Hotend v1 maintenance

Hello All,

I've got a question about hotend maintenance and cleaning holes for heater and thermocoupler.

After cleaning these holes, do we need to put thermal paste in these before putting heater and thermocoupler?

Thanks in advance

Onap

No, thermal paste is not required.

I've wondered about that also.  Wouldn't the thermal paste improve heat conduction for the heater and the thermocouple and reduce temperature lag and heatup time?

Thermal pastes that can tolerate 300ºC are rare and very expensive. I bought some a couple of years ago, tried it, and didn't find it made much difference, although I can't say that I was very methodical in my testing.

On one of my printers the hole for the heater core was a little big so I wrapped the core in a couple of layers of common aluminum foil and that took up the space and gave more surface area to contact.

Thermal pastes that can tolerate 300ºC are rare and very expensive. I bought some a couple of years ago, tried it, and didn't find it made much difference, although I can't say that I was very methodical in my testing.

Well, I guess that leaves out Teflon paste then.