FAME 3D announced new and very powerful toolheads for their LulzBot 3D printers.
There’s actually three new models involved, with two variants, resulting in five new toolhead products. They’re all part of the new “Galaxy” series, and are named Meteor, Asteroid and Nebula.
Let’s take a look at each.
LulzBot Meteor Toolhead
First up is the Meteor, which is the basic toolhead you might find on standard desktop 3D printers. The Meteor has dual drive gears that tightly grip the filament, as well as a “Nickel-Plated Hardened Copper Alloy Hotend”. That suggests the Meteor toolhead should be able to handle fiber-reinforced materials that can be quite abrasive. They can also handle flexible materials.
The Meteor is designed for quick swaps. They say the nozzle can be swapped with “one hand”, and does not require heat-up for tightening. They’re expecting to release a set of nozzle options with diameters ranging from 0.3 – 0.8mm.
Another very interesting feature is a certified air duct system that provides full 360 degree cooling. This should increase print quality significantly.
The Meteor will be produced in two variants: one for standard 1.75mm filament and another for 2.85 filament, which has long been the default for LulzBot equipment. It’s slated for delivery some time in Q1.
LulzBot Asteroid Toolhead
The Asteroid toolhead is quite different from the Meteor, as it is designed for high flow systems. The Asteroid can competently deliver an amazing 200g of material per hour (that’s an entire 1kg spool in only five hours.)
The Asteroid includes a massive default nozzle of 1.2mm diameter, which is upgradeable to a whopping 2.4mm. The heater consumes an enormous 100W of power, and that should very quickly soften passing filament.
The nozzles are abrasive-resistant and have been sourced from Slice Engineering, specifically their GammaMaster series.
The Asteroid will become the stock toolhead on the company’s TAZ Pro XT+ system, as well as their recently announced Long Bed system.
This toolhead is only configured for 2.85mm filament, which actually makes sense: for high flow you will need a lot of material, and the best way to provide that is with fatter filament.
LulzBot Nebula Toolhead
Finally, we have the Nebula toolhead, which comes in 1.75 and 2.85 mm variants.
This component inherits many of the Meteor features, but is a dual extruder system. They include a linear actuator that lifts the inactive nozzle during printing to reduce the possibility of print failures and quality issues.
The Nebula should be much more reliable, as FAME 3D explains:
“With the extruders’ effortless tensioning and dual drive gears, we’ve significantly reduced the risk of clogs while making them easier to use.”
These are all quite different and targeted at different applications. They will begin to appear on LulzBot systems this year, but I suspect some may want to upgrade their older LulzBot or possibly non-LulzBot systems with them as well.
Via LulzBot
