An Essential Part Of Your Spare Parts Inventory
This is one of my favorite items to keep in a spares kit. This critical spare part is the Creality "Plug and Play" Hotend Assembly. I can't tell you how much time this will save you when you have a failure with your hotend thermistor or the heating cartridge.
It can be devilish to replace these components on a well-used hotend assembly and every one hates downtime. This part will save you downtime as it's a quick replacement allowing you to get back to a functional printer again.
The thermistor connection has the normal XH-2.54 connector which means you just plug it in to the appropriate socket on the motherboard. The heating cartridge wires are trimmed and tinned, ready to install onto the motherboard of your printer. Those are of course the screw terminals.
Installation can be accomplished rapidly by removing the front cover of the hotend (the one with the logo and fans) and then easily removing two screws (Pont 1 and Point 2 below) allowing you to remove the old broken hotend and to quickly re-attach the new "Plug and Play Hotend Assembly" from Creality.
If you have been troubleshooting a failure then chances are you already have the case opened and the mainboard exposed but if not, then once you have removed the power plug from the power supply making sure nothing can be energized then simply open the case and expose the mainboard.
Point 3 and 4 are where you will attach the hotend heater (heater cartridge located in the hotend.) Point 3 is the Positve (+) and Point 4 is the Negative. (-) The pair provides +24V direct power from the power supply
Point 5 is where you simply plug in the Hotend Thermistor ( H.264 connector).
You may wish to test everything before you reassemble your Ender 3 printer but the usual disclaimers and warnings apply. Please be careful when everything is exposed and remember safety first!!
You can test to see if the hotend will heat properly, set it to a normal temperature (i.e. 185C) and while doing this you are also testing the hotend thermistor as it should accurately read the termperature while it heats up. You can do this within the "Prepare" menu for "Preheat PLA". You could also achieve this by using the "Control" menu selecting Nozzle Temperature and adjust same while monitoring the Status display.
While this was just supposed to be a review, it seemed difficult to do that without adding a few extra details.
The price is reasonable especially if you can get it with free shipping. You are getting a really great bargain if you consider what parts you get when you purchase the complete assembly.
Moreover the installation time you save when you replace the entire assembly is worth the price.
I am also very happy that the same hotend assembly can be used with a very wide range of printers. It says much about Creality 3D commitment to support original Ender 3 while offering the same great design on the Ender 3 Pro and the Ender 5 series. Such design strategies mean long-term support for even older models.
If you are lucky you can purchase this during one of the special offers from Creality 3D that may include Capricorn PTFE tubing, which as you may know can handle higher temperature without deforming within the throat of the hotend which can lead lead to clogs and leaks. This can sometimes happen at the hotend when using standard PTFE tubing and printing with PETG, ABS and other filaments that requite hotter temperatures. .
This great product really just takes a few minutes to install and the value is so great considering what you get for the price. I highly recommend purchasing today and keeping it on hand as a spare (although you might want to immediately make use of the Capricorn tubing even if your current hotend is still fine!
You can purchase this at Hardware for Hackers - Sort of a Creality 3D Parts Depot which of course is a shameless plug for my new store.