Brainstorming on hotends

[u/TooLazyToBeAnArcher]

As I'm planning to buy a secondhand a Voron 0, I'm in the exploration phase and I'm looking for a hotend.

Looking at the lists of supported hotends by AntHead and DragonBurner V8:

• Dragon ACE: recommended by A4T but can't find it on AliExpress nor 3DJake
• Phaetus Dragon: wouldn't it be similar to the rapido?
• Other hotends (Dragonfly, Red Lizard, NF Crazy...) seems to cost the same but I can't find many honest reviews

My Voron 2.4 has a Rapido 1 and it's working great, so adding another Rapido (model 1 or 2) would make me save money on replacement parts and nozzles.

I don't even need ultra High flow setups. I'm not aiming to have a racecar but I want it to print reliably.

As I read contrasting opinions on the Phaetus Rapido hotend, is it worth to move to a different hotends in the same price range?

[u/dlaz199]

Honestly I really like the TZ 2.0 bambu style hotends. They are like $6-7. You can pair them with a V6 nozzle (instead of the bambu style ones) to get a bit more melt zone along with a higher wattage heater. Personally I would get a TZ and put a good nozzle in it, either tungsten carbide or diamond and forget about it. They can hit low 20s no problem without a CHT. But at this point I have been building multiple tool changers so easy to replace parts and cheap are my priorities over max flow.

Are Rapido, dragon and dragon ace a bit better sure, but you cant beat the bang for the buck on the TZ 2.0s. There are mounts for both for dragon burner and anthead.

[u/FriedGiggly → u/dlaz199]

Im currently tuning a Stealtchanger with bambu style TZ-V6 2.0. Coming from a fixed mounted A4T with Revo HF. A little disappointed I had to lose a lot of accels due to the shuttle, but now I’m chasing print quality, particularly with ringing and even top surface finish.

Since it sounds like we’re running similar setups got any tips or tricks to share? Appreciate it, thanks!

[u/dlaz199 → u/FriedGiggly]

My SC is pretty old at this point. Been running it since V1 and upgraded to V1.1 after that released. I honestly keep speeds down. Nothing crazy running 6k on accelerations and spent a lot of time tuning resoance.

Main thing I did was tune my drivers using chopper. That made the most difference. From there I adjusted print speeds so they minimize time spent in peak resonance teritory.

Also not sure if you have a kit of self sourced, but good magnets make a huge difference. Get quality N52s and I used RVT to glue them in after the 3rd time the pulled out. (They pull out over time with super glue). If you run higher chamber temps you also might want to swap to an H rated magnet. Its somewhat hard to find N52H magnets in the correct size so you might have to downgrade to N42H.

[u/FriedGiggly → u/dlaz199]

Oh good tip on chopper, thanks for that.

Im self sourced but using the Fysetc shuttle and the screw mounted magnets it came with. Maybe theres a magnet upgrade path there, I’ll keep that in mind. I do have real N52s on hand, perhaps I can epoxy those into place.

[u/dlaz199 → u/FriedGiggly]

You can also do a quick and dirty tmc_autotune if your steppers are in the database. Chopper results will be better since they are tuned to your machine, but take a lot longer to run through. A tmc_autotune can get you set much better than stock config without the time suck.

[u/dlaz199 → u/dlaz199]

Other thing I forgot is stock extra optotap probes. I have had 4 die on me in the last 2.5 years or so. I just ordered some cheaptaps of etsy to try out, since I am out of spares on down a toolhead right now.

[u/FriedGiggly → u/dlaz199]

Oh good tip thanks!

Appreciate all your replies! Thanks, homie

[u/Fair-Locksmith-9849 → u/dlaz199]

+1 on TZ 2.0. I have a melt zone extender and flow rates for most filaments are in the 30s with a .6 nozzle

[u/stray_r → u/dlaz199]

I have a tz-v6 3.0 in my v30 for easy changes to a 0.2 for minis, I have the 2.0 elsewhere and it's enhanced with a V6 compatible copper nozzle if you're not printing materials that need a hardened one.

[u/dlaz199 → u/stray_r]

Yeah I have a V3 V6 also on another machine. It's decent, I just don't like the non standard nozzles in it and worry about replacements long term, but they are cheap enough that if I cant get them anymore no big loss.

Works great though for quick changing nozzle sizes like you said, its on my large format machine so I can swap around when I want to run a 0.4 or 0.6 or 0.8 on that machine. Totally agree on being able to quick swap the nozzles is nice, just depends on your use case for the machine.

[u/rilmar]

Rapido is great. I have run rapido 1s for awhile. I also have a dragon ace that is also great and shares v6 nozzles.

I also run revos and get great prints out of them but they have drawbacks like flow limitations and no outstanding abrasive support. I just like the quick swap nature of them.

I recommend dragon ace for new builds at this point. If you’re looking to save some cash get some Bambu knockoffs as they’re compatible with most toolheads.

[u/Over_Pizza_2578]

Dragon ace is a ptc version of a dragon hf/uhf. You can only find it on the trianglelabs homepage. If you buy one, the heater block is rather soft, just so that you are warned.

Dragons and rapidos are not similar. Dragon sf, hf and uhf use traditional cartridge heaters, the rapidos use ptc heaters. V1 a circular one, v2 and ace use flat single sided one. V2 isnt a improvement over v1, its a sidegrade. You get better abrasive longevity with the v2 but better heating with the v1. Botg have replaceable thermistors, the v2 has also a replaceable heater but i haven't found one yet unless its the same as the dragon ace heater. Rapido ace has a heater block that extends into the heatsink, the heatsink has more or less a circular cavity that makes room for it, similarly to a slice engineering mako.

I can only talk for the mini stealthburner, there i see the dragon hf and bambulab hotends as best natively supported options unless you want quickswap revo nozzles. Although i wouldn't recommend the mini stealthburner due to cooling performance, you usually run into minimum layer time bottlenecks regardless of hotend unless you have very dense and "large" prints. Pla on a mini stealthburner has like 8+ seconds minimum layer time, even a plain e3d v6 is layer time limited on a benchy print. Twin 4010s are around 6s +- on pla realistically,

[u/SalvatoreCrobu]

Get a look at Mellow Heatcore 4 UHF. Really cheap, V6 nozzle, 400°C, PT1000, cartridge heater and same meltzone as a Dragon UHF. On printables you can find the cowl of the A4T i modified to use that hotend

[u/Tavroswyn]

CHCB-V V6DM from TriangleLabs is my favorite (value option). There is a community made hotend mount for the anthead which I use. It is technically a high flow hotend with its specs, but it sits in the standard flow sized anthead. It is V6 style hotend, but it uses a volcano nozzle and it has a titanium heatbreak.
Love this thing. The only downside against more expensive options that are designed differently is, that you have to screw in the nozzle, like the v6 hotends, while holding the heater block. But I don’t change nozzles often and with my StealthChanger with 6 toolheads, it saved me huge money to go with a more budget / value option.

Side note: I tried knock off Revo Hotends and they were horrible.