The full story and price of the proprietary hotend

WHY DO WE USE A PROPRIETARY HOTEND IN THE FIRST PLACE?

1. We need to make integration as compact as possible to save space for the Lidar.2. We want to reduce the mass of the toolhead to improve speed.3. We want to reduce the thermal inertial (thermal capacity) to increase the speed of heating up.4. We want a smooth filament path to reduce both drag and the possibility of clogging, especially considering that the AMS will change filaments many more times than a traditional single filament printer.There is one more benefit of this design, which was not intentional but is nice to have. We can now change the hotend while it is cool. People who have experience changing a V6 nozzle know what I am talking about.

IT’S TRUE THAT THERE ARE DRAWBACKS TO THIS DESIGN.

1. When we change the hotend, we need to unplug and plug three connectors. This is not necessary for traditional independent nozzles.2. If we have an unrecoverable clog and need to switch out the nozzle, we have to uninstall and reinstall the heat sink fan, NTC and ceramic heater. This is time consuming.3. The cost of a nozzle assembly, heat break, and heat sink is higher than a nozzle alone.

HERE IS OUR APPROACH TO MINIMIZE THE DRAWBACKS.

1. We moved all connector sockets to the front of the toolhead, so you can access them very easily.2. For switching hotends, there are two scenarios.· One is to change to another nozzle with a different diameter or material and this is most of the cases. For this, we will make the whole hot end assembly available, including the NTC, the ceramic heater and the heat sink fan, which will costs around $35. Replacing such an full assembly will cost only one minutes.·If, however, the nozzle is clogged or broken, it's also possible to purchase only the hardened steel hotend without the NTC or ceramic heater, for only $15. That said, you're unlikely to get a clog with our integrated design.