The classic E3D V6 was very popular hotend for years and it still has a huge installed base. Myself, I have it on 4 of my 3d printers and It is performing perfect, unless you need speed or higher flow. High-flow nozzles solve this issue and this article reviews the plated copper HF/HT nozzle from Trianglelab – the best value for quality option I found to upgrade my V6s.
What is a high-flow (HF) nozzle?
HF nozzles help to increase the volumetric flow rate. Generally they feature a specific internal geometry which increases the melting surface area. Larger melting area inside the nozzle assures both better thermal transfer and higher filament melting capacity. The converging 3-holes is one of the best performant geometries nowadays for the V6 system. It allows to achieve better or similar performance to a Volcano but with the regular V6 form factor.
Why this HF nozzle?
One of the key success factors of HF nozzles is the machining. Though I wont cut a nozzle to inspect its cross section, visually it seems very well machined.
Another advantage of this nozzle is it is hight temperature – up to 500 C. It is a plated copper nozzle and I believe it is a variant of the popular regular plated copper alloy HT T-V6 nozzle, which was my primary choice for non-abrasive filaments like ABS, ASA, PLA, PETG and PC.
Finally, it is compatible with all hotends using the V6 standard, which gives it great interoperability. Personally, I’ll deploy it on all my V6 and Dragon hotends.
HF Trianglelab nozzle – performance
The performance is great – some people said achieving a flow rate up to 35 mm3/s with a v6 setup.
I haven’t measured the flow rate because it depends on other factors, like the filament type or the power of the heater, but I did a practical test against the Dragon HF hotend. I had a project for printing 25 huge parts (380 grams each, 100% infill, 0.4 layer) and I thought initially my Trident with a HF Dragon hotend would be the workhorse for this project. I installed the HF TL nozzle on my V6 hotend in a Voron 2.4. Then I limited the printing speed of both printers to a speed where I get consistent infill. Guess what, the V6 with HF TL nozzle outperformed the HF Dragon with normal nozzle by far (11h and 30min vs 14 hours per part).
Where to buy the High Flow Trianglelab nozzle?
Strangely, you can not find this nozzle in the Aliexpress Trianglelab store. I bought it from the BLV Ali store. Probably it was produced by TL for BLV.
