Tuesday, Nov 27 2018
E3D V6 Hot End Mount
While perusing some 3D printing content I found out E3D was having a sale. OK. With the sale an E3D V6 hot end from Great Britian including shipping was cheaper than ordering it from Amazon Prime. Time to buy. I’ve wanted to print a thing or two at temps higher than are safe with the stock hot end. This will let me do that.
I use the Petsfang part cooling duct. I started with the duct version that fit the stock cooling fan. A month or two ago I printed and installed an updated version that used a 50mm radial cooling fan. That version (and associated mount) works for the stock hot end, but wont fit the E3D V6 hot end. Time to print version 3. The mount (pictured) was printed in PETG and the fang (printing in the background) is in PLA. The Auto Bed Leveling (ABL) sensor mount can move from my existing fang set-up.
Tuesday, Dec 10 2018
Look what came in the mail
My E3D V6 kit arrived in the mail, today. It took a while to get here from England (cheapest shipping option). That’s OK. This is what was in the small box. Instructions for installation are on-line.
Remove part cooling fan
Remove Auto Bed Levelling sensor
ABL sensor bracket moved to new mount
Remove old hot end fan
Stock hot end being removed
Before installing the new hot end I have to uninstall the old. These pictures show the process. The bed levelling sensor holder was moved from the old mount to the new. I disconnected the cable bundle that went from the control unit to the hot end, too. That will let me work on the cable elsewhere.
Too long
Shortened
Install V6 mount base
Side trip to the garage. I didn’t have the right size M3 button head screws to mount the base for the E3D V6. I had socket head screws in the correct size but thought their heads might interfere with the heat sink. I chucked up and shortened a couple of button head screws and used them to mount the base.
It will fit
Attach part cooling fan duct
Once the base was installed I test fitted the heat sink. It will fit. I loosly attached the part fan heating duct to the base as it looks like I can install the hot end with the duct installed.
Install nozzle in heat block
Install heat break
Install thermistor
12V 30W heater
Heater installed
Thermal compound on heat break
Install heat sink
Test fit
I followed the steps in the on-line doc to put the hot end together. This part of the job was very easy. Not shown was checking heater resistance with a VOM. It was very close to the specified 4.8 ohms. I performed a couple of test fits to see which way I wanted to mount the heater and thermister for wire placement.
Hot end cable socket
Unsolder existing heater
Back together
This was a waste of time. I thought I’d un-solder and remove the existing heating element at the connector and wire in the new heater instead of splicing into the existing wires. Ooops. After unsoldering and removing the old heater I realised the wires for the new heater weren’t as long. I didn’t want to shorten everything to match the missing 6-8 inches. I re-installed old heater wires and soldered them back to the connector.
Heat sink fan and thermistor wiring
Heater wiring
I pulled the bundle sheath back and cut off the stock hot end fan and thermister. I cut off a section of the supplied wiring with connector and spliced them into the existing wires. Heat shrink insulation covered the splice. I then cut off the old heater, cut off excess wiring from the new heater, and spliced the new heater onto the existing wires.
Everything connected
V6 installed on printer
I hooked up the fans and thermister then stretched the hot end wiring bundle sheath back toward the hot end and taped it in place. I installed the hot end on the printer and routed the cable to the control unit and plugged it in. Cable ties were used to hold things in place while figuring out the best routing for the hot end cable. I think I can still improve on what I have. I’ll think on that a bit.
I uploaded new firmware to the CR-10S for the V6 hot end. The thermistor type was changed and max temperature is set to 285 °C. I powered up the printer with the new firmware and heated the hot end to 270 °C. That’s the highest the user interface would let me select. I’ll have to look at that later. Once at temperature I made sure the nozzle was tight against the heat break.
heat block insulater
PID Autotune chart
Once the hot end cooled to ambient temperature I installed the silicon insulator over the heat block. I then did a PID Autotune requestint 8 cycles. I plugged the calculated values into the firmware and uploaded it to the CR-10S, again. This time I restored all EEPROM values from the firmware by issuing M502 (load defaults) and M500 (save) commands.
ABL Calibrated
The final step was to figure out the Z-offset value used with the EZABL. The bed leveling sensor is approximately 2 mm above the nozzle. It’s sensitivity is such that it triggers when the nozzle is about 2 mm above the bed. In theory the Z offset will be -2.0 so when the bed leveling sensor triggers the nozzle will be at bed level. The numbers will be +/- according to the actual height of the sensor and sensitivity setting. I found an offset of -1.95 seems about right. I’ll fine tune that number after some test prints.
Thursday, Dec 13 2018
Fine tune Z-offset
The weeks before the holiday season are always busy. I wasn’t able to try printing something until today. I started with this test print to check the Z-offset. The print nozzle was a bit too close to the print surface. I used used baby stepping of the Z axis to dial in a better value while the test was printing. I needed another 0.09 mm for better print quality. I reset the Z-offset to -1.86 mm before printing the remainder of my calibration tests.
One thing I found interesting is that the location of the E3D V6 nozzle is a few mm right and front compared to the location of the stock nozzle. The X (left/right) value is OK. The Y (front/back) value is such that location Y0 is slightly off the print surface. I fixed this with an M206 Y-3 gcode command to offset the Y axis by 3 mm and saved the updated value to the printers EEPROM. That puts the nozzle over the print surface at location Y0.
I’m calling this upgrade done.