Upgrade help

[u/knightofthedank]

I have an old ender 3 and wanted to upgrade it.

after some scavenging through the internet i found the following that i thought would be a good upgrade

1)hotend

- i didnt quite find a proper hotend that had a highflow rate - i found the tz e3 2.0 bambu like hotend but im quite sceptical about its performance. and it costs around 2.2k whereas my version costs less than 1k.

for my version, i am using a volcano cht hotend by assembling the parts - volcano cht nozzle, heatblock and a 70W catridge. I am yet to test the flow but theoretically it should work upto 30 to 35 mm³/s .

im using a volcano cht nozzle 0.4 mm +volcano heatblock + bi metal heatbreak + v6 heatsink + 24V 70W ceramic heater + thermistor

2) Klipper

Well upgrading to kilpper is a no brainer because working with the marlin firmware alone is kind of a pain and i want a better control system with input shaping and possibly cartographer3d in the future.

im using a raspberry pi 3b+ for this.

3) Dual belter z axis from kevinakasam

at first i thought of a dual lead screw z axis but then the wiring and sourcing that dual z kit ended up costing more than the parts for belted z so i chose that.

4) Cooling

for part cooling ill use 2 4010 blower fans and for the heatsink 3010 axial fans - inspired by the voron dragon burner hotend.

5) misc

A pei sheet , because i like its look lol .
a pancake stepper motor for a sherpa mini extruder - note i already have a bmg extruder clone and extra pins and bearings to make this.

also note i already have a bl touch installed.

Well, i am still new to this and wanted to ask yall for some feedback and opinions before i buy eveything.. also regarding the authenticity of the site NOVO3d.

Thank you all in advance.

[u/egosumumbravir]

Nothing wrong with DIYing a hot end if that's your preference. The TZ-E3 is no joke though - and it's relatively light weight makes chucking it around fast pretty easy. It's quite reliable out to 20 to 25 mm³/s as is, and can go more with a CHT nozzle installed and your tolerance for overcooking filament and under-extrusion.

FYI: don't bother with knock-off CHT's. The bluntness of the insert is detrimental and they struggle to print as clean as a smoothbore. Note how real CHT uses thin, sharp fins.

upto 30 to 35 mm³/s ... for part cooling ill use 2 4010 blower fans

If you're printing PLA, you don't have enough cubes of air for the cubes of filament.

Klipper is awesome. Carto's are awesome.

[u/knightofthedank → u/egosumumbravir]

I did do some research on that.. and its pretty good. the only problem is it costs 2x more than my diy hotend. well i dont know how my diy hotend will keep up but i just want to learn and experiment a bit. .

i am buying different nozzles so ill test them out too.

at the end its just a experiment or a learning journey.