After reading several of Marcin's (Zortrax Staff) posts where he mentions replacing/ cleaning the nozzle after every 3-5 spools of filament plus cleaning after every large print, I wondered regarding the reasoning behind this. The "Maintenance Manual" mentions removal of lumps and cleaning every 500 hrs. of working time or if necessary. Fairly nebulous stuff
I have logged over 325 hrs. in the last month and a half and aside from diligently cleaning away filament residue from the nozzle and hot end with my brass wire brush, that's been it for me. I also have a sponge "wiper" attached to the filament feed at the start of the feed tube and have noted that it does collect dust and needs to be cleaned regularly. My reasoning here is that the brass or brass alloy nozzle is not really subject to any real wear if the filament is a pure thermoplastic formula, free of contamination.
I have read, with great sympathy, about snapped nozzles when someone has attempted to remove one. This can be greatly mitigated if one follows a couple of guidelines. The first is to create a small test object which has the sole purpose of running ABS for a short period of time, say five minutes. This will accomplish two things. First when the print is finished, you know that the hot end. extruder and nozzle are at the appropriate temperature for gentle and controlled removal with the correct wrench. The second reason is that you know for certain that all non-ABS material will have been cleansed from the nozzle so that a prolonged soak in acetone will be effective in dissolving any ABS residue into solution.
Anyway, these are a few random thoughts about Nozzle Maintenance. I'm curious about what the community has to say on this topic. All experiences and opinions are greatly appreciated.
I use different nozzles for different materials, and each time I change material, and I take off the nozzle exit the hothend about 5 cm of filament, thus making sure to avoid creating compounds resistant to acetone.
I did this to Zortrax that would be useful to have an hour counter print, to better understand when to do maintenance, have a manual with intervelli maintenance schedules, but do not know how many are effective, it is of little use.
Seems a bit over the top changing the nozzle that often. I have 3 nozzles that I interchange whenever there is a clog. One in the machine, the two others in a acetone bath. These three nozzles have a total of 6-7000 printing hours.
If you print a lot and thus feel the need to replace the nozzle (too) frequently, the threads in the heating block will certainly suffer. My advice is to remove debris from the nozzle before printing and gently wipe the tip of the nozzle with a sand paper (to enhance electric contact with the perfboard). Whenever I change material, I watch the material as it exits the nozzle. If the extruded thread is leaving the nozzle in a fine, straight undisturbed path, then the nozzle is OK.
I have had very few misprints caused by clogged nozzles, I think it's less than 5 over the course of my Zortrax ownership.
I can't see the brass nozzle wear much when using ABS (non filled materials) etc. as there are lubricants (wax etc.) in the plastic. Of course if the filament is dirty then the nozzle will wear more.
As I said before, changing nozzle every 2-3 spools is quote from warranty. As far as I know, If you perform maintenance procedures conscientiously, it will last longer.
As for the printing time counter, it has been implemented in 1.0, and it uses EEPROM, it wont reset after changing firmware.
As I said before, changing nozzle every 2-3 spools is quote from warranty. As far as I know, If you perform maintenance procedures conscientiously, it will last longer.
As for the printing time counter, it has been implemented in 1.0, and it uses EEPROM, it wont reset after changing firmware.
As for the printing time counter, it has been implemented in 1.0, and it uses EEPROM, it wont reset after changing firmware.
Mine shows 518 hours printing time wich is (ofc) not correct. If the value from EEPROM is used then there is some kind of overrun (at 999 hours?). Maybe an overrun occurred shortly before I first checked the counter some days after updating to FW 1.0 (it was 200 hours then). But maybe the actual value is just cut off to hours and minutes.
Some here use their printer 24 hours a day, therefore the display should be at least days and hours, not hours and minutes.