Maintenance and nozzle change on MK3S+
Hi!
I have a MK3s that works very nice, it has printed for 520 hours, and i have not had any problems with it. I have done a regular maintenance on it, cleaned the rods and re-greaced them as per the instruction, and checked the belt tensions(254/263, didnt change them since the machine runs nice).
According to a couple of sources i should change the nozzle every 6 months, but is that "printing months"? I print only PLA and have used the same nozzle during my 520 hours of printing, and i dont sea any signs of stringing of bad extrusion.
How many print hours do a Prusa standard nozzle last with only PLA?
PLA's do vary. As a very rough guide, if I'm not printing anything with abrasive additives, including glow-in-the-dark, I expect to get 4000 - 5000 hours from a brass nozzle...
BUT
There are strange additives in some cheap PLA's to bulk out the polymer, plus some pigments, eg white, are required in larger proportions and include some harder ingredients so it's rare to actually make the top end of the range. Also I'm lazy and sometimes, if I intend to print only a little, say 100g, of GITD I might accept the extra wear and shorten the nozzle life.
Cheerio,
RE: Maintenance and nozzle change on MK3S+
It's been a while since I was concerned about nozzle life (I'm using tungsten carbide nozzles now) but with 500 hours of PLA you're nowhere near where you should be concerned about the nozzle. I call BS on the "six months" recommendation. Change the nozzle when you actually begin to see degradation of your prints.
Formerly known on this forum as @fuchsr -- until all hell broke loose with the forum software...
I call BS on the "six months" recommendation.
To be fair, six months of 24/7 printing is about right.
Cheerio,
RE: Maintenance and nozzle change on MK3S+
I bit the bullet and installed a tungsten carbide nozzle last year since I use several types of abrasive conductive filaments and I was tired of always changing nozzles.
The tungsten carbide nozzles is very similar in heat transfer to the brass nozzles so there is no need to readjust everything. It is also very rugged compared to the ruby ones.
Highly recommended.
REPAIR, RENEW, REUSE, RECYCLE, REBUILD, REDUCE, RECOVER, REPURPOSE, RESTORE
RE: Maintenance and nozzle change on MK3S+
According to a couple of sources i should change the nozzle every 6 months, but is that "printing months"? I print only PLA and have used the same nozzle during my 520 hours of printing, and i dont sea any signs of stringing of bad extrusion.
How many print hours do a Prusa standard nozzle last with only PLA?
During the first part of the pandemic I ran the original brass nozzle on the MK3S for more than 6 months with almost-daily use. Mostly PLA and ABS with some metallics. When I replaced it with a tungsten-carbide nozzle, there was no obvious degradation in the print quality.
Some time after that I had a partial clog that caused the bead to skew sideways and needling and cold pulls would not resolve it.
I had on hand a set of nozzle cleaning drill bits and I attempted to chase out the nozzle with one of those and it caught on something and broke in the nozzle. I was unable to get the remains of the bit out no matter what I tried, so I simply installed a spare brass nozzle and ordered another tungsten-carbide.
It's been several months on that brass nozzle, probably used every 2-3 days or so, again, mostly PLA and ABS with some metallics. No sign of degraded prints at all.
When I get a chance I need to take the machine down and give it a good PM and clean-up. I'll install the new tungsten nozzle then.