The tech’s good. The CR (Revo designed explicitly for a drop-in for a Creality 3D printer…) had a bit of seemingly hinky assembly (Well, using butt splices strikes me as a bit dodgy, but there wasn’t any other good way to DO what needed to be done without a BUNCH of pulling and replacing wiring, so… It works well enough and I intend to clean up the handiwork a bit better- I wanted to try the thing…and RIGHT NOW… X-D ) but everything works and I’ve been printing with it.
Cleaner than the stock hotend by far on PLA. Can run temps to 300 deg C which lets me do Polycarbonate and Nylon filaments. Easy nozzle swap cold. No hazardous heated tightens on stuff. Just finger tighten and remove the thing COLD. That right there is worth the premium price they’re asking for the hotend. No, it’s not high-flow (YET…) or really high-temp, but I’d be…leery of doing high-temp and I’ve got other fish to fry to get 1m/s (Yes, you read that right- someone’s figured out how to get the Ender 3 to jam out 1000mm/s speeds on print. But, it needs the high-flow hotend and a few other mods including setting up for Klipper on the thing. Going to wait a bit on THAT particular madness (and I will…an amped up Ender 3 v2 doing this insane speed would be a plus…but it must wait for the high-flow nozzle options from E3D and my project…) since it’s not available for me yet. They don’t even really have the hardened nozzles out yet. (Preorders for Jan/Feb 2023 are still being taken right now… Word is that they’re rocking and they don’t require any slicer changes- thermal characteristics are allegedly for all intents the same as Brass nozzles are.)
Nifty…and the assessments of, “worth it,” not being the case are from people that didn’t really try to do nozzle swapping regularly or the prospects of having that swap also equate to hardened with similar characteristics to the sapphire/ruby tips or high flow with the same heater cartridge and heatbreak system. For using ONLY a 0.4 nozzle size, never swapping out except to replace a worn/damaged nozzle, it is a bit more far-fetched as a value. (I didn’t say it wasn’t worth it even from THAT perspective. The nozzle’s producing cleaner results than the stock Ender hotend/nozzle config. Not having hassles there is almost fully worth the premium price there…)- but to have the future looking as bright as it is… I’ll deal with a bit of proprietary there for a while. It’s worth it to me.
But…why the change and why the blog post…?
Well, I bought the CR for the purpose of getting a feel for the Micro I’d bought for a pet project that is still in progress and still mostly under the radar. I’m building out a…heh…honestly massive print volume (Current expected initial volume is 400x400x400 mm) printer with a somewhat new-ish kinematic (It’s had one full implementation that was promising, but had to stop due to the Patent rights holder telling him to stop… Well, the patent’s expired…) and I’m doing it slowly but with some thought being applied to each part of this, so there’s been iterations applied and it’s been moving slowly and methodically starting shortly after the expiry of the patent involved with the kinematic. We’re at the end effector parts and the actual linear actuator parts being worked out. Hot end initially chosen is a Micro because I can easily work with it. With that choice, well, I had to see and work with the thing first to know what to expect. Hence, the CR. I can see why people are going on so about it. There’s a few surprises as Stephan over at CNC Kitchen has observed (Thermistor placement isn’t the same as you, “usually,” have with a heater block so you may have to adjust commanded temps if you’re used to <X> under all cases.), that being said, there’s a lot to be said for it The CR model seems to be 1-for-1 in performance and behavior to the stock hot-end- well, except for that it heats up three or so times faster and it’s fully capable of letting you print Nylon and PC filament because of the max temp of 300 deg C and it doesn’t seem to have stringing/ooze problems that the Stock has with things.
Hopefully, I’ll have the pet-project finished enough to show it on a few YouTube/Rumble/etc. videos in a couple of months. We’ll see. Right now is the difficulty of sourcing lead/ball screw actuators in a reasonable time and for something resembling a reasonable cost- or I’d be further along. Be FUN to have a nearly half meter cubed volume printer with the ability to do at least 200mm/s print speeds, with the prospect of 1m/s or more waiting in the wings. Be even more fun if I can scale it like I think I can.