I don’t print any abrasive materials at all. Pretty much only normal PLA and PETG.
I noticed, that my print quality gradually went down quite a bit, especially in the last few prints. I had a lot of stringing, weird blobs, and scarred surfaces.
Now, the print quality is as good as it should be!
They are dirt cheap. You can get a set of 10-15 generic ones, in different sizes, for only a few bucks. Don’t forget that they are consumables.
Yeah, 70 bucks buys a LOT of disposable ones though. It’s probably worth it at some point, but not at my amount of abrasive filament use.
Obligatory we already create a lot of waste 3d printing. Please keep that in mind.
If you need to replace a cheap nozzle after each medium-sized print with abrasive filament, then I’m thinking print quality will suffer towards the end of a larger print (like >250g, but definitely >1kg). Not having to replace nozzles mid-print makes the $70 nozzle seem like a better deal. Depending on what you print and how much you print, of course.
Yeah, you could get hundreds of cheap nozzles for $70. I’ve bought packs of 10 nozzles for 74 cents. That’s almost a thousand nozzles I could get instead of one $70 tungsten one. Or maybe “only” 800 nozzles if I factor in a pessimistic shipping cost too.
EDIT: Checked the price I paid and it was even cheaper than I remember. Edited my calculations.
The time and care required to changing the nozzle (unless you’ve got a good mod or fancy system) isn’t worth it IMO.
Quality > Quantity
And after a while, you can melt all those nozzles into an ingot of whatever it is made of and show off the weight to others.
Brass pot metal most likely. Don’t expect to be able to sell it for much though.
Might be neat to learn sand casting and make a huge commemorative nozzle trophy, or even better, a container for the future spent nozzles!
Or get it machined into new nozzles by a friend who added a CNC Lathe to their setup.