The Mosquito Hotend isn’t like several hotend you’ve seen earlier than. In the event you’ve ever had a hotend leak filament out of the heater block, struggled with each arms to take away a nozzle whereas the hotend is sizzling, or damaged a warmth break since you twisted too arduous, then you understand what Chris and Dan from Slice Engineering are speaking about. After experiencing that irritating strategy of swapping nozzles on the commonest hotends discovered on most 3D printers, Chris and Dan determined to do one thing about it.

Following the “kind follows perform” mantra, they designed the Mosquito from the bottom as much as deal with a few of the most irritating points that extra standard hotends face.

Options

Typical all-metal hotends look much like this:

The skinny-walled warmth break is the one structural part between the heater block and the warmth sink. So, you should be very cautious to assist the heater block when putting in or eradicating a nozzle. You could even be very cautious to not put any lateral forces on the heater block or nozzle.

The Mosquito doesn’t have this drawback. As a substitute of a single, structural warmth break, the Mosquito has 4 thin-walled stainless-steel surgical tubes on the corners of the warmth block, and a non-load bearing warmth break. As a result of the warmth break isn’t load bearing, it may be a lot thinner than a standard warmth break that should assist the heater block, nozzle, heater cartridge, thermistor, and the forces which might be appearing on a hotend. That is wonderful for hotend efficiency. It permits for a really steep temperature transition between the warmth break and the soften zone.

This thin-walled warmth break is a key issue to the efficiency of the Mosquito. And by skinny, we imply actually skinny…

A typical warmth break has a wall thickness round 3mm. The Mosquito is about 20 occasions thinner than an ordinary warmth break! Which means considerably much less warmth travels up the warmth break, which, in flip, reduces the necessity for a big warmth sink. Much less cooling demand additionally means you need to use a smaller fan. The Mosquito solely wants a tiny 25mm fan to maintain it cool versus the usual 35mm or 40mm followers discovered on most hotends. This makes the entire hotend meeting extra compact, and it runs quieter.

Slice Engineering states that their warmth break conducts 85% much less warmth into the warmth sink than a conventionally threaded warmth sink. As a substitute of a giant, cylindrical aluminum warmth sink, the Mosquito has a small copper warmth sink that’s jacketed over the warmth break tube close to the heater block. Copper is sort of twice as thermally conductive as aluminum, so it transfers warmth higher and also you want much less of it to get the identical cooling efficiency as an aluminum warmth sink.

It is a thermal imaging seize exhibiting the very steep thermal gradient of the Mosquito. That is wonderful for a hotend!

Supplies

This materials choice was no accident. Relatively than simply selecting the most cost effective materials out there, every materials on the Mosquito was chosen for a particular function. Slice Engineering states that materials choice was on the coronary heart of their design course of. This brings us to the heater block. Commonplace heater blocks are aluminum which softens and deforms simply at temperatures above 290C°. The Mosquito has a copper alloy heater block that they declare won’t soften at temperatures above 550C°. We didn’t take a look at it as much as 550C°, however we did warmth it as much as 400C° and alter nozzles a number of occasions – each with brass and hardened metal nozzles. We noticed no thread deformation or any indicators of damage which might be widespread for standard heater blocks at that temperature.

Simple Nozzle Adjustments

For individuals who have struggled with altering a nozzle, this may in all probability be your favourite function.

No extra holding the heater block with one wrench and attempting to tighten/loosen the nozzle with one other. The Mosquito makes one-handed nozzle modifications doable. Additionally, due to the fabric choice and the design of the warmth break and heater block, there’s no must warmth up the Mosquito to tighten the nozzle.

Don’t do this with different sizzling ends until you desire a damaged warmth break or a heater block that’s flooded with filament.

Filament Swell

In the event you’ve ever had bother pulling PLA filament out of your sizzling finish due to the ‘bulb’ of filament on the finish, then you’re acquainted with filament swell.

The distinctive warmth break on the Mosquito doesn’t simply have wonderful thermal properties. The precision tubing has a lot tighter tolerances than PTFE tubing. PTFE tubes can usually have an inside diameter exceeding 2.1mm. With PTFE tubing, your 1.75mm filament has room to swell 20+%. Not so with the Mosquito. The tight tolerance of the warmth break that extends all the way in which to the highest of the warmth sink ensures that your filament cools and doesn’t swell sufficient to trigger points along with your filament path.

Conclusion

With the cutting-edge design that Slice Engineering has integrated into the brand new Mosquito hotend, there are plenty of nice causes to improve your 3D printer with one. From the benefit of use to altering nozzles rapidly, to the low charge of warmth creep and the consistency of the goal temperature in your hotend; all of those benefits provide you with extra accuracy in controlling the move of filament deposited on the print, providing you with higher prints and decrease failure charges.