3D Printing Head

You are here: Home / 3D Printers / Add-Ons / 3D Printing Head

  • Get started with 3D Printing

    With the Printing Head Addon

3D Printing Head: FABtotum official supplies

3D printing heads with interchangeable nozzle

The FABtotum’s Printing Head add-on enables rapid and neat 3D printing in PLA, ABS and Nylon.

The Printing Head is a removable extruder, just like any extruder of a 3D printer is composed by an heatsink and a melting chamber.
The heatsink (also called “cold end”) is where the filament is kept solid until in the melting chamber. In the cold end temperature must be as low as possible, especially when 3D printing materials like PLA, which would easily melt and block the path toward the melting chamber.
To avoid that a small built-in fan is always keeping the heatsink at lower temperatures than the “hot end” or the melting chamber.
The Printing Head has dual cooling to keep the temperatures in check.

On the hot end side the most important part is the nozzle: this last component heats up and deposit the material in thin layers. Here there will be a thermistor and a resistance: the first one will detect the temperature and send the value to the board to record it, the second one will increase or decrease the read value in order to get the needed one when printing.
The Printing Head can be serviced and different nozzles and thermistors be swapped when worn out or too old.
Nozzles can also have different diameters. The Printing Head comes with a 0,4mm hole, while 0,6mm is available separately.

How to decide which nozzle size is better?

What is the difference between them?
There is no right or wrong, but:

  • the bigger is the hole the faster is the print;
  • the smaller is the hole the higher is the quality.

Nowadays many special filaments are requiring a bigger nozzle as their phisycal specifications make them harder to be extruded: a wider hole will help them as more material will get through at once.
This is again something that might be tested in order to get to the final setting: there are many players that might affect the fianl decision for the nozzle: ambient temperature, filament quality and material, final quality requirement are to be considered when choosing. A bigger nozzle may not be right if printing small parts of course, but even big objects may need a smoother surface that can be achieved with a smaller size. This second option, which is the standard nozzle size on the FABtotum, is a valid alternative for the majority of the jobs, but it can result too slow or small for specific filaments.

3D printing head and 3D printer extruder

Printing Head Specs

  • Full metal Body with 6mm PTFE Liner.
  • Inox steel melting chamber, with heatbreak to stop thermal flow to the head.
  • Aluminium heat sink to cooldown the body and PTFE liner.
  • Interchangeable brass nozzles (standard one is 0.4, others will probably be 0.3-0.6-0.8).
  • The extruder will be totally removable for maintenance and repairing.
  • Max temp: 240°-250° (in continuos operation with fan always on).
  • Materials: PLA, PETG, ABS, NYLON (to be tested HIPS, PC).
Get your 3D Printing Head
3D printing head and 3D printer extruder