MakerGear Forum

Curious what are the largest nozzle tips for various machines out there running either 1.75mm or 3mm diameter filament? does the filament diameter even matter regarding the nozzle tip, meaning can you push more 3mm filament out in a given minute of time versus 1.75mm filament? not sure how all this backpressure works out. most interested in running Ninjaflex.

the filament dia wont have any effect on print speed on any normal printer. the stepper on the extruder is capable of pushing the filament as fast as you could want to print. only in extreme circumstances would 3mm maybe be helpful like on a really large printer with say a 1mm nozzle or bigger. i could see it maybe helping there but ninjaflex has to print slow anyway. the normal size nozzle that almost every printer runs by default is .4mm. makergear goes just a hair smaller at .35mm i have used both and i saw no difference between the two.

If anything, 1.75 can print faster since it's easier to heat throughout. The largest nozzle I ran was a 0.75mm, and that's just ridiculous. The filament shoots out like a hose...

Here's a video of a 0.66mm nozzle printing 0.5mm layers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGJska4xnyw . This is 3mm PLA.

Anyone who's run a Greg's extruder knows how much filament that's pushing based on how fast that gear is spinning...

why even have 3mm filament?

and is it normally the extruded layer is larger or smaller than the nozzle diameter? how do you get a larger layer from a smaller nozzle? like 0.5mm extrusion from a 0.4mm nozzle?

3mm tends to be older printers. Most but not all have moved to 1.75. As for the width, if you want it wider you just exteude more filament. Think about a caulk gun for a min. If your moving 1" per sec you can go from a bead tue width of the cut tip or if you really start squeezing the trigger you can put out a big fat bead.

The thing that is exceedingly difficult to do is get an extruded filament width NARROWER than the hole in the nozzle. The threadline tends to break into bits (kind of like droplets from a faucet) rather than go any narrower. So with an 0.35 mm nozzle, typical extrusion WIDTH is about 0.40 to 0.45 mm. You'll start having problem if you go any narrower than 0.35 mm wide.

Layer THICKNESS is a separate issue. But, again, you will run into limitations if you try to go to a layer height that is too high --- the filament will push out to the sides rather than stack tall. With the MG 0.35 mm nozzle, the "sweet spot" is about 0.2 mm thick and about 0.42 mm wide. 0.1 mm thick works well, too, and MG has printed down to 0.02 mm layer thickness (20 microns), but that takes some VERY fine tuning, especially around controlling retraction, coast, etc., to avoid buildup on the nozzle, blobs, etc.

Others have nice pretty pictures and diagrams they can post here or cross-ref to previous topics.....
Dale