My hotend-socks should be arriving in a couple of days. I know the first thing I'm going to want to do is to ramp the fan up. To stopping living in fear of thermal runaway. So can anyone warn me what problems to look out for with high part-fan levels?
Fans on high can still cause thermal runaway even with a sock, so make sure to experiment. It may also cause runaway on the bed, rather than the hotend. Other issues with high fans though is that you can accidentally cool one side seriously fast, especially if the air flow hits a flat wall of the print and is forced downwards, and have it peel off the bed. Make sure your fans are well directed at the tip of the hot end.
Has any one got one yet, how does it help.. As said how does the fan (and the heat sink fan) get effected by it? I guess any personal reviews and pointers would be great! GBR1
I hope to get mine tomorrow The idea is that it acts as an insulator, keeping the heat in the block while fans can blow harder without cooling the block
I've fitted mine. Impressed with the quality of the moulding and fit. Warm up seems a little quicker, probably best to redo your PID tuning too. Filament does occasionally stick to the sock but not as easily as to the block. I think I need to readjust my wiper as it doesn't seem to wipe as well as before I fitted it. Not a big problem though. I've not experimented with increased fan cooling yet.
Should get mine tomorrow too. Good point about the wiper; guess it might scrape / push it more than it did previously. Wondering if the hot-end should be pristine before fitting the sock - not sure if it's a good idea cooking bits of plastic residue inside it...?
I've had mine on for over a week and about 10 prints. Wiper seems better with it, before the wiper often just pushed the extruded filament up so it got stuck on the underside of the heatblock. now any filament in contact with the sock just comes off. Temps seem more stable, I am now running on almost a flat line in octoprints temp view, not upped fan speed yet though Yes I'd clean it up, I used a brass brush on a mini drill (like dremel) on a low speed and very gently around the nozzle opening but harder around the rest of the heat block when it was warm, cleaned mine up like new. Yes rerun pid, my values were quite different after fitting the sock
Good point @Jasons_BigBox - I'll start by redoing the PID ! I think it's traditional on Bigbox that the fan sort of creeps up in 5% increments, as far as I know basically because of the thermal runaway risk. At the same time, after a couple of layers without fan, perhaps it would be wrong to go up to 60% on layer 3 because of the effect it might have on the first layer which a) might still be bedding in and b) is close enough to catch the full force of the blast c) because it'll cool the bed itself ?
depending on material, I set my fan to be off for 1-3 layers, and then turn up to 40%, than 60% at layer 10-15, than 100% at layer 15-30. I have two 50mm blower fans though, so the output is fierce.
I can (next time I am near the printer) but I really don't know what use they would be, PID calibration is very specific to the printer (everything from how the E3D V6 was assembled, Heatsync compound or not, exact position of print cooling fan, sock or not, variances in heaters and PT100's, calibration of the PT100 amp, room temp, moon phase and the colour of underpants worn by the operator when initiating the PID tuning sequence has an effect)
Got mine yesterday. Popped them on(very nice fit). Didn't adjust anything just started test printing with them. Have had nothing stick to them. Wipe works better as mentioned above. Temps get to operating level a bit faster not much. The temp does fluctuate a bit so PID tuning would be a good thing...but alas I don't know how to do that on the BigBox...any help here would be great! Oh and not that it should matter but I'm running the BigBox Dual done with Chase's mod.
Use this for PID tuning if you are using OctoPrint. Anothing wicked plugin from tohara: https://forum.e3d-online.com/index.php?threads/pid-tuning-plugin.1226/
I've the definite impression that, printing at much higher fan speeds, the dimensions of parts are changing. - inner diameters of holes are getting larger; - outer diameters of cylinders are getting smaller. Historically my Extrusion Multiplier (Simplify3D) has tended to be around 0.9 but now with Sock on I'm seriously thinking of increasing it. Anyone else notice the same?