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Created by Emil Pop on 13 April, 2018

Won't work properly above certain temperaures.


Than why do I use it? It has two nozzles, hence slicing with Ultimaker Cura (among others) I can assing different temperatures for each nozzle, hence printing support with PLA at 220 Celsius, and the part in PETG at 250 Celsius. A Cyclope system has a common nozle and that would make me bake the PETG at 250 Celsius or higher, filling my house with the smell of burned popcorn for the lenght of the print.


At certain temperatures the heatsink (the golden etched aluminium radiator) goes hot itself (insufficient air cooling) than the filament that is supposed to stay cold and rigid inside becomes too hot and jelly, and that is the end of your print. the fan is a 30x30 mm 12 volt.


Up to 200 Celsius went OK, but that means PLA alone, nothing else. The heatsink went some 40C, pretty much OK.


ABS becomes a no go. It requires 245Celsius, and the heatsink went over 55 Celsius. ANd the print went cockoo since the filament jammed in the heatsink neck.


I decided to try some new toys, so I bought bimetal heat throat having as apssive ellement hypodermic needle metal, very low eat conductivity, it helped, heatsink temperature went down 10 Celsius.



So I went to print with PETG, thecnically it is nylon, it requires 250Celsius, and that brought my heatsink at 70 Celsius and blocked everything.


Than I designed and printed a fan adapter that fits on the heatsink as a 30x30 fan, but at the other end I can fit a 40X40 fan. That pushes almost tripple the air in the radiator. So the heatsink went down to 45Celsius again.

I am preparing to print at 330 Celsius, and that requires an even bigger fan, so my next adapter will be for a 50x50 fan, high air volume model. Just in case it is not enough I designed an adapter for a 60x60 fan too.


UPDATE


40x40 did something but not much, I don't have a 50x50 or a 60x60, just bought some online, a month waiting for them, trying to sort out heat sink cooling isues wile printing with high tempeatures, let's hope more air can dissipate enough heat

I adapted a 80x80 fan to a 30x30 fan place with a funnel, increasing the airflow 12 times


Now testing in printing, let's keep the fingers crossed.


Although there is 12 times more airflow, I still got into trouble and the filament jammed in the throats.


Looking at the V6 heatsink total air flow exposure surface, it is some 3 times more than the Chimera, and the Chimera holds 2 hot ends, and this is fatal at higher temperatures than 230Celsuis apparently, wih all the air I could provide.


So it is a fail for high temperatures by definition, since for a double hot end I need 6 times more surface to wash awaythe undesired heat.


So I go back to what worked before, and will try to improve that, and that is a dual configuration of V6 type hot ends.

I just milled out 3mm from the thicker part of a couple of heat sinks to suit a different type of nozzle with shorter thread than the originalsthe threaded neck that connects the heat sink and the hot end must 1toch the nozzle tight, or molten filament escapes around causing blobs on the print, and 2 keep the hotend away from the heat sink some 3 mm, ut because the new nozzles were short on thread either could not tighten well enough or the hot end and the heat sink would touch tranfering heat where not desired.


The Chimera instead has longer thread on the throats solving this issue for standard hot blocks.


So I will try to use on the dual Volcano (V6) a pair of Chimera type of nozzles, fingers crossed...