Ruby or Sapphire for nozzle tip?

So there are a lot of reviews of the Ruby tipped Olsson Nozzle and I see that Matt @Printed Solid is selling a similar but not the same Sapphire tipped nozzle. Maybe Matt can point to some information that either tell a story that performance is the same or better with the Sapphire tip Vs the Ruby tip?

Anyone have any personal experience with either tipped nozzles?

 

Saw an honest review of the Ruby, it wasn't good and the points the reviewer made appear to be 100% valid. I suspect that hardened steel nozzles are a better buy than a single Ruby nozzle.

 

That was my opinion as well. I went through a lot of brass nozzles and when I swapped to hardened steel I have yet to go through even one. I am sure I will, but as of yet they show no wear with 20-30 hours of print time on the newest nozzle, more on the oldest one. The C2 is still using brass nozzles so I can use that as benchmark I suppose, but all the E3D machines are on a hardened steel one.

Given the cost of the hardened steel and the cost of the Ruby ... I need them to wear a lot faster to make it worthwhile.

 

You would need a 4X increase in usability to make up the pricing differences. And I saw one cut apart, the industrial synthetic gems used in the shape they are in would increase backpressure in the nozzle, backpressure is the devil for nozzles, youy need a bit but not what you would see with these jewel insert nozzles.

 

On the delta the backpressure would probably kill me It has all it can handle now

 

Hey guys. @WheresWaldo if you do some googling, the history between the two companies is interesting. They did work together at one point. We're carrying the sapphire primarily out of convenience as we're working with the supplier already for Ultimaker 3 print cores. It does have some interesting features though. One is that it is nickel plated. The other is the race geometry. There are two internal channels. The idea here is that you're delivering more heat to the filament and melting it more efficiently. Mark tested these for me about a year ago in a 2mm nozzle. Results were interesting, but hard to support at that large diameter. You might suspect that the internal divider would just wear away quickly, but I've run a full spool of XT-CF20 through one with no observable wear.

Regarding wear rate, take a look at E3D's blog post on this from about 3 or 4 years ago. If you're using a heavily loaded abrasive filament, the wear is incredibly fast. They found that after only 250g in a brass nozzle, there was significant opening of the orifice while very little observable wear after 10kg of the same material through hardened steel. This wear rate is significant enough that brass nozzles are not even a viable option for some large prints.

Given this, is there even any point in considering a gem stone nozzle over hardened?

I find that the lower conductivity of hardened steel vs brass does seem to be an issue with some filaments, so if you're printing a lot with those materials and don't want to really have to slow down, it may be worth considering.

Hope that helps.

 

Thanks Matt I do know about the difference in the wear rates between Hardened steel and Brass, so far I just toss a new brass nozzle in my printer about every two months wear or not. But I did experiment a bit with the MicroSwiss nozzles and like them. Not a single micro-clog using all manner of cheap PLA, don't get the PETG sticking to the brass like some tend to do. Now I just wanted to see if there was still some buzz about the jewel tipped nozzles. All the YouTube talking heads love it, but that is expected. A few people on the Ultimaker forums have issues with clogging and backpressure. Only one YouTuber has a review that is scathing about the Olsson. I was just wondering if the Everlast was built in a similar manner.

From everything I have read, the hardened steel has a better ROI than these gem tipped nozzles. But like George Carlin used to say, 'nail two things together that have never been nailed together before, and some schmuck will buy it from you.'

 

cant speak for 3d printing as I feel they are over priced for what they are. On the water jet you can get "nozzles" that are ruby/diamond/sapphire etc that are crazy cheaper (like 30-75 bucks depending) but I suppose the argument there is bigger requires less machining of the gem etc etc. Regardless....hardened steel has worked for all my applications so far and if short prints brass nozzle and toss it away.

 

Any standard E3D nozzle will work (not the Volcano ones, the standard ones)

 

Good question. I imagine they wear faster than the metal nozzles or cost enough more to make it better not to use them.
I don't consider hardened steel "high end" and they last ... a really long time. Easier to produce than the ceramic ones too I imagine.

 

Ceramic shatters. Cant easily cnc it. Brass is crazy easy machineable and cheap...can be cnc. One good operator with 4 machines being bar feed can make an insane amount of production in one day vs trying to create wirh porclain. There are alot of complex geometries to account for with 3d printers...3d pen...as long as its a hole...its fine.

 

See I never "went there" and considered the actual manufacturing side
ALL GOOD POINTS.

 

Make sure it isn't very large, I use a simple program called RIOT if all I want to do is compress the image before posting.
http://luci.criosweb.ro/riot/