Theres little info about these around so ill share my thoughts running on a workhorse, the supplied wiper pad holder does not fit on the bed (holes dont line up because its to large and butts against the glass bed) i use the orginal and it seems to be ok, the major problem is the filament jam, you can load new filament and do one print which comes out fine and it performs as it should, however after that if you try to print something else the filament will jam in the head and i cant see why, this means you then have to cut the filament above the extruder gears and flick out the bit thats jammed. You have to do this every single time you do a print.
I had some problems with this in relation to my SL head. Where it was acting almost as if something was blocking the head and chewing up filament (the gear was).
I ended doing hot pulls and such to try and push out an debris. Also, I pulled the fan off temporarily to allow the extruder to heat up (this was actually a suggestion from Lulzbot themselves), and help get stuff out.
After all that, I adjusted the tensioner, and also limited the plastic I could run through the head. I usually use the Inland PLA from MicroCenter cause it’s cheap and easily accessible. But I have also come to learn it’s not always the most consistent. All I can think is the cheaper stuff doesn’t play nice with the SL, and as such, I only use like PolyLite PLA now in it.
The SL’s tiny .25mm nozzle diameter extrudes exactly 1/4 of the filament vs. a .5mm (HE) nozzle. The difference is based on the square of the difference. If the SL nozzle is 1/2 the diameter, then the square of 1/2 works out to 1/4.
This means the filament moves just 1/4 as much … frequent retractions can grind on the same piece of filament. You’d want to adjust retraction settings in your slicer softer to help prevent this.
With the HS+ nozzle (1.2mm) vs the HE nozzle (.5mm) the nozzle is 2.2x larger. The square of 2.2 is 4.84. This means the HS+ nozzle is moving the filament almost (but not quite) 5x as fast. This should lead to it being much less likely to jam.
HOWEVER… keep in mind that this means it needs to heat up that filament nearly 5x faster. Being 2.85mm diameter filament (vs. the 1.75mm filament machines) means it takes just a little longer to get the heat into the core of the filament. It’s possibly you might need to adjust the temperature upward a little to compensate (print using temps near the higher end of the filaments extrusion range) … or maybe slow the print speed.
While on the topic… the HS .8mm (non +) toolhead is 1.6 times larger than the HE .5mm towhead. This means it goes through filament at 2.56x times the rate of the .5mm nozzle. Or just a little over half the speed of the HS+ 1.2mm head.
I had the same problem with my Mini Aerostruder. When I changed filament, it clogged EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I kept having to disassemble it, but it seemed the hot plastic kept welding itself to either the plastic guide tube insert or the heat sink tube. Eventually I had to order another heat sink and then I made a mistake and it is now a pile of junk. I wish Lulzbot had designed their own head again instead of using E3D’s design.