Genuine E3D Hardened Steel Nozzle V6 (1.75mm) 0.40mm (V6-NOZZLE-HS-175-400)

Really kind of redundant

Quite a bit more than brass but well worth it. Lasts much longer and doesnt clog like the brass ones do.

Being a machinist for 45 years I have the resources of a hardness tester where I work. I decided to test two of these nozzles for hardness. I had to flip them on there side in order to test a flat surface. I checked all sides of the hex. 60hrc or Rockwell was the result. By comparison a hand file would be around 60hrc or a good pocket knife. Not sure what kind of steel they use or the heat treating process they use. Hope this helps answer the hardness question.

Originally got this to print glow-in-the-dark filament. Initially it appeared to be causing jams, but after some troubleshooting I noticed that the filament was getting caught in a step in the middle of my heatbreak shortly after installing the nozzle, what a wild coincidence. After replacing with a new heatbreak, the nozzle prints great. I understand as a general rule, you should print at slightly higher temperature with a steel nozzle, but I noticed in my case that isnt necessary.. maybe because Im using the silicone sock? YMMV, Ill probably just leave this nozzle installed forever.

PLA and PETG sticks to the nozzle enough that buildup will regularly fail prints after about a couple of hours. Z height is set with feeler shims and mesh bed leveling is turned on. E steps calibrated ~ +- 0.05mm over 200mm with the nozzle on, yet flow rate needs to be set at 78% to get ~0.4mm line width. Probably an improperly sized nozzle but I have no way of testing that. Swapped it out for a Microswiss A2 nozzle, reset Z height and line width is now bang on +- 0.02mm at 100% flow rate. This was on a E3D V6 hotend with Bondtech extruder gears. Pictured is the third attempt at printing the bear upgrade extruder with PETG before finally giving up and getting the Microswiss nozzle. It could be something simple but I couldnt figure it out and when the replacement nozzle just worked beautifully right out of the box Im more than a little miffed.

I used to go through copper nozzles like mad. This hardened steel nozzle might be more pricey, but I havent had to worry about it as a point of failure since installing it. Highly recommended, especially if youre printing composites and carbon fiber materials.

This is the second time i have bought this tip. I print a lot of glow in the dark and this one holds up. I only bought a second one because i could not get the first one unclogged and needed to keep printing an order. The clogging had nothing to do with the nozzle but I didn’t have the patience to wait it out. Now I have a spare. Totally recommend.

Updated 12/2/2020 - 0400 OK, lets review. Stringing, clogs, jams, etc. Why? Well, lets be realistic. What do people tell you to do when you have stringy / blobby prints? Dial back your temps, dial up retraction. Right? That sucks. Dont do those things. Dial up your temps. Odds are with PETG youre about 15c too low from stock Prusa Slicer or Slic3r PET settings. THERMAL RUNAWAY (?) Kapton tape is your friend! You could order E3D silicone socks for a prettier solution, but a bandaid-sized strip of kapton tape wrapped around the heat-block (ABOVE the nozzle). Remove the extruder/nozzle fans, the nozzle fan shroud, wrap tape, attach shroud and fans. BOOM done. This protects the thermistor from the nozzle fan blowing across it. The thermistor needs to read the temps of the hot-end, not the nozzle fan! So this should help stabilize your temps, preventing the nozzle fan from hitting it or allowing the hot-end to recover its temps while the nozzle fan goes. Next, dial up retraction. Do you get a jam? Heres what I did. Follow the guide to replace your PTFE insert on Prusas site, only dont replace it. The inner diameter is probably something like 1.8 to 2.1mm. Well, those jams I measured as wide as 2.5mm. So what did I do? I found a drill bit, ran it through my tube, bored out the inner diameter to 2.75mm. I also did a better job of chamfering out the top-end of the PTFE. No more jams, up to about 15mm of retraction length. Perfect! I only need around 5-10 right? Well, theres more to consider. If your nozzle doesnt have a special coating on it, at hotter-than normal temps, PLA and PET/G will stick to the nozzle, or ooze. Not necessarily but possibly both! So even if you dial up retraction length and speed, even if you bore your PTFE insert out, even if you take some tension off of your gearbox screw, and even if your filament is fully dehydrated after 20+ hours at 140(f) some filaments, shiny PLA in particular, will still string all to hell. So will some of the PET/G filaments, from various brands. Caveat. Hardened Steel, whyd you install it? To print plain old shiny PLA and PETG? No! We install this noise so we can print CF PLA and CF PETG, GF Nylon, Glow in the Dark PLA, Color Change, last but certainly not least, metal fill PLA. This stuff EATS brass nozzles, right? Funny story, most of these additive filaments wont be stringy even printing at these higher temps. In-fact youll want to print at these higher temps to get strong layer adhesion and cleaner prints overall. So, something to consider! Use a hardened steel for what you bought it for! If you need to print regular PLA and PETG, consider rotating back and forth based on the need. Swap out back to brass when you need to print plain filaments. Switch back to this hardened steel nozzle when you need to print additive filaments like glow or metal fill etc. Boom. Are all of your problems solved? No! Will releasing tension off of the bearbox screw and upping your temps help fix moire? Maybe! This is my review. There are many like it but this one is mine. --------- Im running dual Prusa i3 Mk3s. One of them is completely stock, the other has custom PETG printed parts but otherwise, stock. Got a good seat on both nozzles and got some very good prints. Heres the problem: 1. Stringing, horrifying stringing. Ive tried retraction towers, benchies, I cant seem to be able to dial in settings for a variety of filaments to prevent stringing. Certain filaments have zero stringing, such as CF, Color Change, etc. Any plain old PLA, strings to all hell. 2. Clogs. Any Retraction Length over 2mm instantly clogs the nozzle when retracting often, regardless of retraction speed or nozzle temp. At higher temps it takes longer to clog, but it still clogs. Any help would be appreciated.

I bought my first one of these nozzles about 2 years ago, I am only just now buying a replacement for it and that is with tons of hours of print time under it. Great Nozzle, albeit do need to tweak the settings. On Brass for PLA I have been needing to hit about 220C vs the 200C with a brass nozzle, but considering how long it was before it seems the time to swap it out really serves to indicate the quality on these. Probably should have reviewed it sooner, but oh well.

Works great and I have been using it for about a month with no issues. Would buy another.