Small reminder: Don't forget to periodically renew your nozzle from time to time!
Small reminder: Don't forget to periodically renew your nozzle from time to time!
I don't print any abrasive materials at all. Pretty much only normal PLA and PETG.
I noticed, that my print quality gradually went down quite a bit, especially in the last few prints. I had a lot of stringing, weird blobs, and scarred surfaces.
Now, the print quality is as good as it should be!
They are dirt cheap. You can get a set of 10-15 generic ones, in different sizes, for only a few bucks. Don't forget that they are consumables.
And if you do print aggressive abrasive materials, remember to either get a super expensive hardox nozzle, or just throw them away after each print. Woodfiber will murder any nozzle.
Gotta say though, your nozzle mostly looks dirty, not worn out (much)
This solution to abrasive filament is a tungsten nozzle or one of the ruby tip ones. The cost is a bit expensive but with a tungsten nozzle you might be one and done
Forget about tungsten, get yourself a Diamondback nozzle They're pretty much indestructible regardless of the hardness of the filament! Ask our boy Zack over at Voidstar Labs
Stainless steel nozzles work well enough and aren't that expensive
Periodically, not sporadically
Thanks for the notice! It's now changed in the title.
I'm no native speaker and thought it was a synonym to "From time to time, when you feel the need to".
Sporadically means more like, "At Infrequent but random intervals"
All good I figured that was the case
Changing nozzles is important as they are consumables, but all of your high quality close up shots are showing a practically unscathed nozzle under a lot of gunk (the picture of the back end of the nozzle has a big chunk of cooked plastic that will pretty easily scrape off), if you cleaned it you'd probably be just as well off as with the new nozzle
The larger photo shows a lot of wear on the end compared to the new nozzle (the flat area on the top is larger). It's hard to tell from the photos but in my experience this generally correlates to a widened nozzle diameter and decreased print quality.
Wouldn’t it be better to replace them regularly by some metric, uses, time, etc?
Yes, but that is also going to require a ton of extra effort to track and assumes the nozzles themselves wear consistently. There would probably also need to be modifiers based on materials used, and even brands. For a professional print farm or a business trying to squeeze every last dollar out of the operation, this might be worth it. For a hobby where we expect a lot of waste? Eh, fuck it, just replace it when prints start going south.
If you're a Klipper user, odds are you'll have easy access to both print hours and filament length extruded. Some marlin printers also track this information as well.
Granted, nozzle wear is also filament specific, but it's better than nothing.
My point was that "sporadically" could mean after one use or three weeks. There is no rhyme or reason to it and it wouldn’t be helpful.
I just experienced this for the first time. I has having to print slower and slower to get the filament to flow enough not to print skippy and stringy. Finally, the gears in the print head started skipping. I took the whole print head apart and found nothing wrong. Switched to the spare hot end that came with the printer and its printing like new again.
Is it worth it spending money on more expensive nozzles? On my Ender 3 V2, I used Creality nozzles I ordered on AliExpress. Now that my S1 Pro is 9 months old (although rarely used), I wonder if it's worth spending 10 Euros on a single brass nozzle made by Brozzl.
Edit: Creality is currently selling a 5-pack of the same size for 1€...
Watched this a while back and my take away way it might.
I've been using a oxbidian nozzle and printing wood and GID occasionally. Seems to be holding up very well. It's a more expensive option but might last as long as 3 or 4 normal nozzles and I think it's also notable that you're not dealing with as much of a downslope in performance on your way toward a new nozzle each time as you are with traditional brass.
Just don't fuck up your printer !!!