Worth upgrading to an E3D V6?

Recently I was clearing a jam on my R1+ and broke the connection between the heat sink and heat block so I need to replace my hotend. I was looking at upgrading to a E3D V6 but would it be worth it over a replacement Hexagon hotend? I don't plan on doing a ton of flexible materials but I was looking at getting a smaller diameter nozzle for printing smaller objects. Would an E3D with a smaller nozzle be much of an upgrade over the Hexagon with a smaller nozzle just using PLA?

 

I have a E3D clone in my R1. I had to modify the heatsink since it didn't fit in the same place as the hexagon heatsink. You could get replacement heatbreak tubes for the E3D design instead of having to buy an entire hotend. In fact you could get every part separately for the E3D design such as the heatsink, heatbreak, block, nozzle, thermistor, heating element, fan, and wiring. You could even build your own custom hotend with individual parts. I recommend using the tubing fitting on the top of the heatsink with Capricorn tubing even if you don't print with a lot of flexible filaments. You will have to modify the opening for the tubing to fit, and the bottom near the heatsink to allow the fitting to fit.

 

I went ahead and got a V6 with a 0.25 nozzle as well. The V6 ended up being cheaper with free shipping from Printedsolid than a hexagon from Robo with shipping. I'll be following the guide here, I think the hardest part will be the wiring. I'm still not sure if I need to change the firmware if the V6 from Printedsolid comes with the barrel thermistor though.

 

Just finished putting it all together and cleaning it up. It wasn't too difficult, the cable management was definitely the hardest part. I decided to run all the new cabled to the motherboard instead of splicing into the old ones but it made routing the wires in the loom a pain. If I did it again, I might keep the old wires in place. In the attached pictures, the stock Hexagon is the left side and the E3D is the right, both with 0.4mm nozzles. I'm pretty happy with the results so far, there seems to be only a slight improvement over the Hexagon. The only real problem I see right now that I also had with the Hexagon was a bit of ringing that I still haven't figured out yet. Don't mind the bottom of the E3D one, I somehow printed it with a raft.

 

Ringing could be:

• Printing too fast.
• Slop in the machine (if you are on stock rods and bearings, you have slop). Slowing down your acceleration will help with this, but not cure it.
• Acceleration set too fast. Stock ROBO firmware had the acceleration rather ambitiously high, need to tone it down.
• Weight of extruder and carriage. This mass just exacerbates the slop in the machine, and causes ringing in its own right. Slow down the print. Bowden setup is great to reduce this mass.

 

Just to throw this out there: Took this pic of a closeup of some text inlaid into the models I print. As you can see, zero ringing. Its possible to get this printer finely tuned in if you desire.

Printing at 3200 mm/min (60% outline speed), 252 degrees (ABS from Maker Geeks), acceleration at 10 for x and y IIRC.

ETA: Better pic