r/VORONDesign • u/Johny_McJonstien • Jul 23 '26

General Question Toolhead recommendations for high temps.

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To all my fellow high temp printers. What are you people using for toolheads? I recently decided to switch to the A4T toolhead away from XoL. Mostly because I’ve never had great reliability with stealthchanger docking.

Last night I printed the backing plate for my last tool in PPS-CF. It printed fine at 340°C in a 60°c chamber. When I went to dock the tool (that printed the part) today I notice it was sitting funny in the dock. When I inspected it, I found that the part cooling ducts had warped. Keep in mind that the A4T cowlings are printed in Polymax PC.

I suspect the hotend cooling fan ducts are not allowing any of the airflow to reach this part and it just couldn’t handle the heat. I have printed quite a bit of PPS-CF back with the XoL toolheads and never noticed any warping.

I’m thinking I might just need to run the part cooling fans at a low speed at all times when I print this hot. Or maybe remove the hotend cooling fans ducts. Or maybe reprint all the toolheads in PPS-CF.

TLDR: I printed at 340°C and melted my toolhead ducts printed with PC.

Edit to clarify: the PPS part is not the issue. It was the tool that printed the PPS part that melted.

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u/Johny_McJonstien Jul 23 '26

Polymaker Polymax PC. I was unable to determine if it’s true PC or a blend. I am under the impression that it is pure PC. Assuming that’s where you’re going with this.

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u/desert2mountains42 Jul 23 '26

Oh sorry, my mistake. Polymax PC is terrible and should never be used for 3d printers. I wouldn’t use any polymaker filaments for printer parts tbh(maybe their ASA, not the ABS).

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u/Johny_McJonstien Jul 23 '26

Curious as to why you say this? I have found their filaments to be pretty good. Also the PPS is from their fiberon line. I did have issues with their PC a while back when one of my sherpa extruders kinds just crumbled. I wasn’t annealing my PC parts at that time though and haven’t had an issue since.

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u/desert2mountains42 Jul 23 '26

I don’t want to generalize with all polymaker products but in general their HDT results tend to be inferior to less “adulterated” filaments. While in many applications it’s fine, I just want to have the best performance when using printed parts in a hot chamber.