Reasons to move to REVO- convince me.

[Maurici]

So... I´ve seen all of the late Sanjay´s videos regarding the revo.

I´ve seen the big boys in team FDM are using Revo...

What is the deal with this nozzle? you guys really change nozzle PER PRINT to actually use it?

I do change the whole hot end (in about 3 minutes) every once in a while when I do print flexibles to use a PTFE lined heatbreak...

I normally use Knock off high flow nozzles (the 3 holed ones) across all my printers, and eventually I will swap 1 of them to assembly a hardened one for carbon filled parts or the likes.

Changing a nozzle is 2 minutes tops after pre-heating.

 

So... other than industrial environments where maybe every other print is printed in different material or for an optimized size of nozzle... why should I move to revo and upset my whole ecosystem of 5 V6 hot ends across all?

(not trying to start heated arguments here, I assume all of you will have a reason an I would love to hear it so I can balance it out on practical reasons rather than marketing BS).

 

Answers like "it looks cool AF sticking under my multi colour RGB´d stealthburner" are perfectly acceptable, but given my lack of aesthetic sense, will probably be automatically discarded... 

Edited March 16, 2023 by Maurici

[Penatr8tor]

I'm not convinced that it's anymore convenient than a Rapido with the following exceptions...

You can swap nozzles without tools.

The nozzles are all the same height so that when you change one out you don't need to adjust Z_Offset.

That being said... The nozzle wrench I printed removes nozzles just as quickly and... If I replace the nozzle with the same brand... I don't need to adjust Z-Offset either.

On the plus side... with a hotend that uses standard V6 nozzles... I can use any nozzle, Ruby, Diamond, Hardened, Plated, Brass, Steel, Tungsten, CHT... You get where I'm coming from.

In the end... for some it will be a great benefit to those that want to take advantage of a closed hotend ecosystem where everything works. For people like me that want to experiment... I like the Rapido. 

[smirk]

I have to say I'm not convinced either, there's a number of "horror" tales on the forum with people having the thermistor dying on them (<GRUMP>to me at that cost from a quality brand they shouldn't be using the "it's early days" excuse, irrespective of their aftercare, issues should be practicallly unheard of</GRUMP>). Yes easy nozzle changes would be "nice" but is "nice" worth  the quite frankly eye-water cost for what is at the end of the day a (disposable) consumable (wait not if you buy the unobtainium version for even more money). I've whacked too many nozzles into the bed and dinged them (through utter carelessness) to make me comfortable at the notion of destroying a significant chunk of cash.

I like the notion of not having to arse about with hot-tightening things and knowing you're not going to get a leak but (being a skin-flint) is that worth the money considering I can get that with TUN for less dosh or just being careful and using quality gear. I get the whole thing about quality costing (I believe in that) but at the same time the cost-benefit has to stil stack up and for me I don't see that with Revo (and I've thought/been tempted a lot). There's also the other matter that I don't think it's designed for pushing lots of filmament - it's not a speed demon.

Possibly over time as prices come down the cost-benefit might stack better....but that brings me to another niggle (which is nothing to do with revo) and that's the closed, patent-protected setup. This is more a "religious" thing, I understand why a company wants to protect "their stuff" and I personally believe the whole open-source stuff isn't really a great business model  but without openness there's no innovation and competition and without that the price will never come down.

Sorry, I seem to be particularly curmudgeonly today, clearly gone into GOM-overdirve after a long day dealing with work.....

 

[Penatr8tor]

17 minutes ago, smirk said:

Sorry, I seem to be particularly curmudgeonly today, clearly gone into GOM-overdirve after a long day dealing with work.....

Sad that we have to apologize for being honest. Everything that I design at work is under the scrutiny of my peers. Vendors making money off of their claims need to be held to a higher standard. The bottom line here is that the whole 3d printing community is made up of all kinds of hobbyists and people trying to cash in on the 3d printing phenomena. Aliexpress and Esty are full of them. The more established brands out there are still small potatoes compared to what's out there.

I'm making decisions based on a few simple principals like most people, how well does work, does it hold up, is it a good design, do I like the way it looks, etc. Additionally I want flexibility because, most of the time I learn thru iterations like, well that was a mistake.  So far the Rapido has been good to me. No clogs, heats up quick, flow is way more than I need. I like the cylindrical heater thermistor design, I like the thick and beefy silicone insulator. It's elegant and not in the way of anything. IMO What's not to like? Not much really.

[mvdveer]

7 hours ago, Maurici said:

So... other than industrial environments where maybe every other print is printed in different material or for an optimized size of nozzle... why should I move to revo and upset my whole ecosystem of 5 V6 hot ends across all?

You shouldn't. If it aint broke then don't fix it. I started my Revo journey with modified Creality printers (All converted to afterburner toolheads). They had wiring running from the hotend to the printer board and changing the hotend was more tedious. (Was too lazy to make up connectors at that stage. When I finally decided to bite the bullet and make connecor fittings for the heater and thermistor wires, the Revo hotend was released.

I liked how it looked, could clearly see the nozzle and if needed could change the nozzle with ease. Thus - all the Vorons I started building were fitted with these as they all have the nozzle in common. Guess it is like the "Apple - Mac" ecosystem. Once you decide to go down that rabbit hole it is difficult to turn back.

But I agree, just as easy to remove the assembled hotend.

2 hours ago, smirk said:

personally believe the whole open-source stuff isn't really a great business model  but without openness there's no innovation and competition and without that the price will never come down.

 

I am with you there. I think that is one of the reasons the Voron Development Team dumped Slice engineering.

[Maurici]

5 minutes ago, mvdveer said:

If it aint broke then don't fix it.

Preciselly in TeamFDM, this must be biggest BS ever said...

Aint broken don´t fix it in a place that printers get build for pleasure and modified for BDSM inclinations of most of the builders...

C´mon!!! 

 

(agree with the rest of the post tho)

Edited March 16, 2023 by Maurici

[mvdveer]

1 minute ago, Maurici said:

Preciselly in TeamFDM, this must be biggest BS ever said...

Yeah, and coming from me........

[Buurman]

I like the Revo to be honest, if you get the newer verion with blue wires on the heater, you probably wont run into issues...

Why do I like it? its compact and light, wiring is higher up, you see more of your print and is easier to clean. It heats up like its on cocaine, and sometimes a cold swap/maintenance is nice to have, best print quality I ever managed, was with a revo, but that can be coincidence, not proven.

What I dont like: Insane price for a nozzle, and still no hardened version on the market (yes have 2 of them in pre-order for 3 months)

And yes, one broke on me, older version with white wiring, got a replacement in 1 day!!

 

[Maurici]

1 hour ago, Buurman said:

It heats up like its on cocaine, and sometimes a cold swap/maintenance is nice to have

Now we are talking quick heating times is a thing... if it wasn´t that my printers soak for 20 minutes at the start of any sesion... but got a point.

Now... the cold swap/maintenance... oh good... how many times I´ve burned myself. FFS. Not that will trigger my decision, as the cons are high, but what a luxury. Didn´t thought about that one!

 

[claudermilk]

I basically started with Revo. I planned my Trident build with it in mind and got on the pre-order for it. Once that was finished and solid, I swapped my Mini over to Revo so both printers are on the same ecosystem. I never touched the nozzle on the Mini for fear of messing it up. 

From my limited experience the plusses for Revo are:

• Easy cold nozzle swap.
• Heats up very fast ("like it's on cocaine")
• Nozzle & heatbreak are integrated--only one joint way back up in the cold zone.
• Compact & light.

The downsides:

• New, "closed" ecosystem of nozzles
• Thus lack of hardened & exotic options so far
• No high flow options--yet
• New product with new product teething issues
• Partially closed source if that matters to you

AFAIK the closed source part is just the heater core part. The nozzle & heatsink are easily reverse-engineered & no magic there. I'm actually kind of surprised no clones have popped up yet.

It seems that the thermistor issue has been resolved with the blue-wire versions. I have had two failures of heater cores, one was almost immediate. Both were replaced quickly after jumping through a few troubleshooting hoops. While an irritation, E3D stood behind their product and that's all I ask. I have probably about 1600-ish hours of print time between my two Revos now.

So far I have not had a single issue specific to the nozzles. I have rarely-used 0.6 and 0.25, and not-yet-used 0.8 and shiny new 0.15, otherwise all that time was on my 0.4. One of the things I like about the system is the nozzle & heatbreak are a single part, so there is no seam there to potentially leak. That's also where the higher price comes from; I looked at V6 style nozzles & heatbreaks and the prices were comparable at the time.

Really in the end it's a matter of preference. Pick the hotend that meets your needs best. One thing I like with the AB/SB tool head is the modularity--it should be easy to swap out hot ends so long as you have your wiring set up for it.

[smirk]

3 hours ago, claudermilk said:

I'm actually kind of surprised no clones have popped up yet.

There are clone nozzles out there but I suspect (at the moment) they are everything you might expect at the ridiculously cheap end of the market.

[mvdveer]

7 hours ago, claudermilk said:

E3D stood behind their product and that's all I ask.

So important in this post Covid world where service has been dropped from "customer service". Same experience - Failed heatercores (x3 white wires) but replaced once verified through E3d's troubleshooting steps. GREAT cutomer SERVICE.

[mvdveer]

4 hours ago, smirk said:

There are clone nozzles out there but I suspect (at the moment) they are everything you might expect at the ridiculously cheap end of the market.

Think I will stick to and continue to support E3d as they have acted with integrity and honesty - in my experience

[Maurici]

4 hours ago, mvdveer said:

Failed heatercores (x3 white wires) but replaced

 

4 hours ago, mvdveer said:

Think I will stick to and continue to support E3d as they have acted with integrity and honesty - in my experience

 

reading this I think I´m unlucky in my industry...

I develop (a fundamental part of) the E3d´s high end equivalent in a completely different sector.

If I manage to deliver a 100% failure rate onto customer hands, no matter how my brand response would be, I would be sacked straight away and most likely my brand would go to bankrupt soon after.

As a development engineer I find unacceptable that customers are used as beta testers unless is a low end product and is fully open sourced. (I.E. enders 3 and elegoos and the likes). I find surprising that a company like E3d got away with that, being something THAT fundamental that would have been easily avoided by running an actual validation program.

I didn´t know about this early batches issues before I did open this tread...

 

Edited March 18, 2023 by Maurici

[smirk]

8 hours ago, Maurici said:

As a development engineer I find unacceptable that customers are used as beta testers

It's a very software/IT approach that sadly I see companies adopting being contaminated by (perhaps because their management or management consultants have come from IT?).....but there again you're a proper engineer......let's just say after 30++ years in IT I have an incredbily dim view of it all

[Penatr8tor]

@smirk I think most companies have been contaminated to a greater or lesser degree. But then again... the years have a way of making one a bit jaded when it comes to expectations of quality or in some cases capability. Maybe we get lucky and AI will replace millennials in high tier business positions and save us from this wokeness insanity. 

[smirk]

13 minutes ago, Penatr8tor said:

Maybe we get lucky and AI will replace

I'm going with plan-b 

[jace055]

I have a Rapido HF, Rapido UHF w/1mm CHT, a Revo, and 2 V6 hotends. All are mounted and ready to be swapped in including the UHF with the longer stealthburner. I use tap so there is no Z-offset adjustment either. Swap and go. 
 

Honestly the only difference is print speed. The Rapidos heat up slightly faster than the Revo. It’s like 15 seconds vs 30. The Revo is still fast. The Revo is good to about 13mm^3 reliably. The Rapido HF can do about 17mm^3 in ABS. The Rapido UHF can push 30mm^3 with the 1mm CHT before cooling becomes an issue with stealburner. I only use the V6 nozzles now with abrasives and hardened nozzles as they are cheap to replace. That stuff gets printed slow anyway. 
 

Having said all of that, I have been using the Revo more lately. I’ve been playing with the .6 nozzle and swapping back and forth to the .4. I have .6 and .8 for the Rapido but the Revo is just super easy to swap. 

[SVDB]

On 3/18/2023 at 10:47 AM, smirk said:

It's a very software/IT approach that sadly I see companies adopting being contaminated by (perhaps because their management or management consultants have come from IT?).....but there again you're a proper engineer......let's just say after 30++ years in IT I have an incredbily dim view of it all

Technology has come to a point where a hobbyist can slap components together, call it a product, make a company, and sell it to customers, without ever getting the science down what drives any of the technologies used. I think companies like E3D do some degree of research but I suspect it's more empirical than scientific, so there will be gaps and tolerances that the consumer will once in a while discover.

As for software, I'm also a software developer with 32 years of experience in a wide range of technologies, and my entire career I had to fight managers who wanted to ship immediately even though they were explicitly told it's not ready. The worst was during the dotcom bubble, because the product wasn't actually the product; the start-up was the product and the customer was either a VC or another company.

[smirk]

1 hour ago, SVDB said:

fight managers who wanted to ship immediately even though they were explicitly told it's not ready.

I can empathise. Fortunately, the Cloud(tm) is here to sort all those problems, or so I gather  from all those managers  planning to cloudify poorly undocumented 30-year old PLSQL and Fortran code.

Guess that's why I'm here, I came for the download and stayed for the sanity (noting that's a relative term ).

[SVDB]

I work for one of the largest B2B cloud companies now. Nothing's changed, it just a different scale.

[Tina]

I am using 3 V6 clones and a Mozzie clone.
The V6 all have a copper block, a titanium tubed copper heartbreak and a copper nozzle.
The Mozzie clone is the standard flow version.

Usually I print ABS (80%), PLA (19.5%) and rarely TPU or PETG. I don't change the heartbreak for TPU and had no problems. 

Sorry but being an Irish consumer I did contact E3D to order a Revo and E3D bullshited us Irish!!! No IOSS order from them, NO Irish distributor (they have one even in Island...), NO shipping with Royal Mail (only €3.50 robber knight fee to courier) only with DHL (€13.50 ontop of VAT and exorbitant DHL shipping fees). So I don't like E3D as they don't care for Irish customers!

 I like the modularity of the V6 system and the exchangeability of nozzle, heartbreak, block, heater and thermistor. If something breaks you can swap it and don't throw all of it out! You can choose what material you want for the block for example: brass (worse heat coefficient), aluminium (2x better than brass) or copper (2x better than alu).

How would you print CF or any other abrasive with the Revo? F!%* them!

I stick with a interchangeable system like the V6 nozzle (V6, Dragon/-fly, Mozzie etc.). 

[Maurici]

1 hour ago, Tina said:

I don't change the heartbreak for TPU and had no problems

I only do so for speed purposes, I can print TPU as quick as an slow PLA print with PTFE lined heatbreak and I have MUCH less stringing. If the print is small I don´t normally botherand I print it with the all metal ones but I have to print at half the speed (like 30 or 40mms max)...

 

1 hour ago, Tina said:

with the Revo? F!%* them!

calm down! no need to get aggressive,

Edited March 20, 2023 by Maurici

[Tina]

25 minutes ago, Maurici said:

calm down! no need to get aggressive,

Then tell me how to print abrasives? BTW It's just an other try to get ppl to a closed eco system AND not providing a proper service to my country, Ireland EU!

[Maurici]

17 minutes ago, Tina said:

Then tell me how to print abrasives

With Revo, apparently, you don´t till they make widely available this unobtanium one they have.

 

17 minutes ago, Tina said:

BTW It's just an other try to get ppl to a closed eco system

Nothing wrong with this if the system works. How many professionals pay massively overpriced stratasys printers or on a more mundane world, apple products... because despite their limitations, they work no fuss. (not saying is revo´s case, but nothing wrong with closed ecosystems). The V6 you are using is also developed and patent protected by E3d as it was... the problem is that it has been much easier for the other companies to make V6 compatible hardware as is simply an M6 metric tread... but you owe your nozzle and block system to them. Without them we would probably have to go to moskitos, or buy MK8 cheappo clones from china as we all know that china struggles to develop on their own... and the time will come for the revo-chinese nozzles, and ptc heaters revo-compatible. No doubt about that.

17 minutes ago, Tina said:

not providing a proper service to my country, Ireland EU!

It probably doesn´t makes financial sense for them. Same as in my home country, Spain, As far as I know E3d doesn´t really have an european HQ but rather stuck with UK service... so probably the situation is countrywide.

They have many re-sellers tho, and some probably will have better service to you than the HQ.

I´ve roasted them quite a lot a few posts back as I dissagree with some of the practices towards the users, but Fxxxng e3d and the late Sanjay who was the genius behind all the products ideas, we wouldn´t have  A LOT of systems we currently all use.

Edited March 20, 2023 by Maurici