Question: If you have tried a dodgy dual input hotend, what were your experiences?

Background: As with anyone else who have a single extruder, I've been contemplating upgrading to something with a bit more flexibility. But the idea of getting a whole new printer doesn't appeal as much to my wallet, as it does to my mind :-)

Scouring aliexpress for weird filaments with the mrs - you know, normal Saturday-evening-and-the-kids-are-sleeping couple activities - we fell upon a dual input hotend for creality cr10. It looks an awful lot like the hotend we have, and it comes with either 24v or 12v heater. It's only about 15€ so I might just give it a try, but it's pretty stupid when I don't even have a plan for an extra extruder as well. And I don't know how I would go about wiring that part up on my cr6 at the moment.

As the title states really. I need to refer to this diverse group of people, who somehow have gotten put in the same box labeled "sexual minorites".

I'm a boring CISHET vanilla white male, so I don't really know. I want to include as many as I can when I refer to "lgbtq+ people". I've been studying various flags, trying to find the one flag I need. But I can't really figure it out.

Is lgbtq+ the preferred term, or what should I use? Is a flag better? I don't want to hurt someone by not including them.

I apologize for the links below being vendor specific, but the linked products are the specific products I have used. I have no affiliation with the shop other than they offer to bill my job instead of having me pay upfront and then get the expenses redeemed. (I have tried making this both subscript and super script with respectively ^ and ~, but none works on lemmy)

I seek advice on proceeding with the setup and acquiring an acceptable printing quality.

Background

I have recently "upgraded" a creality cr6 se at work. I installed a spider steel/PEI plate (https://3deksperten.dk/products/spiderflexiplate-double-system-255x245-ex-cr-6-se), a bimetal heatbreak https://3deksperten.dk/products/3dsupreme-titanium-alloy-bi-metal-heatbreak-cr6-se) and a hardened steel nozzle (0.4mm from this kit https://3deksperten.dk/products/creality-3d-3d-printing-up-market-nozzle-kit-8-pcs)

Findings

Testing this new setup I used the PLA spool I had been printing with days before without issue. The new and old nozzles are all 0.4mm.

What I discovered was that I couldn't get any adhesion to the built plate, some spray glue (this exact make and model https://3deksperten.dk/products/printafix-100ml) fixed that. Then layer adhesion was an issue. So I upped the temp to the max for this PLA and increased the extrusion rate. First 10 layers or so were somewhat ok, but the rest delaminated instantly.

I then opened a brand new spool of PLA, thinking that the old spool had moisture issues. Cranked the temp to max, 210°C, added 5°C to the bed and applied a strong shot of spray glue. This time the print actually got done, but the parts where Cura's tree support was supposed to be supporting, the layers seem to come apart. The rest of the print was somewhat ok, though not great.

Current considerations

• Maybe I attempted too much at the same time. I may try swapping the nozzle back and only deal with the plate and heatbreak.
• The heat break may be install wrong. The nozzle was screwed in all the way, loosened a few turns, then the heat break was screwed in all the way. The nozzled was then tightened. No heating was done. I may try giving the heat break a few turns before installing the old nozzle again.
• Should I have heated hotend before tightening the nozzle?

Looking to maybe upgrade my kid's creality cr6-se, so we can move into the more exotic materials.

It appears that I have two options for an all metal hotend, but I can't find any comparisons. Not besides a reddit post from 2020 stating that the Prima Creator is a knock off.

So have anybody tried one or both and care to speak about the experience?

UPDATE:

Never before have I seen an entire maker community go "WTF are you doing you MANIAC! Just frigging buy it instead". I'm impressed :-) Normally I have to solicit such a strong response, this was pure ignorance.

I don't know whether we'll go forward with the 3d-printing part of this project anymore. If we do, I do hear you on the PETG, and it's not out of the running anymore. I may take the project on in a much smaller scale, on my own dime, so I can still try out some exotic materials (ie not pla).

In response to the cost per wand. I've found mailbox red TPU72d from kungfuflex for about 43USD per kg. I made a mock-up of the wand with 2mm walls, and at 220mm length it comes out to about 54g per wand. That's about 2.5USD - if nothing goes wrong and I don't waste a spool by printing unattended.

I think there's still something to be said about being able to form the wand to fit snug on the specific flashlight. Maybe the solution will be purchasing wand attachments and making an adapter for them.

ORIGINAL POST:

I'm designing a wand attachment for a flashlight. The wand attachment will be about 170-200mm long, slightly cone shaped, and fit securely onto a given flashlight. When attached to the flashlight and the flashlight is turned on, the flashlight will illuminate the wand giving of a red glow.

The purpose of this is to use the wand for directing traffic at night. Don't worry, we're licensed to do so and typically asked by the police to do it.

See the picture for an idea of what I'm trying to explain. Disregard the tape and the fact that it's white PLA. The white PLA is what I had open and the flashlight is not the same as will be used with the final device.

The attachment will be produced in 70-150 copies and handed out to volunteers of my national guard company. The final attachment must therefore be able to take a beating, ie scratches, impacts, temperatures and various rough handling.

I have at my disposal a pool of +10 Cr6-se, one ultimaker s5 and one stratasys uprint se plus.

I'm considering a couple of material choices. TPU or PETG in a couple of the cr6s or PC in ultimaker. The uprint strictly uses some proprietary ABS spools, and all the filament I've got for that is ivory white. A buddy of mine has offered to print a release candidate in flexible tough resin. But I don't think that he has any idea about the scale of the project. So it really narrows down to TPU, PETG or PC. If I'm going to make this rigid I'm going to go for PC, for durability, or TPU for flexibility and durability.

I've found a source for PC in transparent and white and TPU (72d, 95a and 98a) in transparent, red or white.

I like the TPU72d in red, but is it the right material? I can't find anything on the translucency of opaque TPU. In the picture it's just 1 mm of opaque white PLA, but what about 2 or 3 mm of TPU? Should I just drop the illusions of red opaque TPU and print in clear PC and spray a coat of red paint on the inside? Or clear TPU?

WYD?

The pic may not be nsfw ... but the words uttered at the time certainly were!

As we all know correlation equals causation, and you can always extrapolate from a trend seen in a single research project.

Throwaway any and all ideas you have from that scientific theory course you had to take in university.

The video shows brains, but no blood.

10000 brains in individual buckets in a basement. The brains were obtained without consent and now poses an ethical dilemma.