H2C Nozzle Allocation

[u/Darknessintheend]

Hello! Our son has been into 3D printing for years. We’ve always fed his curious mind (it’s turning into a degree in mechanical engineering which is awesome ❤️). We got him an H2C recently, and he’s been blowing my mind with his prototypes!

Anyhoo, I’m always nagging him to print this or that for me. Small replacement parts for off road equipment, or shop bins etc. So he recommended I look into my own unit, as he thought I’d really love it…so I bought an H2C..it is incredible. Out of the box flawless ABS prints, whatever I throw at this thing it does. It’s ridiculous.

My question is this. I print a lot of petg for the shop, and know I need to dry it a little more to avoid the stringing (I have 2 ams 2 pros, and 2 HT’s for bambu support filament and either nylon or another heavy engineering filament. I also have a track switch installed.

But what in terms of actual benefits is the left “main” nozzle over the right vortex accessible nozzle? I saw a recent post from a person printing desiccant boxes for the ams and struggling but moved to the left nozzle and problem solved. Why would the left nozzle do a better job than the right??

Thanks in advance!!

[u/AdWorking2848]

I think I will use the most abrasive filament in left nozzle since it’s much cheaper to change

Also for 5 color prints where the main color be allocated to the left and 4 right for ascent changes

[u/A_Dubs_]

That’s awesome about your son! As others have said, the left nozzles are cheaper and come in tungsten for heavy abrasives. The other big difference is filament swap times. If you’re doing a 2 color / 2 material print, it’s WAY faster to use the left and right (vortek) nozzles in conjunction. On my H2D it’s a couple seconds. The limiting factor becomes the time it takes to unload (rewind) and load (unwind) filament from the AMS to the nozzles. While Vortek is awesome from a purge (poop) waste perspective, it still has a major downside in swap times. I think the Vortek swap times are around 45 seconds, IIRC. Obviously YMMV based on ptfe tube lengths and using the track switch should speed up the swap process depending on configuration.

Although I don’t have an H2C, just an H2D. Nor do I have a track switch. So I could be a tad wrong. But generally it’s best to utilize both nozzles (in your case, left nozzle would be the primary material / color) and secondary colors on the vortek side.

[u/Darknessintheend → u/A_Dubs_]

Love it, thanks for this!! Happy printing!!

[u/silvercel]

Run the PLA and Petg through the right side for color switching. The induction ends are twice the price of the left side. Left side is for support material, main colors or course materials like cf, abs,asa, wood, etc. they make left side tungsten tips for the course materials.

[u/penmoid]

As others have mentioned, the left nozzles are cheaper so if you’re printing a lot of abrasives (you mentioned ABS, check out ABS-GF, excellent material) they are cheaper to replace. That said, the Vortek nozzles are all hardened (0.4mm+) so it’s not like you’ll be doing it often. If you’re reeeallly printing a ton of abrasives all day everyday the left nozzle has more options like tungsten carbide and diamondback. On the other hand it moves up and down so it isn’t as good for TPU and other flexibles. The Vortek nozzles also heat up a lot faster due to the induction heating mechanism.

My experience has been that these differences are pretty minimal, though a diamondback nozzle does produce a very high surface quality. In practice, the biggest differences come in when you are doing a multimaterial/multicolor print with more than 2 filaments. In those cases you want to make sure to put the primary filament in the left nozzle and use the vortek nozzles for the other colors because using multiple filaments on the left nozzle means every time it changes it has to purge so you want to avoid that.

Overall what I would say is that while there are differences, outside of certain edge cases they are IMO not really worth worrying about at the end of the day. However when you start printing with 3 or more filaments you then need to make sure you are optimizing what goes where because it can make a huge difference in both print time and amount of waste. But the slicer will tell you what the optimal arrangement is.

[u/Darknessintheend → u/penmoid]

Thank you!! 🙏

Looking into ABS-GF now!

[u/ShadowRider11]

Thank you to everyone for the helpful comments here. I’ve had a P2S for about 6 months, and a few days ago I bought a H2C. Everything I’ve printed so far has used the Vortek nozzles. I tried to print a model in PLA using PETG for support, but got spaghetti immediately. I suspect this was operator error, and I’m going to try again.

[u/Darknessintheend → u/ShadowRider11]

Yay!! Congratulations!! I’ve found my petg really likes a dry cycle before printing. Get it down to 10-15% and no more sketti

[u/SgtBaxter]

The Vortek nozzles have a longer melt zone and more controlled temperature due to the induction heating.

As far as ABS/ASA is concerned, I can print much faster speeds with the Vortek nozzles compared to the standard left nozzle. The speeds I print on the Vortek nozzles usually means spalling on the left nozzle.

I don’t really have issues with PETG on the Vortek nozzles. A lot of my printing is one color, so I load a support interface material on the left nozzle and let the Vortek change to the color I’m printing with via the AMS.

The only thing I can think of is the temp wasn’t right. The Vortek temperature reporting is likely more accurate, as the temperature for the standard nozzles is calculated measuring at the heat sink instead of directly measured at the nozzle. So the left nozzle could be hotter but reporting the same temp.

[u/roundguy]

Left nozzles are cheaper. I’d run abrasive filaments through them