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 HotendThe 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

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.
Key Features:
- Small
- Good support
- Efficient heater
Great breakdown of available extruders.
Thank you! We will add on to this list if we get comments on whats missing 🙂 Hopefully this will be the go to list when it comes to hotends for 3d printers
I am looking at getting the THC-01 hotend that is a 3 in 1 out different from the chimeara or Diamond. How does it compare.
Oh cool let us know how that one works 🙂
You are missing the Creality CR10 Hot end from Micro-Swiss.
https://store.micro-swiss.com/collections/creality-cr-10/products/all-metal-hotend-kit-for-cr-10?variant=3080823406621
Thats right we will add it tomorrow:) Wanna make it the big hotend list. maybe we should add on prices as well?
Thanks for putting the list together, glad I found the right spot and group of folks to start this hobby. Thank you for sharing.
This is a great list! I definitely think the addition of prices and links for the hotends would turn this into a highly bookmarked page. I am very interested in the “many to one” type of hotends. It seems to be a great way to upgrade your existing printer for multiple filaments in a print instead of going down the multiple extruder route.
I definitely bookmarked this page yesterday and came back today to re-read it. I enjoy reading lists like this. So educational! When I first started coming here I didn’t know the lingo or the names of parts so a lot of stuff went over my head! After a while I’ve gotten better and can take it all in now. Reading stuff like this is so helpful. Thanks for posting it! Now to make my Christmas list and add a couple of these!! haha
A number of different parts for a 3D printer, interesting.
Seems very E3D heavy. Look at Prometheus, DyzEND, and SeeMeCNC’s HE280 for additional offerings I can think of offhand.
very interestin to learn
I use the titan aero volcano mix, it is a good setup, BUT the bearings failed quite soon afterward, E3D was fast to send out replacements for it.
Thank you for this list it’s really helpful!
Thank you good info!
How about a review of clone hotends and how they compare to the original
Ditto Derek’s comment. Also links to products would be helpful!
That E3D Kraken looks beastly and badass, I like it a lot but I guess it’s not for beginers, btw every time I see some product called kraken I can’t help to imagine Liam Neeson saying “release the Kraken!”
Is the Titan aero any good? I mean it looks awesome, I’ve seen lots of clones and thought about getting one, but also see some poor results with, so may be needscalibration
Great gadgets to add to your 3D printer, liked this article !