Abrasive filaments, such as carbon fibre filled, will cause rapid wear out and quickly damage a standard brass nozzle, that will eventually lead to very poor prints. By printing just 250g of filament with a brass nozzle, it will need replacing. To combat this E3D have developed a new wear resistant nozzle that eliminates these problems. Even after extended printing with abrasive materials these new hardened nozzles will not wear out.
Volcano
The Volcano nozzles pack a punch when printing at fast speeds and huge layer heights. Volcano brass nozzles are perfectly crafted for fast 3D printing when using the E3D Volcano heater block. The Volcano nozzles have been specially designed, with a custom internal geometry to maximise filament output. They have a super long heated melt zone, for the ridiculously high filament melt speeds. The brass nozzle tips are individually sized for optimum trace flattening.
Steel Hardened
With the hardened nozzle E3D have changed the standard nozzle from brass to a carefully chosen steel, they are then post processed using a combination of chemical and thermal treatments. These processes combined result in a super hardened wear free nozzle.
Buying a hardened nozzle may be a big upfront investment, but savings would be seen from printing just a single spool of abrasive filament, which would normally require multiple nozzle changes. Time and hassle is also saved as you will no longer have to keep replacing worn out nozzles.
The treatments applied to these nozzles do cause them to have a dark uneven coloration, this is nothing to be concerned about, and is perfectly normal. There will be some residue left on the nozzle, even after the pre-applied cleaning process, this will be flushed through after printing a few millimetres of filament.
John Bethwaite
Does what it says on the tin. it is what it is.