E3D V4 All metal hotend

[milosonator]

We are taking exclusively 1.75mm setups here. Both the Rostock and Orion deltas come stock with 1.75. Was there a reason you switched to 3mm? I have no experience dialing in a 3mm setup but I don't know why it would take more retract, unless there is a lot more hysteresis in the 3mm Bowden.

Thixotropic, google it!

I have built my own Rostock mini, and I've never used 1.75 mm filament. I must say that it doesn't seem to make sense to me that I would need more retraction than 1.75, since retracting the same length results in more volume being retracted. Maybe I should go down instead of up, and see what happens. Also 3mm should suffer from less hysteresis than 1.75mm, one of the reasons I stuck with it.

[Nylocke]

I had a 3mm E3d on my Ultimaker and I think I was having pretty good luck with not jamming at 4mm retracts at 80mm/sec (Cura settings). The only time I ever suffered a jam was from some SeeMeCNC Translucent Green PLA, but then again I couldn't print that on my Buda I had on my Rostock Mini if that says anything. I just got my Picos in 2 weeks ago though, and I haven't had any reason to print with PLA after I found a nice supply of Nylon locally, so I haven't printed with PLA since last year, but those were my settings to the best of my knowledge.

[wshelley]

Thanks for the suggestions on my jamming issue. Strangely the extruder didn't turn out to be the real problem. I sliced my test object with the slicer in Repetier host and it printed fine so I went back to Kisslicer and re-sliced the object. The code looks pretty much identical to that generated by Repetier host but when the print job starts the extruder stepper motor does the first retract (set to 2mm now) and then never moves again. I've gone through the Kisslicer settings and can't see anything strange there and side by side comparison of the code looks fine but the stepper goes silent after the first move.

Any thoughts on that one?

Ward

[Jarrett]

For those of us that screwed up and just missed the V6, can we get a quick summary of what we should do?

The information seems to be in bits and pieces here and there.

From my understanding, could I do this if I didn't want to deal with disassembling my hot end entirely and removing the thermistor, etc.?

• Unscrew the nozzle.
• Freeze the nozzle.
• Remove the leftover filament from the nozzle (with pliers so it stays cold longer).
• Grind a 2mm drill bit to be less steep - this means a more gradual transition into the bore, right? What angle?
• Drill out bore by hand to be 0.5mm.
• Magic?

If I go the oil route, too, am I understanding that people are greasing up the filament before the extruder? Wouldn't that cause the filament to slip in bad ways?

[SanjayM]

Jarrett - If you're having problems we'll sort you out! No drill bits needed. Just get in touch on our contact us page http://e3d-online.com/ContactUs on our site. If you need a new nozzle you need a new nozzle. We don't expect our customers to have to take drill bits to our product to get it to work.

[Flateric]

Jarrett - If you're having problems we'll sort you out! No drill bits needed. Just get in touch on our contact us page http://e3d-online.com/ContactUs on our site. If you need a new nozzle you need a new nozzle. We don't expect our customers to have to take drill bits to our product to get it to work.

^^This right here is the number one reason above all others that these hotends and more importantly the company behind them are worth getting.

Top marks for support and being there for existing customers. I said it before I will say it again!

[mhackney]

+1

I totally agree.

[gestalt73]

Hey, for all of you out there that are rockin' the V4, V5, or V6 E3D hotend.

While you're printing, what is your temperature variance?

I saw on the E3D site that they're claiming the new design can keep the hotend within +/-0.5c, which would be fantastic.

No matter what I try, my variance is always +/-5c.
I've repacked the heater cartridge using foil to close the gap and increase contact area.
I've tried standard thermister, screw in thermister, with no difference.

What are other people seeing?

Any other tips to narrow that band?

For my Octave ABS filament, it tolerates the 10c swing really well. My ToybuilderLabs ABS, and my SeeMeCNC Green ABS are alot more sensitive, and you can see ridges on the external perimeter of small parts as the temp swings to and fro.

[Polygonhell]

No matter what I try, my variance is always +/-5c.
I've repacked the heater cartridge using foil to close the gap and increase contact area.
I've tried standard thermister, screw in thermister, with no difference.

What are other people seeing?

This is purely a function of your PID values, assuming your not doing stuff like turning fans on midprint (when you have to expect recovery time before stable temperatures), I have <1C, I would consider anything over +/-2C to be terrible, but I had to manually set my PID values.
As I keep saying with the 40W heater cartridges so many people here are using the PID auto tune values are often really appallingly bad.
Try manually increasing D (say double it) and see if it improves, you might also have to change I if you start falling short of the target temperature.

[gestalt73]

Hey Polygonhell, thanks for the tips and advice, confirmed my suspicions and set me on the right track to figure this out.

OK, so additional searching also confirmed oscillation issues when using the 12V 40W heater cartridge.
Many suggest turning down your max pwm to as low as 128, but it sounds to me like just masking the issue.
The +/-5c oscillations were pretty consistent regardless of the autotune settings

OK, so M303 usually gives me something like the following:

Code: Select all

temperature_control.hotend.p_factor          31.100           # permanently set the PID values after an auto pid
temperature_control.hotend.i_factor           2.797           #
temperature_control.hotend.d_factor          87.000           #

I read about a dozen articles on manual PID tuning, and then I followed portions of the manual tuning section of the PID article in wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_contro ... ual_tuning

After trying several sets of values and watching settle and oscillation during an extended G0 E300 F100, I think I've narrowed it alot

Code: Select all

temperature_control.hotend.p_factor          25           # permanently set the PID values after an auto pid
temperature_control.hotend.i_factor           1           #
temperature_control.hotend.d_factor          0           #

And it's holding to within +/-1.2c now. A definite improvement!

As soon as I get caught up on a few print jobs, I'll try it out with some filament that I have that is more temperature sensitive.

Thanks for your help!

[Generic Default]

I used to have problems with the PID values too. I got it tuned so that the temperature only changed by +- 1.5 degrees at ~280 degrees, but when Repetier came out with the new version at the beginning of 2014, they changed the PID algorithm entirely and it made my temperature control much more stable. The new algorithm is much better, so if you''e using an old Repetier firmware you should really update.

If you are on the new version then lower your I and P values. D will slow down the power as it approaches your desired temperature. P will multiply the power, making everything unstable. I will cause your temperature to wobble and overshoot consistently.


All of the PID systems are similar in how they work. There are better systems than PID but most engineers and programmers aren't experienced with them. I had to lower my I and P values significantly from what the autotune told me was perfect.

[rampeh]

Just a quick question for those of you who've bored out your nozzles:

I hear a lot of the time people say you have the right temperature when you can push filament through by hand without too much force. Is there any way to quantify too much force? It's definitely not effortless for me to push PLA through my E3D v4 by any means (0.6mm nozzle), but it's not ridiculously strenuous either. It often feels like it takes a lot of pressure to get going, but once it's started extruding it is a bit easier. I'm thinking this might be one of the reasons I have trouble with stringing, since the extruder may miss steps after a retract (i'm not exactly sure how I can check this).

Can any of you think of a good analogue to how much pressure is a good amount to get PLA flowing through a nozzle?

[626Pilot]

Fill a 32-ounce glass with water and pick it up. You may need to apply that much force or a little more to get PLA to feed. If you really have to put some arm into it, it's too much force for the extruder, and you need to address why it's jamming in the hot end. (You might think, "why can't the EZ-Struder apply more force then?" Simple - you don't WANT it to, because much more force is likely to destroy your push-to-connect fittings. This was common with the old torque monster extruders these printers used to ship with.)

If you're like me, your E3D likes to jam after a series of rapid-fire retracts. This is because the retract is dragging hot filament higher in the hot end than would be ideal, and possibly giving it the opportunity to expand into the tiny fissures where the nozzle meets the heat break. I found jams were much less frequent when I backed off the retraction to 3.1mm or so. If you have trouble with stringing, try using a retraction lift setting of 0.5mm or less. (I found 1-2mm lift encouraged a lot of slop.)

I abandoned PID tuning on Repetier once I discovered the "dead time" controller. Instead of having to manage three weird variables, you only tell it how many seconds the hot end takes to get started heating up. It then gets a sense of the hot end's thermal inertia, and uses that to decide when to turn it on or off. Info here: http://www.repetier.com/dead-time-control/

[rampeh]

I was dipping into the firmware and found dead-time control as well yesterday, but I wasn't sure if it would improve on the PID control. I might give it a go tonight.

I've got my retraction at around 3.2mm, at quite a slow rate as I heard this helped. My Z-Lift is a bit high, but i think I can lower this now. I took the advice here and polished my nozzle, at least, i sanded it with very fine grit sandpaper and it's had a noticeable improvement in surface finish, and allowed me to tune in the extrusion multiplier better as well. I think this might have caused some of my problems with z-lift banging into the print and breaking off small details.

I'll test the free pushing of PLA through tonight. I think i'm much happier now that I've got a good surface finish on top, a good extrusion multiplier, and good infill overlap / extrusion width. There are so many settings which impact in little bits!

[Eaglezsoar]

Fill a 32-ounce glass with water and pick it up. You may need to apply that much force or a little more to get PLA to feed. If you really have to put some arm into it, it's too much force for the extruder, and you need to address why it's jamming in the hot end. (You might think, "why can't the EZ-Struder apply more force then?" Simple - you don't WANT it to, because much more force is likely to destroy your push-to-connect fittings. This was common with the old torque monster extruders these printers used to ship with.)

If you're like me, your E3D likes to jam after a series of rapid-fire retracts. This is because the retract is dragging hot filament higher in the hot end than would be ideal, and possibly giving it the opportunity to expand into the tiny fissures where the nozzle meets the heat break. I found jams were much less frequent when I backed off the retraction to 3.1mm or so. If you have trouble with stringing, try using a retraction lift setting of 0.5mm or less. (I found 1-2mm lift encouraged a lot of slop.)

I abandoned PID tuning on Repetier once I discovered the "dead time" controller. Instead of having to manage three weird variables, you only tell it how many seconds the hot end takes to get started heating up. It then gets a sense of the hot end's thermal inertia, and uses that to decide when to turn it on or off. Info here: http://www.repetier.com/dead-time-control/

That is good info, have you found that the dead time settings work better than PID control?

[626Pilot]

Yes. I was having a hard time getting PID control to keep things working with a part cooling fan. Dead time control is simpler, with fewer terms to manage. I think the approach is a lot more direct than PID, at least for hot end temp control.

[1ggy]

I just got my v6 today and I have a few questions. First, do I just change the thermistor to 5 in the firmware? Because the specified one is 8, but it says 5 in the assembly instructions and a few of the places I've looked said 5 is appropriate for the thermistor type. Second, has anyone else had problems with the innards of the V6? I just put mine together, and there is something in the barrel stopping it from extruding. I bumped the temp up the the max (280) and manually pushed the filament and it wouldn't budge. When I pulled it from the hot end, there were no signs of melting whatsoever. Third, I specified the maximum temperature in the firmware to be 295, but in repetier host it only allows me to take it up to 280, and if I try to adjust it from the panel on the printer, it maxes at 240 still. Any idea as to the cause?
Also, I noticed they made the v6 shorter than previous versions, so all of the mounts have spacers that are too long and the nozzle ends just above the u-joints.

[Mac The Knife]

For your problem with not being able to set the temperature over 240 on the printer, open your config.h file, and near the bottom are you values for menu settings. You'll be looking for "UI_SET_MAX_EXTRUDER_TEMP".

[Eaglezsoar]

I just got my v6 today and I have a few questions. First, do I just change the thermistor to 5 in the firmware? Because the specified one is 8, but it says 5 in the assembly instructions and a few of the places I've looked said 5 is appropriate for the thermistor type. Second, has anyone else had problems with the innards of the V6? I just put mine together, and there is something in the barrel stopping it from extruding. I bumped the temp up the the max (280) and manually pushed the filament and it wouldn't budge. When I pulled it from the hot end, there were no signs of melting whatsoever. Third, I specified the maximum temperature in the firmware to be 295, but in repetier host it only allows me to take it up to 280, and if I try to adjust it from the panel on the printer, it maxes at 240 still. Any idea as to the cause?
Also, I noticed they made the v6 shorter than previous versions, so all of the mounts have spacers that are too long and the nozzle ends just above the u-joints.

Did you make sure to insert the tube all the way into the V6 as indicated in the instructions?
The mounts that you download and print usually do have spacers too long so you have to cut them to the length that works best for you.
If you get a mount like this one: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:137140
you can print it without spacers and get the proper spacers from McMaster Carr.
You do change the thermistor setting to 5 if 5 is for the Semitec 104GT2 thermistor in your firmware's configuration.h file.

[626Pilot]

If you get a mount like this one: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:137140
you can print it without spacers and get the proper spacers from McMaster Carr.

If you can tell me the correct spacer length, I can modify the printable spacer and publish a version 6 for it. The other two pieces (that hold the hot end firm) are unchanged.

[Eaglezsoar]

If you get a mount like this one: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:137140
you can print it without spacers and get the proper spacers from McMaster Carr.

If you can tell me the correct spacer length, I can modify the printable spacer and publish a version 6 for it. The other two pieces (that hold the hot end firm) are unchanged.

Someone running an E3D V6 with the MAX V1 and / or V2 could you measure the spacer length that works for you? This is important.

[1ggy]

I'm getting my spacers today, I went with 1 3/8ths inch, I will update on the fit when I get them installed.

[1ggy]

1.375 inch spacers work perfect.

[PopolZ]

I finally got around to install my V5 with V6 heat block and nozzle. I can't get that SOB to print for more than 1 layer with PLA. No problem with ABS.

V6 on the way!

[Eaglezsoar]

If you get a mount like this one: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:137140
you can print it without spacers and get the proper spacers from McMaster Carr.

If you can tell me the correct spacer length, I can modify the printable spacer and publish a version 6 for it. The other two pieces (that hold the hot end firm) are unchanged.

It looks as though the spacer length should be 1.375"