E3D hot end first pics and how-to guide

As much as we all love the Buddaschnozzle name, I think performance means something more. The all-metal Hot-end E3D seems to have the best reviews, so I decided I wanted the flexibility of printing in any filament with the same extruder.

Here is my quick how-to guide on installation and extrusion using the E3D on a TAZ.
The J-mount provided on thingaverse http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:374717 leaves out how-to instructions, so here are a few.

Assembly of the E3D hotend can be found on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr02pG58gaU following these simple instructions can make all the difference. Assemble the E3D and use the leads provided cut about in half to allow for the thermistor and power to be hooked up to the factory wiring mounts. I used tabbed quick disconnect crimp-ons for this in case I wanted to use other hot-ends in the future, leaving the factory plug intact.

The 12VDC E3D fan must be powered on when the extruder is turned on, I provided an external 12VDC power source, which is on as long as the power to my TAZ enclosure is on. I wish Lulzbot had made a standard 12VDC terminal/connection point out on the extruder frame from the RAMBO unit for fans, LED lights, etc…

I used Teflon tape to secure the E3D hotend to the J-mount, worked like a charm,


A couple of 10-24 screws and a trim of the screws to fit exactly and the assembly was easily put in and removable from the TAZ extruder frame.

After this is was a matter of placing the J-mount in place of the aluminum plate for the Buddaschnozzle, and securing it to the extruder with the two allen factory screws. I had to use 2 J-mounts to make one that worked, the screw holes didn’t go all the way through on both sides, so print two, or wait until I redesign it and post the revision. I had to shave about 1/32 of an inch off the inside curve of the extruder mount with a tile cutter bit for my Dremel, this took the high points from the fast factory extrusion and knocked them off a bit to allow for the mounting of the J-mount with the already installed E3D.

After this I hooked up my power leads and zip tied everything nicely.


You may have noticed that I mounted the J-mount on top of the extruder platform while the person who posted the mount on Thingaverse http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:374717 mounted theirs on the bottom, mounting it up on top of the extruder platform is so that the filament cooling fan still works, as you can see it is pointed right at the tip of the extruder, and does work.

The new green filament compression arm for the Hob bolt I printed with the new E3D


, and then replaced a broken part that was being held together with zip ties,

I like the new green one, I redesigned it to take the stress better by widening the frame arms a bit not by making it taller. It will be even better in Nylon.


I can’t wait to get the max temp restrictions off my TAZ so I can print in Nylon Muuuch faster than before, till then please feel free to ask questions and I’ll try to answer them.

Ogrethetoymaker

The reason the hole does not go through one of the pieces is it was designed to use heated inserts. One half is also made slightly narrower to compress around the j-head.

Also I see you have the direct drive e3d head. Mine is the bowden version as I wanted to eventually move the extruder off the axis. My adapter was designed to allow the bowden version to also be directly mounted.

Still using my big clunky fan shroud for print cooling and mounting below the x mount lines my cooling nozzle perfectly. nice to know once I get a fan for a stock shroud I can just mount it on top.

OK folks here is the first Nylon part pic, it’s the small herringbone gear, final print temp… (lol) 244C, with a very strange sets of speeds that could be further adjusted, but I tried many till I got a piece that is by far the strongest thing my TAZ has produced so far. It is printed in Bridge Nylon, and it crazy strong. However on the road to this awesome outcome I had many delaminations and other problems.


After I reflashed my TAZ to the 2014Q2 rev firmware it printed slightly different, and I had to re-do my SLic3r profile, it gets hotter faster and doesn’t jump around so much, before it varied 4 degrees, now it floats 1-2 up or down but is solid. The high temp of 244C did cause some bubbles to appear in the filament, After it was out of the extruder, this might be due to water vapor present, as it is very humid here. No matter I just incorporated my knowledge of stir-welding with 3-D printing and the print head drags through the bubbled goo a bit, however I get a fully fused, accurate part out of the deal.

I’d say with the high strength of the Bridge Nylon that a few bubbles will actually increase the strength not take away from it with cavity based dodecahedral skeletal structuring internally. Seriously I didn’t know I could print something this strong, it’s nuts.

Thanks to all the people at Lulzbot for helping me get my nylon TAZ 4 printer online with my new E3D hotend.

Ogrethetoymaker

Anytime you change your hot brands, PID tune the new hardware to improve your heating performance: https://www.lulzbot.com/support/fine-tune-your-marlin-pid-settings

That’s a great custom rig! You should consider modifying to print with a Hexagon Hot End from RepRap Discount: http://www.reprapdiscount.com/hotends/67-hexagon-hotend-set.html

In fact, bam’s doing very early stages of extruder mounts for that which are available on our devel server here: http://devel.lulzbot.com/TAZ/accessories/hotstruder/

Thanks for documenting and sharing your work!

So would you recommend switching to an E3D hotend to you fellow Lulzboters?

Here is the new J-mounts in G-code for PLA, and yes I would say I like the stability of the E3D V6, it is a good head as long as you use it right. Gotta reflash to newest firmware, set temp sensor to 5, max temp to 315C on extruder 0 in arduino after updating it with the LCD patches, then vroom vroom.
SPARE PARTS 2.gcode (3.56 MB)



It was a little bit gooey printing it with a .40mm nozzle while the g-code is set to .35 and these settings worked with the Buddaschnozzle, but it also worked with my new E3D V6 head so who gives, the slic3r settings worked very well for me in PLA with no extruder jams, and good bridging, the excess was easy to trim with the handy Xacto knife that came with My TAZ 4.

in hindsight I could have modified the print while it printed to avoid so much goo and overprint, next time I will do this for sure I do like printing perfect models.

enjoy.


OK here is the new J-mount for the E3D v6 installed and printing! it turned out good with that G-code, very little modification was needed just some minor x-acto scraping that just made it pretty, the shape was still the same.

Also I installed the Nylon Small herringbone gear and lubed it with some olive oil which seemed to help, the black stuff is from my original gear which started to fall apart due to alignment/tightness issues with the filament hob bolt nut. This must be tightened so that it does not bind the small gear and large gear together too tightly which prevents them from turning freely, tighten the large herringbone gear bolt lightly and then they will self-align, too tight and they will bind, be sure to use the washers.


Another day another upgrade.

Hi all,

I am in the middle of a TAZ clone build and would like to incorporate the E3D. Question for those that have done the swap: The heater cartridge on the E3D is 12V but I cannot find a voltage spec for the Budaschnozzle. Is it a straight plug and play swap or are there hardware/firmware settings that need to change? Also, is there a 12V output on the RAMBo that could be used to run the fan without an external power supply? I’m more of a mechanical guy–electronics are still slightly baffling for me. :smiley:

Here is the new redesigned J-mount OgreMod1


The E3DV6 head end fits internally perfectly so it’s square, and has a very small gap between the screw tabs for compression of the E3D without the use of plumbers tape. It also has a stabilization tube that extends down to keep it straight due to model collisions, but allows for an air gap so that the hot-end fin flat side does not touch the stabilizer, the J-mount prints well with limited modification needed to the inner curves of the bridges where a small amount of filament may bulge down during printing which can be quickly scraped off with the X-acto knife that came with your TAZ.

J-mount for printing with TAZ 4 Buddaschnozzle .35mm extruder to mount E3DV6.
E3D v6 J-Mount TAZ set - point35mmnozzle- OgreMod1.gcode (2.43 MB)
This mount is designed to fit the E3DV6 exactly, printed in PLA.

Enjoy!


I had a visitor to my Taz, a small frog or toad not sure which but you can see the upgrades I’m running, including my all new Nylon E3DV6 mount which survives accidental and cooling fan failures, tested up to 1 hour extruder at 240C on, fan off, which is when I realized the fin cooling fan was off, lol. I had done this before and ruined a couple of PLA mounts so I took some time and printed a bridge nylon one which doesn’t care about the cooling, and doesn’t melt when I forget to plug in my power supply. When the PLA mount melts it messes up my prints which is a bummer when I get a great idea and can’t print due to operator error :mrgreen: Always leave the extruder cooling fan on if you turn it on and your PLA mounts won’t melt. I will say the new bridge nylon mount is waaaay stronger than the PLA one which on small dimensions is kinda glassy.

So, I’ve been converting my TAZ to a dual extruder, but I wanted to keep my E3D hotend - now hotends, plural. :smiley:

Sadly, the Dualie mount has some very specific height and other size requirements, and the E3d mount posted here doesn’t work very well for it.

So I made my own. It’ll fit through the hole in the Dualie mount, has a space for running the thermistor, heater, and extruder fan wires up through the mount, and uses a single 4-40 screw + square nut to hold it all together (you’re welcome to resize that hole however you like - 4-40 with a square nut was what I happened to have lying around).

It’s also very, very tight. Earlier versions were less tight, and actually had an odd bug-as-a-feature where there’d be some automatic Z-lift on retracts - if anyone is interested in that version, I think I still have it lying around somewhere.

Sadly I’ve already hooked it all up in my extruder mount, and the Dualie is kind of hard to take pictures of. Tomorrow I’m taking it apart again (waiting on a few more parts for the second extruder), so I’ll take some more pictures and maybe do a how-to guide on installing it.

Mine is printed in ABS, .3mm layer height. There’s no supports in these STL files, you’ll have to generate them yourselves for now. Supports are necessary on this in at least one spot. I’ll try and post some with supports included later on - or possibly straight g-code, but it’ll be gcode designed for an e3d hotend, and not a budaschnozzle.
E3dV6 Top v141027c.stl (230 KB)
E3dV6 Bottom v141027c.stl (78.6 KB)


IMG_1496.JPG
IMG_1497.JPG

I’m an aspiring nylon user who is looking to print at 245 degrees, so this information is gold dust - thank you! I have a few questions:

Have you considered the “official” Fangtooth all-metal head? http://devel.lulzbot.com/TAZ/accessories/fangtooth_guppy/

Is this the correct kit? http://e3d-online.com/E3D-v6?product_id=383

Hi,

I believe that files in that lulzbot folder are a build for a Hexagon hotend. Not e3D. It could be, that both would fit

That E3Dv6 kit you linked is basically the one I’ve been using - with one major exception being the heatsink fan on that kit is (I believe) a 24v fan, and I’m using a 12v fan but a 24v heater block. I went with the 12v fans because I had a 12vDC power adapter laying around which I’ve hooked them up to - I basically just leave them on the entire time, even when the machine is off. At some point I might rig up a switch (or even better, a relay from the RAMBO board…)

It might be possible to hook the 24v heatsink fan directly up to the rambo board, but I couldn’t find a good spot to do that from - I still print a lot of PLA, so I couldn’t cannibalize my extruder fan for that purpose. If anyone knows of a good spot to leech some power from the RAMBO board I’m all ears!

Oh, one other thing - the thermistor on the E3D kits is fragile as all heck. I’ve killed a number of them, and it’s hard to find replacements for the cloth/fiberglass covering they come with. Instead, I use this: http://www.printedsolid.com/shop/e3d/stud-thermistor/ which is unbelievably simple to use - just screw it in, set your firmware up, and you’re good.

@meshoo

Thanks for the information. I hadn’t thought about the fan voltage issue; I might be able to use the extruder fan for now as I don’t need it for nylon, although when I get back to PLA I’ll need it again. I will order a replacement unless I can find a spare 24V line on the RAMBO.

Themistors, ugh, the most delicate part of the printer and the one on which everything else relies! That one you linked to looks actually robust enough to be worthy of the task.

Does anyone have a source for the clip connections the hot end heater and thermistors use? I am switching to an E3D Friday but, connections are a problem.

Have you tried alibaba:
http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/plastic-clip-connectors.html

and deal extreme:
http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/plastic-clip-connectors.html

or there is this Japanese stuff:
http://www.yokowods.co.jp/ev/clip_connector/050pitch/index.html

could you post an image of what you are looking for? Maybe language barrier here :wink:

We use these connectors and pins on our hot end wiring harness:

Male connector pins, 24-30 AWG Digi-Key 16-02-0108
Female connector pins, 22-24 AWG Digi-Key 16-02-0102
Male Housing Connector 4POS .100 Digi-Key 0701070003
Female Housing Connector 4POS .100 W/LATCH Digi-Key 0050579404