Changing HotEnd
Hello!
Please excuse me if this thread have been already talked about in the past. I'm new in the forums and didn't get to found nothing about my question...
Could you send some sort of instructions or manual in order to change the whole HotEnd with the fewer steps and in the most efficient way possible?
I've a Prusa i3 MK3 for a few weeks by now, although we are a workshop's team with plenty of 3D printing experience with a lot of other 3D printers such as Ultimaker or BCN3D Technologies ones.
This experience tell us to fully change the HotEnd of every 3D printer whenever you want to change the filament for one which works with a very different range of temperatures. The most classical case is switching between PLA and ABS. If you keep different HotEnds for different range temperatures you will see its life (and their nozzles) pretty much extended.
That is the reason why I'm asking about some sort of guidelines in order to change the HotEnd (no need to change the wires as you can put the heater and thermistor in the new one) for this awesome MK3 3D printer. I've fully assembled our MK3, and now that I'm willing to change the HotEnd I'm feeling it will be much more complicated than for other 3D printers, so I will be really grateful if the Prusa team help us with this and show us the best and easiest way to do so.
Thank you!
Re: Changing HotEnd
The MK3 can print ABS without any physical changes, you simply select ABS for print material or set the print temperature in your slicer. There doesn't appear to be a more direct way to replace the hotend, you must take the extruder apart to remove the hotend.
Re: Changing HotEnd
Well, a full hotend swap would certainly work, but it's not necessary. The trick is to make sure you've fully cleaned the hotend of leftover filament when switching materials, particularly from high-temp (e.g. ABS) to low-temp (PLA). Try this process yourself and see if it meets your needs:
[...] This experience tell us to fully change the HotEnd of every 3D printer whenever you want to change the filament for one which works with a very different range of temperatures. The most classical case is switching between PLA and ABS. If you keep different HotEnds for different range temperatures you will see its life (and their nozzles) pretty much extended.
These steps will eliminate the need to do a full hotend swap just to switch materials. It's the same procedure when swapping nozzles out. The reason I really like the cleaning filament is that it will extrude at a wide range of temps, so if any is left in the hotend after the cold pulls, it'll melt out in the last step. I've been able to swap freely between PLA, PETG, NGEN, XT and a variety of carbon, wood, copper and other filled materials with no issues. My biggest extremes would be 3DXTech PETG that prints at 265C and PLA at 200C.
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Re: Changing HotEnd
Hi there,
Thank you for the answers...
I already knew about that kind of procedures although I like most when you use some Nylon to fully clean the whole hotend, it seems to work better in our experience. However, the way the Prusa X-Carriage is built makes us to think the nylon-cleaning procedure will be dangerous and could damage the 3D printer.
We also used cleaning filaments, our choice is the one from Smart Materials 3D, with pretty good results although not as good as with nylon.
Anyway, thank you very much for the tips, we will try to make the cleaning procedure like you suggest and hopefully we won't suffer more clogs than usual regarding not changing the hotend. We would really love the Prusa MK3 design would be prepared to swap hotends more easily, maybe in the future their team will think about this, we think it would be a great feature.
Thank you!
Re: Changing HotEnd
Hey,
Just wanted to quickly reply since I found this post while searching for a way to get to the hotend. I am one of those poor souls that installed the hotend way to low and only realized the mistake when Z calibration kept failing. I found this video . You can basically take off both fans on the extruder and are then able to take of the front plate of the extruder assembly and access the hotend.
Hope this helps.