Super hard nozzles - Test pilots

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Swordriff
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Re: Super hard nozzles - Test pilots

Post by Swordriff »

Yeah-yeah!

The ruby nozzles have been known for a long time now.
I run a business, and am not waiting around for all other makers to catch on and
mass produce these!

Me and Anders have been discussing this for more than a year now.
I also contributed to the (old, which I make) design.

My design now is a high tech, patent pending design which can print much cooler
than Anders design. AFAIK, they cannot manufacture my design in Chine.

Companies with machines and systems who could make it, are busy making other parts
and have not "woken up" to 3d printing parts yet,

He recently sent me a message that he improved his design and impied mine ( he said "yours", of course)
is outdated . Good!

I am selling the worlds smallest, biggest and fastest nozzles.
They willl soon also be the hardest.

Why he seems upset, and in the same sentence says my product is not good,
is completely beyond me. Why so afraid then?

We are all infringing 30-100 Stratasys patents. Take it from me, I have been in
many meetings with them.

A block with change of nozzles is nothing new. A nozzle with ruby has been known for 15 years.

If my nozzle does not work, well is that not good news for everyone else then? what are
you afraid of?

Take care guys ! When in doubt, scream and shout!

Stop copying others´s peopels` patents.

Sincerely

Carl
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Re: Super hard nozzles - Test pilots

Post by Neotko »

Men this is the kind of stuff that kills open source and sharing info with people.
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Re: Super hard nozzles - Test pilots

Post by gr5 »

Carl asked me to remove the ruby and saphire nozzles from my store. Done. I don't know if this is permanent or just long enough to let Anders version hit the stores. Secondly - I sold 4 so far. 4. That's about 1 per week. I mean I don't know if there is much of a market out there. Maybe there is but I sent emails to everyone who asked about it and none of them ordered one now that they know they cost more than $20.

Note that there was a ruby nozzle kickstarter long ago. So the idea has been out there for many months. Note that Carl has paid Anders quite well in the past. Note that this design is something like a year old now and it took both Carl and Daniel something like a year to get motivated enough to actually make these things (there's no good reason it should take that long -- it's about priorities and motivation).

Anyway for 99% of people you can tell them your idea and they won't steal it because they are too lazy. Not motivated. Not interested in starting a company. But be warned - Carl actually gets stuff built and sells it. So if you give Carl an idea there is a high probability that he is going to build the thing and sell it. Daniel also at 3dverkstan gets stuff done and built. Carl and Daniel are business people. So remember that when you talk to either of them!

I don't know if there was some agreement regarding the ruby nozzles between Carl and Anders or not.

Anyway I don't think Carl cares much about whether he sells ruby nozzles or not. He's got another product that he thinks is better. We'll see. So if someone asks him real real nice he might just stop making them. Or at least stop all sales for a little while. But I think competition is good for everyone. It helps motivate.

I certainly don't care much one way or the other. I don't make much money on my store. I make 4X more per hour if I do my normal contracting job (I get paid by the hour). So effectively every hour I work on my store I lose money. But that's still more than I make answering questions in the forum, lol! Computer programming is hard work and the store is easy. Mainly I want to help people in USA get products faster. If someone wants to take my whole business off my hands that's fine also. However that could change I suppose. My store might suddenly make some "real" money some day.

And I'm happy to be a USA reseller for the Olsson Ruby also. Just don't expect me to sell more than a few dozen as I don't think the demand is there yet.
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Re: Super hard nozzles - Test pilots

Post by Neotko »

Gr5 respectfully. What does has do to with this? You are a reseller nothing else.
Swordriff
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Re: Super hard nozzles - Test pilots

Post by Swordriff »

Anders Olsson
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Re: Super hard nozzles - Test pilots

Post by Anders Olsson »

My design now is a high tech, patent pending design which can print much cooler
than Anders design.
You are not going to print much cooler than a brass nozzle at normal speeds, and I print at the same temperatures with ruby as with brass (with my latest design, not the prototypes).
There are actually no advantages with going much colder, you need that heat to get good layer adhesion.
AFAIK, they cannot manufacture my design in Chine.
Of course they can, they can do anything in China, but if you want acceptable quality you might as well make them in Europe.
We are all infringing 30-100 Stratasys patents.
Any links?
A nozzle with ruby has been known for 15 years.
Much longer than that actually, have look at water jet nozzles.
If my nozzle does not work, well is that not good news for everyone else then? what are
you afraid of?
Well, the problem is that the first ruby/sapphire nozzles really HAS to work and perform, or the market will loose trust in these kind of nozzles.
And as far as I can see those nozzles has the same 0.5 mm sapphire that we already tested and which DID NOT have acceptable performance according to our rather rigorous tests (?)

gr5:s comment is actually really important here, the market does not yet exist and for there to be a market the first products at the market have to show good performance and reliability.

Now, other recent products from 3DSolex appears not to have gone through the rigorous testing they would have needed. For example the Matchless block which had lots if issues with leaking (for rather obvious reasons to me) and the extra large nozzles which don't melt the plastic through and extrude only 50% of the promised rates.

That is why I was a bit worried to see a competing product which I have never even heard anyone testing and which appears to be based on a design that did not work well according to my tests.

One more thing, in general I prefer cooperation, making things non-patentable by publishing them and so on.
It this case I unfortunately was forced to select side though, which is something that was a result of the Olsson-block going large scale.
Certain people could not keep quality/deliveries which eventually put certain companies in big trouble. I am not blaming anyone for that, it was to a large extent due to some unfortunate decisions earlier on.
However in the end certain companies decided who to work with and who not to work with, and I had to select side at that point to keep my credibility.
Swordriff wrote:
You can not reliably fix a jewel that way, that is why you don't see those nozzles being used anywhere. (We already had experts trying to fix the ruby like that)
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Re: Super hard nozzles - Test pilots

Post by gr5 »

Just to clarify - I think Carl's patent has nothing to do with ruby or sapphire nozzles and instead is related to a newer secret nozzle. But I could be wrong.

And it's *that* nozzle, the secret nozzle, that "can't be made in china". Which I translate to meaning, "is unlikely to show up at 1/4 the cost on ebay from sellers in Asia". But yeah - of course anything that can be made one one country can be made anywhere.
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Re: Super hard nozzles - Test pilots

Post by Swordriff »

my point is : I am not copying any design wrgt the ruby nozzle from Anders.
It is well known before his invention of the ruby nozzle.
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Re: Super hard nozzles - Test pilots

Post by Swordriff »

just to clarify; my 1.5mm nozzle puts out 6-10 times more plastic than a "regular" 1.5mm nozzle. A regular tries to print a toothpick.
Drill out a nozzle to 1.5 and try it yourself.

Why are you hitting me on my quality issues, I have them all the time and I solve them. No secret.
I ship new products.

This is how it is to push boundaries.

You launch your product, then I launch mine, maybe, but dont wait another year. Lets hope not another kickstarter comes up...
I think people will be able to choose the right product. My leaking nozzle will not destroy your invention. Dont worry. Its like cars,
people know what is good.
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Re: Super hard nozzles - Test pilots

Post by Swordriff »

have you all gone mad?????

too much sangria anyone?

one year after its in kickstarter I sell some ruby nozzles?

what about it?

did someone patent it?? I could have sold these in january.

please help
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Re: Super hard nozzles - Test pilots

Post by Anders Olsson »

Swordriff wrote:just to clarify; my 1.5mm nozzle puts out 6-10 times more plastic than a "regular" 1.5mm nozzle.
Again, any videos or other proof of that?
Swordriff wrote: Why are you hitting me on my quality issues, I have them all the time and I solve them. No secret.
I ship new products.

This is how it is to push boundaries.

You launch your product, then I launch mine, maybe, but dont wait another year. Lets hope not another kickstarter comes up...
I think people will be able to choose the right product. My leaking nozzle will not destroy your invention. Dont worry. Its like cars,
people know what is good.
Well, launching a product based on a design already proven not to be good (on this public forum) is not exactly pushing any technical boundaries in my mind at least. Charging people for a product which is publicly known not to work very well might push the customers patience though.. :-)
It is hard for me to interpret such move as anything but an (unintentional?) attempt to kill the reputation for jewel-based nozzles?

I mean, if a bunch of reviewers get hold of those nozzles that gr5 sold and give them mediocre reviews, that might completely kill the small market there is for jewel-based nozzles at the moment, effectively removing ruby/sapphire nozzles from the market for the years to come.
That would be very unfortunate considering the potential these nozzles have both for regular use but in particular for printing extreme materials, and a shame considering how much time and effort people here have put on testing these things.

Similar things has happened before, look at the J-hotend for example which was more or less killed when the market was flooded by crappy Chinese clones of it.

In general, selling products that are not properly tested as if they were ready products, expecting the customers to sacrifice time to beta-test them without being aware that they are beta-testers, and then expecting the customers to happily wait for a replacement when the first one failed, that is not my preferred way of doing business at least. But it is of course up to each and everyone to decide how they want to do business.

And regarding business, I am not interested in making quick money on premature products and therefore I rather let things take a bit more time and test things properly than starting to sell products that are not ready for the market.
I am most likely not going to make any money on the ruby nozzles anytime soon but it does not bother me.
For me, the ruby nozzle is just an essential tool for printing interesting materials (and that is most likely much more profitable for me than selling ruby nozzles).

Talking about pushing (technical) boundaries by the way, I printed a boron carbide blade the other day for a research facility in the US.
It is a crucial part of a new instrument, but no one has managed to manufacture these blades with high enough quality yet, even though they have been putting lots of effort for a year now.
2016-12-02-9728.jpg
The one I printed came out much better than anything made before, but was still just within the required tolerances, with a variation in thickness of 0.05 mm over it's length of 200 mm. I certainly could not have done that with anything else than the ruby nozzle and those small improvements in performance on the lastest version certainly helped giving that edge that was needed.

That is what pushing boundaries is about in my mind! :-)
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Re: Super hard nozzles - Test pilots

Post by danilius »

This is a very fascinating thread, especially after I cam across this video on youtube:

They struggled with nylon (OK, I use that a lot, and it has a very steep learning curve), but the single biggest fail was carbon fibre. Now this is fascinating, because many of the parts I design and test are to be used in an aggressive environment, i.e. the users are going to bang them around. So I'm always after tougher materials.

I wanted a ruby nozzle to print carbon fibre, but the more I read and watch about the material, the less convinced I am that it offers any real benefits over PLA, let alone PETG.

Now I see all of this I'm thinking of getting a steel nozzle, testing CF and then probably dumping it because it is considerably more expensive that PETG.

So it seems that the market for a ruby nozzle is going to be pretty small, unless the price of metal-filled filaments come down in a big way, which is unlikely.

Then you have the whole open-source issue. We are still figuring out the rules for all this. What is and is not acceptable? How does one pay back the original inventor or whatever? Is it a viable economic model? It is inevitable that as this Economy 2.0 evolves, there will be some issues like this cropping up. It's hard to point a finger anywhere and say "He's the baddie". Discussing this i the open like this can only help figure out how one handles all these issues, so this whole discussion is really vital to the success of open hardware.

Lastly, kickstarter. Having seen so many horror stories from kickstarter, I would never support one. I bought my wife a Pebble watch a few months ago, and look what happened now. Next time, I will buy her a major brand product, because they are unlikely to sell out without a second's warning. Sure, Samsung messed up the Note 7, but they at least have deep pockets to compensate the buyer with.
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Re: Super hard nozzles - Test pilots

Post by Anders Olsson »

I think most people use carbon fiber filament, or any of the other composite filaments, just for the look of it.
While I am generally not very impressed by PETG-plastics, I have to say that the matte slightly glittering surface that XT-CF20 can give is rather attractive. It is not the nicest material to work with though.

The only proper reason to use XT-CF20 over other plastics from a mechanical point of view is if you want more rigid objects.
When I say more rigid, I mean that they flex less under a certain load, not that they can take more load before they break.
If you are for example printing frame for a drone, reduced flexing might be interesting while the maximum load the material can take before it breaks is less important (since it will break anyway when you crash it :-) )

Regarding the market for a ruby nozzle, I honestly have no idea how many one can sell. I have been using them for more than a year now and I would not go back to brass just because there is no advantage with brass as I can see it, but the ruby has the advantage of consistent performance no matter what you print with it.
Whether it will be a niche product or whether it will be much more widespread is difficult to tell though.
The most important and unpredictable factor, as for many other products, is not how many actually needs one, but how many just "wants one".

I could not agree more about kickstarter by the way, there are so many horrible stories and I can not understand why people keep funding things.
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Re: Super hard nozzles - Test pilots

Post by danilius »

Anders Olsson wrote:I think most people use carbon fiber filament, or any of the other composite filaments, just for the look of it.
While I am generally not very impressed by PETG-plastics, I have to say that the matte slightly glittering surface that XT-CF20 can give is rather attractive. It is not the nicest material to work with though.
PETG has one advantage over PLA or ABS - it's interlayer adhesion is so good, it looks just like glass when you break it. Delamination is never an issue with properly printed PETG. Also, if you dry your PETG first (I use a fruit dryer at 45-50 degrees for four hours or so) then stringing will become much less of an issue. There are several more things you an do such as reducing retracts to the barest minimum.
Anders Olsson wrote: The only proper reason to use XT-CF20 over other plastics from a mechanical point of view is if you want more rigid objects.
In my experience, the only materials stronger than PETG are Nylon (that stuff is insane, and I love it) and Polycarbonate (more hassle than it's worth unless you absolutely must have it).
Anders Olsson wrote: Regarding the market for a ruby nozzle, I honestly have no idea how many one can sell. I have been using them for more than a year now and I would not go back to brass just because there is no advantage with brass as I can see it, but the ruby has the advantage of consistent performance no matter what you print with it.
Whether it will be a niche product or whether it will be much more widespread is difficult to tell though.
The most important and unpredictable factor, as for many other products, is not how many actually needs one, but how many just "wants one".
Yup, there you have a great point. I probably want one just because I like the idea of it, and it's cool. My kids were really upset when I broke the one you gave me, so I think they will be overjoyed when I finally buy one. I think I will run off the CF filament I have then just use it as a regular nozzle. Do I need it? No. Do I want one. Definitely. So you might be on to a good thing.
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Re: Super hard nozzles - Test pilots

Post by Neotko »

You guys should really test greentec pla. Is so amazing, it flex more than pla but is so difficult to break. Also it has a much more pretty look than pla (matte). Only downside is that it needs hairspray/glue/something to avoid warping on the bed. To remove it I made a trick using window washer droplets and I can take the print at 40C without any deformation since the greentec can resist up to 110C.
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