After working with the 3rd version of the Funmat HT for a few months, I already had to disassemble the hotend several times. As this seems to be a unique hotend (Intamsys was using e3dv6 [clones?] hotends before) there's unfortunately a lack of information about it and how to maintain it. So here's a brief description of it's parts:
1: The actual (low-temp) hotend including nozzle, temp. sensor and heater cardridge. The nozzle seems to comply with the e3dv6 standard, although it looks more like a MK10 type on the outside.
2: The heatbreak unfortunately is glued to the heatsink (3) so I wasn't able to remove it (edit: after another disassembly I managed to remove it. Just heating that thing up works fine.). At least it's not glued to the hotend which is the case for the HT-hotend.
3: That's the heatsink.
4: This PEEK liner is glued to the heatsink, so removal is a bit tricky. I used some structured pliers on the outside to gently pull it out with a turning motion. This worked out fine but I can't promise to keep your liner intact after that operation. To stay on the safe side, support the inside of the tube with a ~2,5mm nail or something similar. BTW the chamfered end of the liner belongs to the bottom end.
5: This spring sits in the top barrel of the heatsink and is needed for Intamsys' hacky bed-level calibration.
6: This wheelish thing is screwed into the heatsink. To remove it, you first have to pull out that pin (8) from the mounting part (7).
7: The holder or mounting part as I'd call it.
8: This pin can be removed by just pulling it with pliers and a lot of force. Actually I think there's no need to pull it out.
9: The PTFE-liner (id: 2mm/od: 3mm, 15mm length). I was rather baffled to find that one in this so called all-metal hotend. This is why I had to disassemble the hotend in the first place because it's been swelling due to the high-temps needed for printing a lot of polycarbonate (which Intamsys says is no problem with the low-temp hotend). If friction gets too high due to the reduced inner diameter there'll be some strange extrusion issues including the hotend making unintended Z-hops on retractions. This should actually be sold as a feature. Getting it out without using force is impossible so I had to use a drill (3mm max). Watch out: There's a narrowing in the heatsink above the heatbreak; you don't want that damaged.
10: The whole cold-end from another assembly. Intamsys shipped the printer with a heatsink too short at first which interfered with auto-bed levelling. This is the good one. Except for the PTFE tube...
To disassemble the hotend first chuck the heatsink in a vise. Then either just unscrew the holder (7) - or remove the pin (8) and unscrew the wheel (6) with a pipe wrench like I did. Afterwards remove the spring and the PEEK liner as described above.
However if you're just about to replace the PTFE liner, this whole operation is futile. You can achieve the same by just drilling it out of place from the bottom end.
I know, this doesn't belong here but just to have it noted somewhere on the internet:
How to get the FunmatHT (rev. 3) to work with octoprint:
install octoprint version 1.3.11 or higher; this version is the first one with chamber temp control implemented
slice your files with reprap g-code flavour instead of ultimaker2 (eventhough Intamsuite comes with UM2 flavour preset). Otherwise the printer will act like it's being fed with 2,85mm filament and overextrude like hell.
invert the z-axis control
That's it. Still have to figure out how to auto-bed level via octoprint. But I guess just using the same gcode like on the UM2 could lead to success.
I just want to say thank you for putting tis here. I have been cursing this design that passes as hotend to hell! Never occurred to me that there is a PTFE liner in there. This knowledge might save my year! So thanks!
Other than that I want to say this design is bad, filament constantly got stuck in all the various parts of this HotEnd causing me to disassemble and clean everything with dichloromethane (a solvent that dissolves most plastics). I am looking into milling some aluminium block so that I can fit a dragon hotend on there. I hope that then all my problems will be passed.
2 is to replace the heatbreak with a bi-metal HB from slice engineering
After that there was only the shitty extruder limiting the machine. So I replaced that with an all-metal bondtech extruder and since then I'm really happy with the funmat. Before the BMG, the max chamber temp for polycarbonate was about 70°C. Now I print it at 90°C with excellent layer adhesion and print quality.
Oh, and one more fix: I didn't like the PEEK tube between extruder and hotend, since it's pretty wide and causes filament to buckle. Also it's not transparent and I can't see what's going on inside. So I printed one with a smaller diameter out of ULTEM1010 and this probably also helps a little.
Next issue to tackle is some nasty smell the funmat generates when running at 90°C for several hours. This will involve a complete disassemble unfortunately... sigh
BTW: since you're into getting a new hotend: have a look at the hotend + extruder from dyze. If I started all over again, I probably would buy one of these. Seen them on a fair a few times already and it looks absolutely decent for high-temp stuff.
I’m tackling the same problems at both of my intamsys funmat ht and upgraded to the bondtech bmg extruded. But since then I have issues with continuous overextruding. The user manual from bondtech doesn’t help. Is there a way to read the current e steps? I don’t really know if the firmware takes the overwrite using the .gcode/m500 method. Did you manage to do the upgrade exactly like it’s meant to in the manual? Thanks a lot!
It was leaking filament and the PTFE-liner was worn-out. This caused the whole hotend to raise with every retract which eventually killed the auto-levelling switch.
I just recently got a funmat HT, and am struggling to get quality prints. Specifically, I'm struggling with the first layer being too thick (like instead of the lines of the first layer being nice and even and clean, it's like they're getting smushed or over extruded or something, so that the first layer of the print has sort of a tiny skirt around it. That along with stringing when I run stringing stress tests.
Do you have any recommendations for print settings? Perhaps a recommendation for which slicer to use and/or settings I could import into that slicer? Specifically I'm trying to print with PLA and/or ABS.
I'm fairly new to 3D printing, so any advice you have would be a big help! Currently I've switched from Intamsuite to Cura, and have the G Code flavor set to rep rap per a recommendation from this thread.
For PLA, I'm printing at 210 degrees, 60 degrees hot plate, no chamber cooling, changed the initial layer from 0.3mm to 0.4, and have enabled retracts on outer walls and z hops on retracts, and turned off combing.
This isn't really a printer suitable for beginners since it's got a lot of issues and tendencies to destroy itself.
However I can try supporting your start with the funmat. I'm assuming you've done the basic z-level calibration (once you've done that, try not to touch that setting ever again; it's buggy and gives a chance of crashing your hotend against the glass plate) and now you only need to fine-adjust the z-offset via settings->other settings->z-offset. Increase this value by about the amount necessary for a perfect 1st layer. It's trial & error and you probably will have to start a few prints after changing it until it's ok.
That along with stringing when I run stringing stress tests.
Depending on which hotend you're using you need to use different retraction settings in order to keep stringing on a low level. Since I have modified my hotend completely several years ago I don't remember the best settings exactly, but it's supposed to be somewhere in the range of 1-4mm for the low-temp hotend (which is useless anyway in my opinion) and 0,4-2mm for the high-temp hotend.
Do you have any recommendations for print settings? Perhaps a recommendation for which slicer to use and/or settings I could import into that slicer?
Not exactly recommendations but personally I like to use cura (which is also what intamsuite is based on - but don't use intamsuite!). Just add a custom printer, set the XYZ dimensions, check the "heated bed" and "heated chamber" checkboxes and choose "RepRap" for the g-code flavor. Rest should be fine as it is as long as you don't print materials that require a nozzle temp >365°C. I can recommend adding at least
M104 S0
M140 S0
M141 S0
for the end-gcode for your own safety, to absolutely make sure the printer stops all heating elements when prints finish (had some prints where this wasn't the case). No recommendations for profiles though since I don't use profiles. Also what makes a huge difference is using octoprint instead of the LCD. I only use the LCD for setting the z-offset which has to be changed depending on chamber/bed temperature. If you also have plans to change chamber/bed temps sometimes, here's one custom start g-code I made recently that automatically changes z-offset in order to compensate for thermal expansion.
{if material_bed_temperature_layer_0 <40}
G92 Z15.0
{elif material_bed_temperature_layer_0 >=40 and material_bed_temperature_layer_0 <60}
G92 Z15.1
{elif material_bed_temperature_layer_0 >=60 and material_bed_temperature_layer_0 <80}
G92 Z15.2
{elif material_bed_temperature_layer_0 >=80 and material_bed_temperature_layer_0 <100}
G92 Z15.3
{elif material_bed_temperature_layer_0 >=100 and material_bed_temperature_layer_0 <120}
G92 Z15.4
{elif material_bed_temperature_layer_0 >=120 and material_bed_temperature_layer_0 <140}
G92 Z15.5
{elif material_bed_temperature_layer_0 >=140 and material_bed_temperature_layer_0 <=160}
G92 Z15.6
{endif}
The absolute Z-value might differ on your printer since my hotend isn't original but the relative values are supposed to work most of the time. It's also important to notice that this only works with cura versions >= 5.9.0 since older ones don't support if-statements.
Specifically I'm trying to print with PLA and/or ABS.
That's quite an expensive and troublesome printer for just printing PLA and ABS. To be fair - printing ABS with the heated chamber works pretty well, especially if you exchange the horrible intamsys extruder with a proper one (Bondtech has one designed for the Funmat). Anyway... for PLA you have to keep all doors open and use a lot of part cooling fan with about 60°C bed temp - and this still won't be enough ventilation for good results. ABS requires about 100°C bed temp and with the standard extruder you can set the chamber temperature to about 60°C max. Also it's important to use some proper glue stick for ABS since the parts will rip out chunks of glass from your bed when cooling off otherwise. Glue with self-releasing properties such as magigoo PC works pretty well.
z hops on retracts
If you want to keep stringing low, disable z-hops.
Ok thanks for all the advice. I actually got the printer for free, which is the only reason I have it. So just trying to make the most of it. I’ll try some of this stuff out and see how it works!
If I can ask a couple other questions:
What makes the low temp hot end useless?
Without knowing much, my believe was that the only difference between it and the high temp hot end would be the temperature that the components can withstand, and so with mostly printing PLA, the low temp would be just fine. Is there something about it that would cause me to want to use the high temp hot end, even when printing with materials that don't require high temperatures?
By the way, I don't have the enhanced version, so no auto bed leveling (which sounds like it might be a good thing). For leveling, I've just run through the wizard built into the printer's firmware, which moves the nozzle above the three leveling screws, and I folded a sticky note in half (which I measured with calipers to be 0.2mm) and used it as some shim stock.
Should I be adjusting the Z offset in the settings on the printer, rather than adjusting the same setting in the slicer?
My thought was that I change the first layer height in the slicer (I'm using Cura with RepRap G Code flavor) and this would do the same job as adjusting the Z offset in the printer's settings
Good question! Just did a quick test since you got me curious: it's about 110 Ohm at 25°C and 140 at 100°C. So most probably PT100, yes. The high-temp sensor has an additional jumper integrated in the connector but measured resistance is the same... so I'm not sure if it only has an extended range, or if it's exactly the same.
Great, thanks for checking this. Funmat is very weird I don't understand why it won't allow to print low temp materials with high temp nozzle. Is the heater 24v ?
Comments Section
After working with the 3rd version of the Funmat HT for a few months, I already had to disassemble the hotend several times. As this seems to be a unique hotend (Intamsys was using e3dv6 [clones?] hotends before) there's unfortunately a lack of information about it and how to maintain it. So here's a brief description of it's parts:
1: The actual (low-temp) hotend including nozzle, temp. sensor and heater cardridge. The nozzle seems to comply with the e3dv6 standard, although it looks more like a MK10 type on the outside.
2: The heatbreak unfortunately is glued to the heatsink (3) so I wasn't able to remove it (edit: after another disassembly I managed to remove it. Just heating that thing up works fine.). At least it's not glued to the hotend which is the case for the HT-hotend.
3: That's the heatsink.
4: This PEEK liner is glued to the heatsink, so removal is a bit tricky. I used some structured pliers on the outside to gently pull it out with a turning motion. This worked out fine but I can't promise to keep your liner intact after that operation. To stay on the safe side, support the inside of the tube with a ~2,5mm nail or something similar. BTW the chamfered end of the liner belongs to the bottom end.
5: This spring sits in the top barrel of the heatsink and is needed for Intamsys' hacky bed-level calibration.
6: This wheelish thing is screwed into the heatsink. To remove it, you first have to pull out that pin (8) from the mounting part (7).
7: The holder or mounting part as I'd call it.
8: This pin can be removed by just pulling it with pliers and a lot of force. Actually I think there's no need to pull it out.
9: The PTFE-liner (id: 2mm/od: 3mm, 15mm length). I was rather baffled to find that one in this so called all-metal hotend. This is why I had to disassemble the hotend in the first place because it's been swelling due to the high-temps needed for printing a lot of polycarbonate (which Intamsys says is no problem with the low-temp hotend). If friction gets too high due to the reduced inner diameter there'll be some strange extrusion issues including the hotend making unintended Z-hops on retractions. This should actually be sold as a feature. Getting it out without using force is impossible so I had to use a drill (3mm max). Watch out: There's a narrowing in the heatsink above the heatbreak; you don't want that damaged.
10: The whole cold-end from another assembly. Intamsys shipped the printer with a heatsink too short at first which interfered with auto-bed levelling. This is the good one. Except for the PTFE tube...
To disassemble the hotend first chuck the heatsink in a vise. Then either just unscrew the holder (7) - or remove the pin (8) and unscrew the wheel (6) with a pipe wrench like I did. Afterwards remove the spring and the PEEK liner as described above.
However if you're just about to replace the PTFE liner, this whole operation is futile. You can achieve the same by just drilling it out of place from the bottom end.
I know, this doesn't belong here but just to have it noted somewhere on the internet:
How to get the FunmatHT (rev. 3) to work with octoprint:
install octoprint version 1.3.11 or higher; this version is the first one with chamber temp control implemented
slice your files with reprap g-code flavour instead of ultimaker2 (eventhough Intamsuite comes with UM2 flavour preset). Otherwise the printer will act like it's being fed with 2,85mm filament and overextrude like hell.
invert the z-axis control
That's it. Still have to figure out how to auto-bed level via octoprint. But I guess just using the same gcode like on the UM2 could lead to success.
I just want to say thank you for putting tis here. I have been cursing this design that passes as hotend to hell! Never occurred to me that there is a PTFE liner in there. This knowledge might save my year! So thanks!
Other than that I want to say this design is bad, filament constantly got stuck in all the various parts of this HotEnd causing me to disassemble and clean everything with dichloromethane (a solvent that dissolves most plastics). I am looking into milling some aluminium block so that I can fit a dragon hotend on there. I hope that then all my problems will be passed.
Np. The low-temp hotend really is a disappointment... but I got the high-temp hotend up to a state where it's absolutely fine with "just" 2 fixes.
1 is to prevent unintended retracts: https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/dvrsnn/funmat_ht_enhanced_retraction_fix/
2 is to replace the heatbreak with a bi-metal HB from slice engineering
After that there was only the shitty extruder limiting the machine. So I replaced that with an all-metal bondtech extruder and since then I'm really happy with the funmat. Before the BMG, the max chamber temp for polycarbonate was about 70°C. Now I print it at 90°C with excellent layer adhesion and print quality.
Oh, and one more fix: I didn't like the PEEK tube between extruder and hotend, since it's pretty wide and causes filament to buckle. Also it's not transparent and I can't see what's going on inside. So I printed one with a smaller diameter out of ULTEM1010 and this probably also helps a little.
Next issue to tackle is some nasty smell the funmat generates when running at 90°C for several hours. This will involve a complete disassemble unfortunately... sigh
BTW: since you're into getting a new hotend: have a look at the hotend + extruder from dyze. If I started all over again, I probably would buy one of these. Seen them on a fair a few times already and it looks absolutely decent for high-temp stuff.
I’m tackling the same problems at both of my intamsys funmat ht and upgraded to the bondtech bmg extruded. But since then I have issues with continuous overextruding. The user manual from bondtech doesn’t help. Is there a way to read the current e steps? I don’t really know if the firmware takes the overwrite using the .gcode/m500 method. Did you manage to do the upgrade exactly like it’s meant to in the manual? Thanks a lot!
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Comment removed by moderator
Why are you having to pull it apart?
It was leaking filament and the PTFE-liner was worn-out. This caused the whole hotend to raise with every retract which eventually killed the auto-levelling switch.
I just recently got a funmat HT, and am struggling to get quality prints. Specifically, I'm struggling with the first layer being too thick (like instead of the lines of the first layer being nice and even and clean, it's like they're getting smushed or over extruded or something, so that the first layer of the print has sort of a tiny skirt around it. That along with stringing when I run stringing stress tests.
Do you have any recommendations for print settings? Perhaps a recommendation for which slicer to use and/or settings I could import into that slicer? Specifically I'm trying to print with PLA and/or ABS.
I'm fairly new to 3D printing, so any advice you have would be a big help! Currently I've switched from Intamsuite to Cura, and have the G Code flavor set to rep rap per a recommendation from this thread.
For PLA, I'm printing at 210 degrees, 60 degrees hot plate, no chamber cooling, changed the initial layer from 0.3mm to 0.4, and have enabled retracts on outer walls and z hops on retracts, and turned off combing.
This isn't really a printer suitable for beginners since it's got a lot of issues and tendencies to destroy itself.
However I can try supporting your start with the funmat. I'm assuming you've done the basic z-level calibration (once you've done that, try not to touch that setting ever again; it's buggy and gives a chance of crashing your hotend against the glass plate) and now you only need to fine-adjust the z-offset via settings->other settings->z-offset. Increase this value by about the amount necessary for a perfect 1st layer. It's trial & error and you probably will have to start a few prints after changing it until it's ok.
Depending on which hotend you're using you need to use different retraction settings in order to keep stringing on a low level. Since I have modified my hotend completely several years ago I don't remember the best settings exactly, but it's supposed to be somewhere in the range of 1-4mm for the low-temp hotend (which is useless anyway in my opinion) and 0,4-2mm for the high-temp hotend.
Not exactly recommendations but personally I like to use cura (which is also what intamsuite is based on - but don't use intamsuite!). Just add a custom printer, set the XYZ dimensions, check the "heated bed" and "heated chamber" checkboxes and choose "RepRap" for the g-code flavor. Rest should be fine as it is as long as you don't print materials that require a nozzle temp >365°C. I can recommend adding at least
for the end-gcode for your own safety, to absolutely make sure the printer stops all heating elements when prints finish (had some prints where this wasn't the case). No recommendations for profiles though since I don't use profiles. Also what makes a huge difference is using octoprint instead of the LCD. I only use the LCD for setting the z-offset which has to be changed depending on chamber/bed temperature. If you also have plans to change chamber/bed temps sometimes, here's one custom start g-code I made recently that automatically changes z-offset in order to compensate for thermal expansion.
{if material_bed_temperature_layer_0 <40} G92 Z15.0 {elif material_bed_temperature_layer_0 >=40 and material_bed_temperature_layer_0 <60} G92 Z15.1 {elif material_bed_temperature_layer_0 >=60 and material_bed_temperature_layer_0 <80} G92 Z15.2 {elif material_bed_temperature_layer_0 >=80 and material_bed_temperature_layer_0 <100} G92 Z15.3 {elif material_bed_temperature_layer_0 >=100 and material_bed_temperature_layer_0 <120} G92 Z15.4 {elif material_bed_temperature_layer_0 >=120 and material_bed_temperature_layer_0 <140} G92 Z15.5 {elif material_bed_temperature_layer_0 >=140 and material_bed_temperature_layer_0 <=160} G92 Z15.6 {endif}The absolute Z-value might differ on your printer since my hotend isn't original but the relative values are supposed to work most of the time. It's also important to notice that this only works with cura versions >= 5.9.0 since older ones don't support if-statements.
That's quite an expensive and troublesome printer for just printing PLA and ABS. To be fair - printing ABS with the heated chamber works pretty well, especially if you exchange the horrible intamsys extruder with a proper one (Bondtech has one designed for the Funmat). Anyway... for PLA you have to keep all doors open and use a lot of part cooling fan with about 60°C bed temp - and this still won't be enough ventilation for good results. ABS requires about 100°C bed temp and with the standard extruder you can set the chamber temperature to about 60°C max. Also it's important to use some proper glue stick for ABS since the parts will rip out chunks of glass from your bed when cooling off otherwise. Glue with self-releasing properties such as magigoo PC works pretty well.
If you want to keep stringing low, disable z-hops.
Ok thanks for all the advice. I actually got the printer for free, which is the only reason I have it. So just trying to make the most of it. I’ll try some of this stuff out and see how it works!
If I can ask a couple other questions:
What makes the low temp hot end useless?
Without knowing much, my believe was that the only difference between it and the high temp hot end would be the temperature that the components can withstand, and so with mostly printing PLA, the low temp would be just fine. Is there something about it that would cause me to want to use the high temp hot end, even when printing with materials that don't require high temperatures?
By the way, I don't have the enhanced version, so no auto bed leveling (which sounds like it might be a good thing). For leveling, I've just run through the wizard built into the printer's firmware, which moves the nozzle above the three leveling screws, and I folded a sticky note in half (which I measured with calipers to be 0.2mm) and used it as some shim stock.
Should I be adjusting the Z offset in the settings on the printer, rather than adjusting the same setting in the slicer?
My thought was that I change the first layer height in the slicer (I'm using Cura with RepRap G Code flavor) and this would do the same job as adjusting the Z offset in the printer's settings
Can I ask you what kind of temp sensor it uses? Looks a bit like pt100. I'm trying to fix my low temp hotend.
Good question! Just did a quick test since you got me curious: it's about 110 Ohm at 25°C and 140 at 100°C. So most probably PT100, yes. The high-temp sensor has an additional jumper integrated in the connector but measured resistance is the same... so I'm not sure if it only has an extended range, or if it's exactly the same.
Great, thanks for checking this. Funmat is very weird I don't understand why it won't allow to print low temp materials with high temp nozzle. Is the heater 24v ?