Hi, I know there have been several topics here about the High Flow Hotend, but I’d like to ask if someone who actually uses it could share what settings you use for filaments like PETG, PLA, or ASA—those are probably the main ones being printed. The reason I’m asking is that I’m considering buying an HF 0.4 or 0.6, but Bambu simply doesn’t support it with a profile, and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to set it up properly myself.
And could you actually show how much time it saves you when printing with it, without losing print quality?
Purchased the HF 0.4 nozzles - have had no difference in print times whatsoever. Feel like I wasted my money. Will keep an eye on this thread for any advice though!
That’s exactly the problem—Bambu Slicer doesn’t support the HF hotend, there are simply no settings for it. Personally, I’m considering whether it might be better to just get a 0.6 nozzle since I mostly print larger objects.
Yeh I would if I could do it again TBH. I’ve set the nozzles to HF on the printer, and I go into the filament settings and set it to Direct Drive High Flow, as has been suggested, but I do not save a single minute when it comes to the print.
On another note, to make matters worse, I purchased a second AMS2 Pro at the same time as the nozzles only to find it has today dropped in price by £50!! Bad order all round I guess! lol
Have you adjusted the MVS and print speed? Without doing that, you won’t notice any difference. As a side note, the Direct Drive High Flow setting is applied automatically when an HF nozzle is installed. There’s no need to select it manually, but you do need to update the MVS and speed in the profile you plan to use.
The main speed increase is by increasing your max volumetric speed in individual filament profiles. I typically increase it by 60% or more over the standard nozzles. If you just plug the nozzle in and print you aren’t going to save any time on most filaments. Some Bambu filaments already have a higher HF nozzle max Volumetric speed, but generics/other brands don’t and will use standard nozzle settings. I find the HF nozzles to do exactly what they’ve said it will when they’re used properly
Would you be able to provide me with an idiots guide on what to change?
I mainly print all types of PLA (all Bambu branded) - Basic, Sparkle, Marble, etc
As others have said just installing the nozzles and then selecting them in Bambu Studio isn’t enough, you have to adjust the filament profiles to take advantage of the higher flow.
Leonilian
I’ll join as well – if you could send a photo, that would be great.
Currently with ETTG HF it’s normally 25 mm/s, and with HF it’s 35, which is also stated on their website. Honestly, on the model I’m slicing, from 2:18 it comes out as 2:18, which is basically nothing – they even promote this on their website. In that table, they only list 32 mm/s.
On one hand, I understand this is probably more about the strength of the individual layers, but still, I expected at least a 20-minute reduction for €60. That’s why I created this topic – either I’m doing something wrong, or that’s just how it is.
Simply put, for me right now it seems more worthwhile to buy a 0.6 nozzle instead of HF. To give you something to compare with, I’m attaching the model I’m currently printing.
120% variant
Sorry for the delay, friend showed up to drop off prototype Christmas cookies for feedback.
So I’ve played with this a bit and I’m actually kinda surprised at what the slicer is showing me after tweaking some settings. The main issue is slowing down for overhangs and cooling, as that is where the most time is lost as the flow can drop to like 5 when it’s max is 35. I have been using Ludicrous mode almost every print which kinda overrides that to essentially no detrimental effect for months now, and was pretty confident that I could replicate that in the slicer without much effort, however I was wrong, as I wouldn’t be confident in telling everyone to change cooling and overhang speed settings while saying it wouldn’t affect any print quality. I apologize.
However what I will say is that with the high flow nozzles, I have been able to put down first layers at ridiculous (ludicrous one might say?) speeds. I have the slicer print initial layer at 200 and infill at 300, and then enable ludicrous mode while the printer does it’s initial purge/homing before the print. Perfect first layers, indistinguishable to one printed at “normal” speeds. I routinely shave hours off my print times and end with the same quality print as I would if I left it on standard. I would show two prints side by side to compare but I literally cannot tell them apart, I just know that one took over 6 hours, and the other took around 4. I have also tested with some prints by changing the speed mid-print at certain times so I could look for a difference in quality. Outside of what looked like maybe a little less sheen on the ludicrous mode print I struggled to see where it changed.
While I would like this to be a simple “change these 3 settings” situation, it seems like it’s not unless you want to tweak and test a number of things and I don’t have that kind of time right now. In any case, I highly recommend ludicrous mode if you have HF nozzles, it has saved me dozens of hours and the only time I regretted it was when I put in some really dumb numbers into the filament and print profile just to see what would happen (Elegoo HF PLA+ is fast, but not 55mm^3/s + 66% fast)
You could probably safely update to 18-25 Max Volumetric Flow but MAKE SURE you do it in the High Flow profile, it does not do anything in the regular filament profile. To take advantage of the extra flow you need to print wide and thick. If you are printing at 0.12mm layer height, then you will likely never see a reduction. If you are using 0.6mm line widths, and 0.24mm layer height you can see a pretty drastic drop in print time. When I did my flow test on PLA I was able to go from 27mm3/sec to 38 for max flow and it only stopped due to a extruder motor overload. I could have probably gotten more with extra heat. My test was with a knockoff HF though so I suggest testing it with your own filament, and don’t go up against the limit or you will see weaker prints.
This is where I made the mistake. I set a higher volumetric rate on the standard nozzle settings instead of the High Flow settings.
If you create your own profiles for filament and you use the HF nozzles, make sure to set all settings on the ‘Direct Drive High Flow’ part of the profile. Otherwise you will find the printer using unexpected values.
