A revolutionary new hotend that helps scale back warmth creep to virtually zero utilizing a cutting-edge design.
Posted on November 5, 2018
by
Taylor Landry
The Mosquito Hotend just isn’t like all hotend you’ve seen earlier than. In case you’ve ever had a hotend leak filament out of the heater block, struggled with each palms to take away a nozzle whereas the hotend is scorching, or damaged a warmth break since you twisted too onerous, then you realize what Chris and Dan from Slice Engineering are speaking about. After experiencing that irritating strategy of swapping nozzles on the most typical hotends discovered on most 3D printers, Chris and Dan determined to do one thing about it.
Following the “kind follows perform” mantra, they designed the Mosquito from the bottom as much as tackle a few of the most irritating points that extra typical hotends face.
Options
Typical all-metal hotends look much like this:
The skinny-walled warmth break is the one structural part between the heater block and the warmth sink. So, you have to be very cautious to assist the heater block when putting in or eradicating a nozzle. You will need to even be very cautious to not put any lateral forces on the heater block or nozzle.
The Mosquito doesn’t have this downside. As an alternative of a single, structural warmth break, the Mosquito has 4 thin-walled stainless-steel surgical tubes on the corners of the warmth block, and a non-load bearing warmth break. As a result of the warmth break just isn’t load bearing, it may be a lot thinner than a standard warmth break that should assist the heater block, nozzle, heater cartridge, thermistor, and the forces which can be appearing on a hotend. That is glorious for hotend efficiency. It permits for a really steep temperature transition between the warmth break and the soften zone.
This thin-walled warmth break is a key issue to the efficiency of the Mosquito. And by skinny, we imply actually skinny…
A typical warmth break has a wall thickness round 3mm. The Mosquito is about 20 occasions thinner than a normal warmth break! Which means that considerably much less warmth travels up the warmth break, which, in flip, reduces the necessity for a big warmth sink. Much less cooling demand additionally means you should utilize a smaller fan. The Mosquito solely wants a tiny 25mm fan to maintain it cool versus the usual 35mm or 40mm followers discovered on most hotends. This makes the entire hotend meeting extra compact, and it runs quieter.
Slice Engineering states that their warmth break conducts 85% much less warmth into the warmth sink than a conventionally threaded warmth sink. As an alternative of a giant, cylindrical aluminum warmth sink, the Mosquito has a small copper warmth sink that’s jacketed over the warmth break tube close to the heater block. Copper is sort of twice as thermally conductive as aluminum, so it transfers warmth higher and also you want much less of it to get the identical cooling efficiency as an aluminum warmth sink.
This can be a thermal imaging seize exhibiting the very steep thermal gradient of the Mosquito. That is glorious for a hotend!
Supplies
This materials choice was no accident. Fairly than simply selecting the most cost effective materials out there, every materials on the Mosquito was chosen for a particular objective. Slice Engineering states that materials choice was on the coronary heart of their design course of. This brings us to the heater block. Customary heater blocks are aluminum which softens and deforms simply at temperatures above 290C°. The Mosquito has a copper alloy heater block that they declare is not going to soften at temperatures above 550C°. We didn’t check it as much as 550C°, however we did warmth it as much as 400C° and alter nozzles a couple of occasions – each with brass and hardened metal nozzles. We noticed no thread deformation or any indicators of wear and tear which can be frequent for typical heater blocks at that temperature.
Straightforward Nozzle Modifications
For many who have struggled with altering a nozzle, this can in all probability be your favourite characteristic.
No extra holding the heater block with one wrench and making an attempt to tighten/loosen the nozzle with one other. The Mosquito makes one-handed nozzle modifications attainable. Additionally, due to the fabric choice and the design of the warmth break and heater block, there’s no must warmth up the Mosquito to tighten the nozzle.
Don’t do that with different scorching ends until you desire a damaged warmth break or a heater block that’s flooded with filament.
Filament Swell
In case you’ve ever had bother pulling PLA filament out of your scorching finish due to the ‘bulb’ of filament on the finish, then you’re aware of filament swell.
The distinctive warmth break on the Mosquito doesn’t simply have glorious thermal properties. The precision tubing has a lot tighter tolerances than PTFE tubing. PTFE tubes can usually have an inside diameter exceeding 2.1mm. With PTFE tubing, your 1.75mm filament has room to swell 20+%. Not so with the Mosquito. The tight tolerance of the warmth break that extends all the way in which to the highest of the warmth sink ensures that your filament cools and doesn’t swell sufficient to trigger points together with your filament path.
Conclusion
With the cutting-edge design that Slice Engineering has integrated into the brand new Mosquito hotend, there are a whole lot of nice causes to improve your 3D printer with one. From the convenience of use to altering nozzles shortly, to the low charge of warmth creep and the consistency of the goal temperature in your hotend; all of those benefits provide you with extra accuracy in controlling the circulate of filament deposited on the print, supplying you with higher prints and decrease failure charges.
