bimetallic heat break
Oct. 31st, 2022 12:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdSo a week ago I upgraded my Ender 3 V2 to a bimetallic heat break, for the usual reasons, and I've found a couple of unexpected benefits:
1. Way easier to get super-clean cold pulls, so I'm saving time on filament changes. But more importantly:
2. After installing and rerunning PID calibration, I can now stably print at 170°C! Before I couldn't. The printer could just barely handle 175°, and couldn't maintain 170° reasonably at all. Now it works great!
Admittedly printing at anything below 180°C is a super edge-case - I mean, the firmware defaults to not letting you print that cold, you have to override that to do it at all. But if you use some low-temperature filaments as I do, getting a better 175°C and getting 170°C at all is a nice little surprise side-benefit.
And yeah, I've done some side-by-sides printing old .gcode files, print quality really is just a little bit better, presumably from better temperature stability all around.
So - yeah! Pleasantly surprised. Yay. ^_^
1. Way easier to get super-clean cold pulls, so I'm saving time on filament changes. But more importantly:
2. After installing and rerunning PID calibration, I can now stably print at 170°C! Before I couldn't. The printer could just barely handle 175°, and couldn't maintain 170° reasonably at all. Now it works great!
Admittedly printing at anything below 180°C is a super edge-case - I mean, the firmware defaults to not letting you print that cold, you have to override that to do it at all. But if you use some low-temperature filaments as I do, getting a better 175°C and getting 170°C at all is a nice little surprise side-benefit.
And yeah, I've done some side-by-sides printing old .gcode files, print quality really is just a little bit better, presumably from better temperature stability all around.
So - yeah! Pleasantly surprised. Yay. ^_^
