10 Hotends for your 3D Printer

Hotends of all kinds, Great and diverse options for your upgrade

Want to upgrade your hotend or just looking to see some of the offerings on the market right now here is a easy to digest list of some hotends that could allow your printers to print with new materials in multiple colours and with materials. Upgrading your hotend is one of the best ways to expand the capabilities of your machine

Hexagon Hotend

All Metal Hexagon Hotend

The all metal hexagon hotend manufactured by Reprapdiscount is an all metal hotend that comes with the lulzbot line of printers, but can also be purchased separately to add to almost any printer. With its all metal design it’s capable of maintaining pointing temperatures up to 300 degrees. So it’s capable of printing high temp materials like Nylon and Poly-carbonate. The Hexagon Hotend is also really good if you want to keep your X carriage weight down because it own weighs 25g and it’s boden compatible. It’s compatible with both 1.75mm and 2.85mm filament.

Key Features:

All Metal
Light
High temperature

J Head

The Jhead hotend is another light hotend. It has a PEEK tube so can only reach a max temp of 247 Degrees. The hotend is heated using a resistor so there is no need to insulate the heater block as is common on some other hotends. This is another great candidate for boden system giving you a thin hotend allowing you increase X printing volume. It’s also 13mm shorter than a standard MK6 Hotend so giving you additional Z volume just by changing the hotend to a Jhead.

Key Features:

Short filament path
Light weight

E3D V6

The E3D V6 is one of the most widely used and cloned hotends on the market. It has a great range of materials with a max temp of 300 degrees. It’s also one of the most cloned printers on the market giving you low cost options as well as mounts for every printer under the sun. One of the best things about the V6 is its high quality construction and comparability with the rest of the E3D product ecosystem. You will be seeing more of that on the rest of this list

Key Features:

All Metal
Wide compatibility
High temperature

E3D Upgrade: Volcano

**E3D Volcano heater block Source: E3D**

The Volano heater block is for those who want to print big and fast. The larger heater block compatible with the V6 has a longer filament path allows you to print faster with larger diameter nozzles for big prints. So if you’re building a crazy large scale machine to print your next cosplay the titan upgrade is something you will want to consider.

Key Features:

All Metal
Fast printing
High temperature

E3D Titan Aero

The Titan Aero is a great example of the inter-connectivity of the E3D ecosystem it’s all the best parts of the E3D family in one compact package. The Areo contains both the great heating core and the titan extruder with a perfectly machined heat-sink all in one. The compact and Rigid design is great to withstand a hotend crash. The shorter filament path also makes it better to print flexibles. You can Also slap on a volcano heater block if you’re a crazy person.

Key Features:

All Metal
Compact
High temperature

E3D Lite6

Not as full featured as the V6 but still a great option if you’re looking to get genuine E3D. The Lite 6 is not all metal so you can’t hit the high temperatures. But if you’re just into printing around 200 then it’s a great way to save some money. One of the great things that again is why buying E3D is a great option as you can change out parts and upgrade this to a full all metal V6 if you want to down the line.

Key Features:

Cost effective
Good entry level
Upgrades

E3D Cyclops

Now jumping into the stranger and more fun depending on your perspective. This is where the extrusion system but using two filament paths and one nozzle. Its got the same great construction and support as the rest of the E3D ecosystem. A this system allows you to add a second extruder to a printer you already own allowing you to not reduce the print volume and configuration of your printer. While giving you the ability to print in two materials or colours.

Key Features:

All Metal
Dual colour
High temperature

E3D Chimera

The brother of the Cyclops the Chimera allows you to do everything that they Cyclops but allows you to have two filament paths. So if you need to print filaments with different printing temperatures in a single print allowing you to print with multiple materials in a single print.

Key Features:

All Metal
Dual Material
High temperature

E3D Kraken

To end our great time in the E3D family we head to the Kracken, this hotend allows you to print with 4 inputs at different temperatures all in the same hotend. This is truly for the mad scientist among you who want to produce parts with multiple colours or even have extremely long prints moving to another filament path when you will run out on another nozzle. And yes this because this is an E3D hotend it’s modular so you can add 4 volcano heaters to this thing. You crazy crazy people.

Key Features:

All Metal
Quad material
High temperature
Mad Science points

Diamond Hotend

Now if you were really into the idea of multiple filament from the last three hotends we took a look but want to mix the diamond hotend is something to take a look at. The diamond hotend combines three individual filament paths into a single nozzle and allows for the changing of flow between all three on the fly giving you the option of multiple colours but also allows for multiple filaments to enter the nozzle at once allowing you to mix colours and do gradients. If this is something you are interested in but don’t want to buy into the E3D ecosystem then the diamond hotend is one of your only options.

Key Features:

All Metal
Colour mixing
High temperature

Ubis 13s

The Ubis 13s is the main hotend for the printrbot line so if you get any of their printers you will get this hotend. Because of its small thin design; which is made possible by its very small Nichrome heater. It’s also good at getting the max print volume on smaller machines. It can go up to 270 degrees so you can print ABS but not some of the very exotic high temp filaments. It’s less transferable to other pritner than a lot of other printers on this list but because its so small it’s really good if you’re building a smaller printer but want to get as much build volume as possible.