Or, leaving behind the theoretical benefits and considering only the pragmatic benefits, has diminishing returns already been reached just moving up from 0.4mm to 0.6mm nozzle?
Anyone reading this making a lot of use of a 0.8mm hotend?
The reason I ask is that I’m planning to order a pair of 0.6mm hotends, and I’m wondering whether I should toss a couple of 0.8mm hotends into my shopping basket as well?
The only reason I see for owning one is if you want to print vase mode with thick lines. I tested both the 0.6 and 0.8 and the 0.6 came out perfect but 0.8 was quite bad quality wise zits and imperfection everywhere, need to tune the retraction settings for it. Also with HF hot ends, the flow rate is maxed out with 0.6, so there is no advantage with 0.8 HF speed wise.
I promptly sold my 0.8 duo as they are pretty useless for me. I will however purchase the 0.6 HF as soon as they are available.
What about 0.2mm? Do you find that useful at all?
You are the nozzle king.
Yes I use the 0.2 often when I make control panels with text on them. It makes the text legible instead of blobs when its on the smaller side. Also clock faces or anything with finer details.
You do need to turn up the max flow rate, as stock on 0.2 profiles is 2mm³/s very low, I bumps most of them to 8-10mm³/s.
See my reply on my thread about the 0.6mm and 0.8mm hotends to see the numbers for the standard flow versions of them. There are uses for wider line widths and thicker layer heights that can be delivered from the larger diameter nozzles in the standard flow hotends, but overall output of filament into a model isn’t one of those benefits.
.8 is pretty great for vase mode, you can really increase the layer width significantly, and for some designs it’s also pretty cool to get thick layer lines 
If ever there was a need for a HF hotend, then surely it would be a 0.2mm HF Hotend. Do we have any inkling as to whether Bambulab will offer a 0.2mm HF hotend?
For anyone interested, here’s the post that Magma_Doom is referring to: Any news on 0.6mm and 0.8mm high flow hotends? - #8 by Magma_Doom
It’s a good read!
Thank you! Will take a look for sure.
By the way, you don’t necessarily need a bigger nozzle for wide lines. On the X1C I have printed 1mm wide lines in vase mode with the 0,4mm nozzle and it came out beautifully. I don’t see why you couldn’t go even wider.
I have never used the 0,6 and 0,8 nozzles that I bought with the printer. I even disassembled the 0,8 nozzle for parts to repair a 0,4 nozzle. The only reason I keep the 0,6 nozzle is in case I print something like wood filament. But it is unlikely I ever will.
The 0,2mm is something different. The additional level of detail you can achieve is truly amazing.
What about in non-vase mode though? Seems like you would be ploughing a “V” into the extruded plastic as you laid it down.
Good point. I just measured the stock 0,4mm X1C nozzle. The flat bottom is ~0,8mm wide. At least that width should work perfectly. You could also choose a smaller line width only for the top layer for smoothness.
Maybe someone with an H2D can check the geometry of regular and HF nozzles?
I have replaced the stock nozzle with an E3D 0,4mm Obxidian nozzle that is able to consistently extrude 35-40 mm³/s instead of stock 20-25 mm³/s and even then I never felt the need for a larger size. Actually I rarely print much faster or at larger line widths or layer heights because overhangs get so much worse.
For me the main benefit is the much more consistent extrusion. E.g. even regular PETG stays shiny at 20mm³/s, which became dull with the stock hotend. I also measured layer adhesion which stays the same between 70 and 300mm/s, while it lost almost 30% with the stock hotend.
I have to add that most of my prints aren’t very large, where increased extrusion would make much of a difference. That could be different for you of course. Still I think that only very few people really benefit from a larger nozzle. The only exception might be for preventing clogs when printing something like wood filament.
The 0.2 nozzle flow is limited by the tiny 0.2mm hole not the internal geometry. I do own 0.2 HF hot ends for X1 (Ali CHT), but when testing the flow was very similar to standard flow hot end.
While 1.0 mm wide lines are fine for a 0.4 nozzle, you actually can’t go wider than that - it’s the max. at ~0.2 layer bc math (see here, the source is libslic3r documentation IIRC). Bambu Slicer doesn’t even allow more than 2.5x nozzle size unless you fiddle with the extruder settings. Doing so, you “can” go wider but the shape of the extrusion will not be predictable so quality will plummet.
For a 0.8 nozzle, the max. width is 2.0 mm provided the nozzle flat size is 1.6 mm and layer height is 0.4.
Thanks – Just learned something, specially with the article @the_Raz linked. Always thought the limit of the .4 was .5mm width…
With that it settles for me that the .6 and .8 are just not really worth it.
I might get the HF .6 when they make one.
It depends on the nozzle manufacturer as to how much “shoulder” they provide around the nozzle hole. In this case, we have only the one Bambulab approved nozzle. If you were to go with some other aftermarket nozzle (not that I’ve yet heard any reason as to why you should), it might be different. A way you could measure would be to photograph it head-on, and then use your knowledge about the nozzle diameter as a yardstick for measuring out the shoulder width as shown in your head-on photo.
Fun fact: Earlier today I accidentally set my initial layer line width to 5mm while using a 0.6mm nozzle. Yes, you read it right.
For context: this was on my Bambu P1S with a 0.6mm Bambu nozzle.
Hi flessa, the main challenge is the backpressure on extruder and the filament between the extruder and the hotend (the filament in the throat area). A 2x line width usually is already a lot of back pressure. It’s over extruding a lot and completely relying on the plastic’s fluidity to spread out. Based on the assumtion of the nozzle “shoulder” would keep the plastic flattened. The higher the multiplier, the harder it goes and the less accurate the line width would be. Which is why you got 2.3mm 
I would say anything less or equal 1.5x would usually print easily, and anything below 2x is worth trying.
That makes sense!
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FYI, these are back in stock at this very moment, along with the 0.2mm hotends.