FYI: Snapmaker 2 All-Metal Hotend Simple Mod

I have changed my brass nozzle for a steel nozzle, the auto-calibration always plunges into the bed. I have adjusted the proximity sensor to be 1mm ‘above’ the nozzle tip as instructed in another post about stopping the nozzle from gouging the heat bed.
Is there a trick to getting the auto level working with a steel nozzle fitted? Or does the proximity sensor only work with bronze somehow?

Actually it doesn’t matter of which material the nozzle is made but it should be a MK8 Type. Snapmaker also postet the procedure of how to adjust the sensor height correctly:

I think you should give the described tests a try to see wether your sensor is workling correctly and to make sure the platform is installed correctly.

on further investigation I have discovered that my proximity sensor is broken, worth checking if you have bed gouging. I wouldn’t of noticed the ‘red LED’ on the back was/wasn’t working (or even existed) without reading these forums.

Just bought both heatbreak and nozzle from Ali, thinking about titanium one - do you think this one - Tough Titanium Heatbreak for Creality Machines and Tough Dual Hotend - Kraken Compatible - TH3D Studio LLC - will work too? I am learning and experimenting with my first 3D printer so sorry for maybe dumb question.

@pegak, this heatbreak is 7 mm diameter on the heat sink side and the Snapmaker 2 one is 6 mm there. The one I listed is a direct replacement as is also 6 mm. If you are willing to do a hard mod on the heatbreak and drill the 7 mm hole (N ensure is really fine and smooth ) then you will be able to fit it, but in that case I recommend a bi-metal one (e.g. from Slice Engineering) as you’ll get further better results with the same work :slight_smile:

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I think you will be interested in this topic. Please share your opinions there. Thank you in advance.

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Thank you very much, I am still a newbie. I ordered what you recommend, but also tried to look for titanium one. But now I am experimenting with a laser, so updates will come later!

How about exchanging the PTFE tube with a silicone tube? Silicone shrinks and gets brittle at higher temperatures but you can exchange it every now and then.

Using a silicone tube would be kind of difficult: first of all , to remove the ptfe from inside the hotend heatbreak can be quite a challenge without damaging it; second, silicone is not specially sliding as PTFE is and can easily trap the filament. If no one else in he 3D printing community has done it , is because does not work out :slight_smile: , most likely. An all-metal hotend is the way to go, being the bi-metal ones the latest advance.

Ok, good point. Btw. you can actually buy throats without the PTFE tube inside.
Did you do some actual printing tests with the all-metal hotend? How do they compare side by side?

Edit: Or you can try some high temperature PTFE tubes. They degrade at 280°C but that should be enough to start with PC. I wonder what kind the stock tubes are. The specs state up to 275°C for the hotend.

You could also try using a 3x4mm silicone tube on the outside and a 2x3mm PTFE tube in the inside part within the heatbreak throat. The silicone tube should give you enough thermal insulation to protect the PTFE tube from decomposition. And just because no one has tried it does not mean that we have reached perfection yet :wink:.
I admit that silicone’s high friction coefficient is probably unsuited for this and available low friction coatings are usually not meant for this temperature. But also note that according to wikipedia “[…] cases of polymer fume fever were mostly present in people who had cooked at 390 °C (734 °F) for ≥4 hours.”. The little amount of PTFE in the hotend will probably do nothing with your health compared to the other particles you get from 3D printing.
Anyway, I am still quite interessted to see how well the all-metal hotend performs against the stock hotend. Please share your experience with us!

I’ve just got my all-metal throats, so far, I’m not having a great amount of luck, I’ve just applied some thermal grease I had here, though I am not terribly confident it’s going to stand up to the high temps, but eh, will find out shortly. I can get it to print, but the filament keeps jamming, so I’m guessing it’s heat-creep, even though I’ve lowered the retraction right down (I was retracting 7mm at 55mm/s which worked really well for my filament) … But now, even 1mm is causing it to jam. Thankfully it’s not clogging though. Will report back in a day or so with more info as I figure this out.

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So, either I got the very broken silicone boot sitting in a good position between the heater block and heatsink or the thermal grease is working. But I’m back up to 7mm of retraction at 55mm/s and printing very well. PETG at 250’C print speed set at 55mm/s … will go back to 60mm/s after this current print and see if it changes anything. Waiting on new hotend kits, with entire boots, and grizzly kryo grease to arrive, after that hopefully I won’t have any issues. I wonder how PLA will work…

And it didn’t do a complex print at those settings. At the moment, I cannot complete a stringing test without it jamming, even at 0.4mm retraction. So, working on different settings till I have something that works… Then will post about it.

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I’m not having any luck with the all metal hotend. With zero retraction I’m getting heat creep and the filament is jamming. I am trying to do a rather large piece out of Taulman 910, which requires 255 degrees. I also tried regular ABS with the same large piece and not getting any luck with that either. After 20 hours it clogs.

I just replaced the nozzle and used the same heartbreak. Yea I know PTFE is toxic and all that, but I’m happily printing carbon fiber/nylon at 250 C and it’s working perfectly

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I didn’t have any difficulty removing the teflon tube from the hotend. I took the nozzle off when I had a blockage, and the teflon tube pushed out with the filamant. I replaced the teflon tube with one from the extra hotend that came with the printer, as it was easier than changing the entire hotend. I subsequently replaced that piece with a tubing purchased from Amazon. Change the smile to www in the address if you don’t use Amazon Smile. https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07F66CXL4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I haven’t used that hotend, so I don’t know how it worked out, because I’m still using the first hotend with the replaced teflon tube.

I forgot all about this mod. Might as well switch out the nozzle while I’m working on the print head. At this rate, I’m never gonna get the printer back together :wink:

Just tried again with this all metal hot end, this time using thermal paste (I didn’t have any last time). Nope, still the same. Even PLA was clogging with heat creep after about half an hour.
I’m giving up. Gonna take jenjenkatkat’s example and fill my room with toxic fumes haha!

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So, what’s the verdict on this mod? It kinda sounds like it creates more problems than it solves.

Is it better to just use a tougher (hardened, titanium, synthetic ruby, whatever) nozzle and just repace the stock Snapmaker hot-end as it wears out?