Prusa Nextruder nozzle (both standard and HF) and the Prusa V6 nozzles with the adapter, I understand that each of these nozzle types is available in both brass and hardened versions. My question was specifically about the differences between these two nozzle types.

So I’m still curious to know people’s experiences, if they’re happy to share. 

RE: What’s the best nozzle?

The Prusa brass nozzles are great and will last an extremely long time if your not printing abrasive materials. 

The hardened nozzles are only needed for printing abrasive filaments. They will not provide any additional print quality vs. the brass nozzles. 

RE: What’s the best nozzle?

If you have one of the ObXidian nozzles you can just use it for everything and not change it every time you use another filament type without any downside for other materials. Hardened steel nozzles often require different temperature levels compared to brass nozzles. This is not required for ObXidian nozzles. I use mine with the standard profiles and with the same temperature levels as the brass ones.

RE: What’s the best nozzle?

I use WC (Tungsten Carbide) nozzles from Spool3D in Canada (I'm in the US). You do have to use plated copper blocks as the thermal expansion of aluminum vs. WC is dissimilar enough to loosen WC nozzles in aluminum heater blocks with only a few thermal cycles. I accidentally didn't discover this as when I first got my WC nozzles is when I happened to coincidentally upgrade my MK3 V3 extruder. I recently found nextruder plated copper heater blocks from Levendigs (in the Netherlands). And accelerometer input shaper calibration with the new Prusa accelerometer was only a few Hz off of the stock setting. I suspect that I'll get to use my 0.6 and 0.8 WC nozzles now that nextruder nozzle assembly changes are a lot easier than V6 nozzle changes and I don't have to re-do Live Z calibration.

An advantage of the WC nozzles is the thermal conductivity is only slightly lower than brass. I've had good experience using Prusa filament settings for brass nozzles on WC. I can scrape the nozzle tip with my flush cutters w/o worrying about slowly shaving away the tip. I run my 0.4mm WC nozzle as my everyday nozzle. It performs well for PLA and PETG (the majority of what I print), and I don't have to change nozzles if printing anything abrasive (carbon fill, glow-in-the-dark, etc). My cleaning filament doesn't stick to the inside giving me perfect looking cold pulls.

RE:

Posted by: @brian-12

The Prusa brass nozzles are great and will last an extremely long time if your not printing abrasive materials. 

The hardened nozzles are only needed for printing abrasive filaments. They will not provide any additional print quality vs. the brass nozzles. 

Thanks Brian - this is great to know. Especially that there's no print quality difference between them. 

RE: What’s the best nozzle?

Posted by: @walter-layher

If you have one of the ObXidian nozzles you can just use it for everything and not change it every time you use another filament type without any downside for other materials. Hardened steel nozzles often require different temperature levels compared to brass nozzles. This is not required for ObXidian nozzles. I use mine with the standard profiles and with the same temperature levels as the brass ones.

Thanks Walter. It's interesting that the Obsidian hardened nozzles don't need any temperature adjustments. So you can just use the Obsidian for everything and not change it. I'm guessing it will last significantly longer than the brass nozzle if used with less abrasive materials, so less nozzle changes. 

RE: What’s the best nozzle?

Posted by: @sembazuru

I use WC (Tungsten Carbide) nozzles from Spool3D in Canada (I'm in the US). You do have to use plated copper blocks as the thermal expansion of aluminum vs. WC is dissimilar enough to loosen WC nozzles in aluminum heater blocks with only a few thermal cycles. I accidentally didn't discover this as when I first got my WC nozzles is when I happened to coincidentally upgrade my MK3 V3 extruder. I recently found nextruder plated copper heater blocks from Levendigs (in the Netherlands). And accelerometer input shaper calibration with the new Prusa accelerometer was only a few Hz off of the stock setting. I suspect that I'll get to use my 0.6 and 0.8 WC nozzles now that nextruder nozzle assembly changes are a lot easier than V6 nozzle changes and I don't have to re-do Live Z calibration.

An advantage of the WC nozzles is the thermal conductivity is only slightly lower than brass. I've had good experience using Prusa filament settings for brass nozzles on WC. I can scrape the nozzle tip with my flush cutters w/o worrying about slowly shaving away the tip. I run my 0.4mm WC nozzle as my everyday nozzle. It performs well for PLA and PETG (the majority of what I print), and I don't have to change nozzles if printing anything abrasive (carbon fill, glow-in-the-dark, etc). My cleaning filament doesn't stick to the inside giving me perfect looking cold pulls.

Thanks Sembazuru. That's interesting about the thermal expansion differences. 

Do you find your cleaning filament sticks with the brass or other hardened nozzles? 

RE: What’s the best nozzle?

Are the Prusa HF nozzles more prone to clogging and/or harder to clean if they do, due to their more complicated internal geometry? 

RE:

Posted by: @omar-3

 

Posted by: @sembazuru

I use WC (Tungsten Carbide) nozzles from Spool3D in Canada (I'm in the US). You do have to use plated copper blocks as the thermal expansion of aluminum vs. WC is dissimilar enough to loosen WC nozzles in aluminum heater blocks with only a few thermal cycles. I accidentally didn't discover this as when I first got my WC nozzles is when I happened to coincidentally upgrade my MK3 V3 extruder. I recently found nextruder plated copper heater blocks from Levendigs (in the Netherlands). And accelerometer input shaper calibration with the new Prusa accelerometer was only a few Hz off of the stock setting. I suspect that I'll get to use my 0.6 and 0.8 WC nozzles now that nextruder nozzle assembly changes are a lot easier than V6 nozzle changes and I don't have to re-do Live Z calibration.

An advantage of the WC nozzles is the thermal conductivity is only slightly lower than brass. I've had good experience using Prusa filament settings for brass nozzles on WC. I can scrape the nozzle tip with my flush cutters w/o worrying about slowly shaving away the tip. I run my 0.4mm WC nozzle as my everyday nozzle. It performs well for PLA and PETG (the majority of what I print), and I don't have to change nozzles if printing anything abrasive (carbon fill, glow-in-the-dark, etc). My cleaning filament doesn't stick to the inside giving me perfect looking cold pulls.

Thanks Sembazuru. That's interesting about the thermal expansion differences. 

Do you find your cleaning filament sticks with the brass or other hardened nozzles? 

As I recall, the brass 0.4mm nozzle that came with my MK4 kit also works well with the cleaning filament (FYI, it's the eSun cleaning filament. Bought this 100g of filament through Amazon back in Feb of 2019 and I have 59g left.) Now, it didn't work well for cold pull on the brass HF nozzle that came with my MK4S upgrade kit, but that was to be expected because of the nozzle internal geometry.

I used to manually do cold pull by packing the nozzle while cooling (i.e. manually push the filament through once the nozzle temperature got below what the printer would extrude at (170°C?)) and then let the nozzle cool until the fan stopped (40°C?). Then set the nozzle temperature to 100°C and start pulling firmly around 90°C (extruder gears open) until it released. If there was any filament or dirt, repeat until I got a clean pull. Usually only 1 or 2 pulls were needed, but if I had printed using a particularly glittery filament more might be needed to clean all the residual glitter out (as I recall, carbon fiber bits were nearly as tedious to clean out as glitter).

I've found that the MK4(S) firmware cold pull (which does nearly what I did manually before) works well with the cleaning filament on both the brass normal flow Nextruder nozzle as well as my WC with V6 Nextruder adapter nozzle assemblies.

I've not used any other types of hardened nozzles, so I can't comment on those.

RE: What’s the best nozzle?

Diamondback nozzles are great for durability and precision, while Prusa brass is more affordable and works well for most prints. Obxidian nozzles are good but tend to be more specialized.

RE: What’s the best nozzle?

Posted by: @omar-3

Are the Prusa HF nozzles more prone to clogging and/or harder to clean if they do, due to their more complicated internal geometry? 

I'm not sure about being more prone to clog, but when they do, it's a real PITA to clean them and sometimes it's impossible. You can try either with a needle from the bottom  or a cold pull from the top... Good luck !.  That applies for every brand of the so called hjgh flow nozzles.

RE:

Adjacent to nozzles, I've used this sponge holder for ages (on my MK3 and now MK4) to wipe dust off of filament before it enters the extruder. I don't remember the last time I had a clog (besides recently using a marble-style (black mica?) filament on a 0.25mm nozzle) even printing with out an enclosure in my dusty basement. The filament path through the sponge does get dark with dirt after printing a while.

This won't protect you from foreign objects embedded in the filament, but quality filament from reliable sources should (nearly) eliminate that concern.

I remember back when I first started using this sponge holder, using filament oilers (basically the same thing just with the sponge slightly moistened with oil) was all the rage. I've never oiled my filament, but I feel like the wiping with a sponge has helped me avoid clogs. (Though this could be confirmation bias like "oxygen-free copper wires" for audiophiles.)

RE: What’s the best nozzle?

Hey buddy, 

Thanks for sharing this - and apologies for the delay responding! 

That’s really interesting to know. Is the Esun cleaning filament nylon?

Do you know if the MK4S firmware could pull is designed to do a cold pull with the HF nozzle?

Cheers

Posted by: @sembazuru

 

Posted by: @omar-3

 

Posted by: @sembazuru

I use WC (Tungsten Carbide) nozzles from Spool3D in Canada (I'm in the US). You do have to use plated copper blocks as the thermal expansion of aluminum vs. WC is dissimilar enough to loosen WC nozzles in aluminum heater blocks with only a few thermal cycles. I accidentally didn't discover this as when I first got my WC nozzles is when I happened to coincidentally upgrade my MK3 V3 extruder. I recently found nextruder plated copper heater blocks from Levendigs (in the Netherlands). And accelerometer input shaper calibration with the new Prusa accelerometer was only a few Hz off of the stock setting. I suspect that I'll get to use my 0.6 and 0.8 WC nozzles now that nextruder nozzle assembly changes are a lot easier than V6 nozzle changes and I don't have to re-do Live Z calibration.

An advantage of the WC nozzles is the thermal conductivity is only slightly lower than brass. I've had good experience using Prusa filament settings for brass nozzles on WC. I can scrape the nozzle tip with my flush cutters w/o worrying about slowly shaving away the tip. I run my 0.4mm WC nozzle as my everyday nozzle. It performs well for PLA and PETG (the majority of what I print), and I don't have to change nozzles if printing anything abrasive (carbon fill, glow-in-the-dark, etc). My cleaning filament doesn't stick to the inside giving me perfect looking cold pulls.

Thanks Sembazuru. That's interesting about the thermal expansion differences. 

Do you find your cleaning filament sticks with the brass or other hardened nozzles? 

As I recall, the brass 0.4mm nozzle that came with my MK4 kit also works well with the cleaning filament (FYI, it's the eSun cleaning filament. Bought this 100g of filament through Amazon back in Feb of 2019 and I have 59g left.) Now, it didn't work well for cold pull on the brass HF nozzle that came with my MK4S upgrade kit, but that was to be expected because of the nozzle internal geometry.

I used to manually do cold pull by packing the nozzle while cooling (i.e. manually push the filament through once the nozzle temperature got below what the printer would extrude at (170°C?)) and then let the nozzle cool until the fan stopped (40°C?). Then set the nozzle temperature to 100°C and start pulling firmly around 90°C (extruder gears open) until it released. If there was any filament or dirt, repeat until I got a clean pull. Usually only 1 or 2 pulls were needed, but if I had printed using a particularly glittery filament more might be needed to clean all the residual glitter out (as I recall, carbon fiber bits were nearly as tedious to clean out as glitter).

I've found that the MK4(S) firmware cold pull (which does nearly what I did manually before) works well with the cleaning filament on both the brass normal flow Nextruder nozzle as well as my WC with V6 Nextruder adapter nozzle assemblies.

I've not used any other types of hardened nozzles, so I can't comment on those.

RE: What’s the best nozzle?

Thanks @chikenpors! What’s your preference between the Diamondback and the Obxidian nozzles? 

Posted by: @chikenpors

Diamondback nozzles are great for durability and precision, while Prusa brass is more affordable and works well for most prints. Obxidian nozzles are good but tend to be more specialized.

RE: What’s the best nozzle?

Thanks @artur5, 

It does seem like the regular non-HF might be the way to go if hassle free is a priority!

Posted by: @artur5

 

Posted by: @omar-3

Are the Prusa HF nozzles more prone to clogging and/or harder to clean if they do, due to their more complicated internal geometry? 

I'm not sure about being more prone to clog, but when they do, it's a real PITA to clean them and sometimes it's impossible. You can try either with a needle from the bottom  or a cold pull from the top... Good luck !.  That applies for every brand of the so called hjgh flow nozzles.

RE: What’s the best nozzle?

Thanks for sharing this, too. 

That’s interesting- I’d never thought about something like this. 

Are clogs often/usually caused by foreign particles in or on the filament? 

Do you recall getting more clogs before using this device?