Because of over and under-extrusion issues, I converted my prusa mini to an e3d v6. It works a lot better now, but with some prints (and a heat creep test print I designed) I still get very inconsistent extrusion. My guess is the fan on the prusa mini doesn't provide enough airflow. That should result in the heat sink being warm. I used my usb FLIR camera to make photos but the emissivity of metals is low so I thought, let's put a bit of paint on the heat sink to make the results accurate. See attached for the results. I only painted the edges of the heat sink, and those show as hotter than the horizontal part so I guess it is working. But making a thermal photo of the printer when it's off shows the whole thing at room temperature, so maybe the emissivity is corrected for somehow by my infrared camera, maybe measuring at multiple frequencies? I can't make sense of it. Now that I think of it, the pictures were taken at 170c for the hot end and the images show about 154 so that's that. What I'm wondering is, how can I better measure temperature here? And what should the temp of the heat sink be? Also, I don't want to put the original v6 fan on it because that'll be noisier. I'm thinking of switching to a lite 6 and keeping the original fan. (Also a bonus picture of the heated bed)
Can't help with the temp measurement other than get one of these cheapo ones that look like a gun and cast a laser beam. Maybe aim at other items where you know the temp to check the readings emissivity, but regardless you can compare the same heat source with both devices. Long ago I found that the V6 fan shroud could be fitted upside down and one way was blocking the air flow, E3D etc. didn't believe this but it plain to see when you fit it. This could restrict the air floe as could misaligned it with respect to the heat sink. Not sure if the shroud is the same but worth a check. Could also be a duff fan or the supply voltage could be low etc. lots of possibilities.
