All Bambu printers have a problem-their nozzles are attached to the heat sink and everything. My Ender 3 has a screw-on nozzle that is really convenient. I would like Bambu to change their designs so swapping nozzles would be easier and cheaper, and also allow 3rd party nozzles.
Have a look at the a1 and a1 mini nozzle
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Screw-in nozzles have a bunch of inherent disadvantages and I think BambuLab did a smart move in avoiding them in favour of a one piece nozzle. In my opinion, it is much more convenient to swap the entire hotend assembly. If you need to replace a worn nozzle, you donāt have to swap the entire assembly but you can reuse the heater and fan and replacement nozzles are not very expensive. So Iām very happy with the way BambuLab has chosen for that topic.
Also, if you look at other companies, many go away from screw-in nozzles and towards single piece assemblies.
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It is really hard to swap the nozzles. You have to disconnect a bunch of wires and stuff and itās just not as convenient as screw-in nozzles. I donāt like that a worn nozzle also takes away the heat sink and the stuff I feel that shouldnāt be thrown out.
There are 3rd party nozzles that let you use screw in style nozzle tips. I wonāt personally recommend them but they do facilitate what you want to do.
āWornā nozzles are pretty rare on Bambu printers as they donāt use brass in the filament path.
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The A1 & A1 mini are the latest two printers from BL.
The nozzle design has greatly changed. It is still connected to a heat sink, but, nothing else.
No wires to disconnect or thermal paste to apply.
You simply pop off the front panel and pull the unit off the printer. It uses a magnet on the print head to stay connected when in use.
It is a simple design easy to remove, works great when in place. It takes less than 10 seconds to remove and to put back.
They also cost 1/3 of the P & X series full units which are the closest in ease of removal to the A series version.
As BL gain more experience, they create better solutions.
The screens in the A1 & A1 mini are far better than on the P series.
Expect future versions of their printer family to benefit from this iterative design process.
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Iād want Bambu to make a reliable quick swap nozzle design on the P series, because they donāt want to leave the old users behind, right?
Quite a few years back I was really into my little hobby latheā¦
And also into anodising Aluminium parts in unusual colour combinations.
With a home made 3D printer I thought I would make my own hotendā¦
After a few revisions and modifications it worked as planned.
And stupid me thought I would go and check if those newly emerged 3D printer manufacturers would have any interestā¦
Letās just say their response was not just based on utterly ignoring facts but also on having no clue.
The nicest response I got was that there is very good reasons why Aluminium is NOT used for hotends, especially not with a heating wire that doesnāt even have any electrical insulation ā¦
I mean, seriously: Would YOU react any different if someone you donāt know comes and proposes an Aluminium hotend ???
You donāt have to answer as I got the same answer often enough LOL
But JUST IN CASE you know more about Aluminium than that it is a metal and rather light:
I used an Aluminium cylinder with an outer thread - a rounded one as it was for the heating wire.
The thread and wire length was matched to heating requirement.
On the top was a proper thread to fit into the heatbreak.
The bottom however had a tiny hole I created on the lathe.
Using a 0.4 dental wire in the hole and a rounded tool steel āsliderā I worked the domed shaped end towards the centre, embedding and locking in this wire.
The hard part was getting it back out againā¦
Took me a lot of trail and error to realise all I had to do was to dunk the hot wire into some good old waxā¦
Anywayā¦
After than came the most vital part of the creation, the anodisingā¦
Aluminium Oxide is not just extremely hard but also a VERY GOOD electrical insulator.
If grown slow and thick enough you could not create a short between the ends of a power cord plugged into your outletā¦
And being that tough means the nozzle hole lasts for a good while, longer than brassā¦
With that sorted the wire was wrapped through the thread and kept in place with a drop of superglue.
To ensure the temp changes and movement of the head would not cause unwanted vibrations of the wire I sealed it with a mix of 2000grit AlO2 grinding powder and sodium silicate - waterglass.
A glowing hot nail turned down to fit right into the hotend cured the mix good and fast enough to keep things secure.
Final step was to add a thin wrap of ceramic insulation paper soaked in a bit of waterglass.
I made 8 of those hotendsā¦
Gave one to a friend and kept the rest knowing I would run through them quicklyā¦
Mind you that this was in the days of 3mm filaments and people using 0.8 or larger nozzles by defaultā¦
I retired the printer about two years later and I never had to replace this first hotendā¦
In all fairness though: I only ever printed PLA and Nylon coming from the hardware store - as used for lawn trimmersā¦
So why did I go through all these troubles ?
3mm filament meant you either had a lot of heating power for your hotend or printed at snail speeds.
I wanted to be able to print as fast in 0.4 as I did with the standard 0.6mm hotend.
Was happily surprised when I reached even faster speeds.
The whole reason for going Aluminium with basically embedded heating wire was thermal mass and reaction time.
Total pain to mess with the PWM controls and temp curves in the old Marlin versions but you could do quite fancy thingsā¦
Like defining your own tables to control the temp.
A hotened requires a certain amount of time to get to print temps and once there it is rather slow to react to increases or decreases.
We prefer this as it means our hotend is able to provide enough stored heat until the heating element kicks back in.
And we can use a powerful one as the high thermal mass means it takes a bit to warm up.
With next to nothing between heating chamber and heating wire and the wire going around the entire length the reaction times were very fast.
From cold to 220 degrees in under 15 seconds, with over 5 seconds āwastedā by slowing down above 210 degrees.
A 1mm temp sensor sitting just 0.1mm from the hole and 0.5mm from the flat bottom of the included nozzle meant a fast reaction to temp changes based on changes in extrusion speed.
As this part was also the thickest overall it provided the best spot.
Any change in extrusion speed made the LED for the heating wire go mentalā¦
But even if the hotend was just set to temp and left there, the filament would not overcookā¦
Oh, youāre right, I forgot something hereā¦
The actual hotend, as coming out of the heat break was 12mm long and turned on the lathe to an outer diameter of 4.2mm, with the heating wire sitting just below this surface inside the thread.
The heat break was a salvaged heatsink for an Intel processor - the ones with the round copper core.
The hotend as sitting dead centre, the top (except) for the connection to the extruder was covered.
A little fan on the side provided the required airflow.
Far too heavy to modern printers but hey, we were printing dead slow in those daysā¦