Nozzles: Which is which?  

RE: Nozzles: Which is which?

The MK3 series extruder is a V6 made by E3D.  The v6 nozzles have a different tip geometry to a V8 although the thread is the same so you can physically fit either.  One thing to watch out for is the thread length, if the thread isn't long enough then you wont get a seal against the heatbreak.  That's one thing that is often off about cheaper copies. 

Nozzles are the one part you don't want to cheap out on.

RE: Nozzles: Which is which?

various upgrades I'd like to d

My strong advice — don't mess around with "upgrades" until a) you really know your machine and can get it to produce quality prints with stock configuration, and b) you see an actual need for it. I use "upgrades" in quotes because I found most of the ones I tried to be marginal or no improvement to stock, or at worst detrimental. Example, fan shrouds. Not saying there are no situations under which they may not yield better results than stock, but stock is pretty good.

With the preaching out of the way, as far as nozzles are concerned, stick with v6 nozzles. They'll work. Brass is super cheap and works fine for most situations. I liked nickel-plated copper nozzles as a small step up. Seemed to get dirty not as easily as brass, but purely subjective, and have the same thermal profile. If you intend to print wood or other filaments with stuff added, you'll want a 0.6 mm nozzle. For corrosive materials, you'll need a hardened steel nozzle or tungsten carbide or similar. I've switched all printers over to tungsten carbide. Not cheap but I probably won't ever need to buy a nozzle again, and they work just fine with standard profiles, unless hardened steel or Nozzle X etc, which required adjustments to the print profiles. And then there are high-flow nozzles, but you'll know when you need them.  99.999% of the stuff most people seem to print certainly won't benefit from it.

RE: Nozzles: Which is which?

Thanks guys for the quick replies!  Tungsten carbide huh?  Any particular brand?

RE: Nozzles: Which is which?

I ended up in the Vanadium nozzle camp. I run some CF PETG and CF PC on a somewhat regular basis. Now on 3 out of 4 hot ends and it will be four eventually. Like the tungsten carbide they will probably last as long as the printer and the Slice ones come with a warranty against wearing out. No change in temp settings needed. Other than that no upgrades on my Prusas, the Raise3d is another frustrating story....

RE: Nozzles: Which is which?

Tungsten carbide huh?  Any particular brand?

I use nozzles from 3D Maker Engineering and Spool 3D. They are full tungsten carbide, not an alloy and not just a TC tip on a steel body. have four 0.4, four 0.6, two 0.25, and two 0.8 mm nozzles. Haven't had any problems with any of them. I've seen reports of Spool3D nozzles working themselves loose but I haven't seen it myself. Maybe I tighten them better. Or maybe I'm just lucky 😇

RE: Nozzles: Which is which?

Posted by: @fuchsr

Tungsten carbide huh?  Any particular brand?

I use nozzles from 3D Maker Engineering and Spool 3D.

I bought a Tungsten Carbide 0.4 nozzle from 3D Maker Engineering in 6/2020. I have been extremely pleased with it. No temp changes needed. They've been very hard to come by, but I noticed that they seem to be in stock now. Of course the price has increased substantially, but they're still a great deal.

RE:

+1 on 3D Maker Eng. TC nozzles. I have little experience yet ( I installed one on my MK3S+ only 3 weeks ago ) but so far no problems at all. It performs exactly like the nickel platted copper nozzle I had before. No temperature adjustment needed and zero problems with getting loose or increased stringing. Like Fuchsr said, I hope this TC nozzle lasts as long as the printer (or myself ..).

For the record, I used a 3Nm torque wrench to tighten the nozzle at 280C. My hotend is a Mosquito, so the heater block is made of platted copper. I don’t know if the same torque would be good for the Prusa stock aluminum heater. For what I’ve read, TC nozzles seem to require higher torques in order to secure the nozzle against the bottom of the heatbreak, but I expect that this depends on the materials used for the heater block and the heatbreak.

RE: Nozzles: Which is which?

So along with the nozzle is the hotend something else to consider "upgrading?"

RE:

Again, depends on your reason for doing it. The standard hotend is perfectly fine. I've used heater blocks with nickel-coated copper for a while, which like nozzles of that material seemed to be a bit more resistant to accumulating crud.

Other hotends have more specific purposes. Some hotends are designed to pump more material through for higher flow rates and higher speed. Others are designed for higher temperatures.  And yet another category is designed to facilitate nozzle changes. All my printers have Dragon hotends because I move between 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, and 0.25 mm nozzles all the time. With the Dragon I don't need a spanner to hold the hotend in place while changing nozzles, it's a more convenient process requiring only one hand as the hotend is fixed in place. More recently E3D Revo has become popular as another hotend designed for easy nozzle swaps, even though it had some initial issues but it looks like they've been resolved. I have one idling in a drawer, never installed it as my Dragon's work just fine. 

Be mindful that some hotends are drop-in replacements, others require significant modifications to the extruder/hotend assembly. Likewise on the software side. Some may require firmware changes or at least changes to your print profiles, others will work fine with defaults. The Dragons for example required no change to any of my printer profiles, and to mount them on the Mk3S required only a small tab to be added over one of the screws in the extruder assembly. 

I'd say a hotend upgrade is a more significant (and more committing) undertaking than simply trying a new nozzle; if the new nozzle isn't working for you, you just go back to the old. Plus, good luck trying to get help from Prusa support if you have an uncommon hotend.

So again, my recommendation is to wait, get familiar with the stock hotend (which is perfectly fine), and see how your needs evolve so you know which—if any—hotend solution may make sense to you. But that's coming from a guy who uses his printers to get stuff done. I get it that people love to tinker, in which case knock yourself out—there are plenty of crazy hotends out there to play with 🙂. 

RE: Nozzles: Which is which?

Thanks Fuchsr!  I do tend to get ahead of myself on any new hobby!

RE:

Posted by: @fuchsr

I get it that people love to tinker, in which case knock yourself out—there are plenty of crazy hotends out there to play with 🙂. 

Hey I resemble that remark 🙂 
Fuchsr is giving good advice.  Don't change things for the sake of changing things, especially if you don't have some experience with the normal day to day under your belt.  Nothing worse than printing new printer parts out, rebuilding it and discovering that you need another printed part 🙂  I guess that's where the second printer comes in.

Its one of the reasons that when I did go for a big change to my good old Mk3, to a geared extruder setup I also took the opportunity to rewire the whole hot end to allow me to swap out all the electrical parts without redoing the cable bundle every time.  It was a big job at the time but now it allows me to tinker a lot more easily but just as importantly roll back any mods if they are worse that what I had on previously.  

The Mk3 is a workhorse of a printer once you get the basics* down and is my most trouble free option for a print.  

I've considered the Tungsten nozzles a few times but I can't justify the cost of the shipping.  Its more than the nozzle last time I looked.  So in the mean time I'll stick with my Nozzle-X and personalised profiles 🙂

*basics - Live Z correctly dialled in and bed cleanliness.

RE: Nozzles: Which is which?

hout redoing the cable bundle every time.

The bane of my existence!

RE: Nozzles: Which is which?

@fuchsr - very well said. All new owners should follow this sage advice.

Cheers