Okay, so Im officially impresed by the All metal V4 hotend from http://e3d-online.com/
The hotend comes well packed, beautifully machined! and is very easy to assemble. This is also encouraging in the case of any clogging and therefore cleaning the nozzle.
I need to point out, in the package was also sample of Taulmann 618, compliments of 3Distributed.com. Although im stocked with it, I find this very nice gesture.
Okay, so I ordered the “no fan” version, not becaose Im cheap, but I was in a hurry to get mine and this option was promissing next day delivery. In order to prepare myself I printed the fan mount from ABS right away from the provided file. Of course, first thing I tried was putting the fan on when the nozzle came and it went right on with no problems. Okay, first step done.
I didnt made the holder, although the E3D provides measurements online I decided to wait for the hotend and do the measuring myselfe. And man I was right, I dont know if any of you have had the same expirience, but the shoulder for attaching the hotend to the holder is 5,5mm instead of 4,6mm stated on E3D download section. Also the most upper 16mm ring is not 4,7mm, but more like 3,5mm (speaking from my head). This is really not a big problem and is really the only thing that I hold against E3D, but would be really useful if these measurements were spot either on techincal drawings or the machinig itself, so we dont get suprised when we want to mount the beautifull piece of metal.
After I got the correct measures, I printed myself a holder from 618 and mount it, I wont talk about assembly, the manual is really straightforward and the hotend comes together with really no fuss at all.
So lets start extruding. Oh my god, this thing really works! I have had previously a J-head with 0.4mm nozzle so this would be in theory just a replacement with wery little to no calibration. And man I was right, the only thing I nedded was a little increace in my flow and we we have a rocket. This nozzle works like crazy, it is wery precised, I was really amazed of how precise the corners can be, and basically all was working like it should. So you can find in the pictures the comparison of the J and E3D hotends, the fan on the right is done with V4. I need to point out, my J has around 300 hours of labour behind, was cleaned a coule of times…
I tried a couple of small somewhat complicated prints, and then for the mini endurance test, I printed a 300mm tall teethy tiki vase from thinginverse. So this was a 6 hour print and the results are amazing!
All the prints are done with ABS on Rostock max based printer I designed and made, filament diameter 1,75mm, Airtripper V3 direct extruder.
I was also playing a little with the speeds and I got up to 100mm/s with ABS, but need to point out there is still room to go faster!
So as a conclusion, Im very impressed by the hotend, I works perfect and here is my point of view on the whole package:
- Great value price/performance
- Easy to assemle
- All metal, really the only thing to replace is the nozzle itselfe if worn out
- Superb quality prints
- Heats really fast, also cools really fast, so I reckon this would make super dual extrusion setup due to fast tool changes
Cons:
- The measures for the mounting shoulder were different from specification
- Somewhat big and long (but this is also the solution to make it work so no t really a con)
In conclusion, I happy so far, I still need to try with PLA, 618, wery excited about PET and flex-polyester from http://www.plastic2print.com/eu/, so still a long way to go, but the first tests are looking great!
Thanks @Sanjay_Mortimer and E3D team to make such a great product!
