Assembling your E3D v6 Hotend

Part of a series on installing the hotend.

The Official Directions

The directions on the E3D wiki are pretty good, but also generic because they need to accommodate for all kinds of different printers. You should give those directions a once over before going ahead with anything else. Follow the directions for HotSide, Thermistor, and Heater Cartridge but take a break after that.

Thermistor Wires & HeatSink

Just leave the short wires for now. We'll solder the long wires onto it later. Follow the directions about screwing on the HeatSink. That's normal.

PTFE Tubing

We'll want a real short piece of PTFE tubing. Just long enough to extend out of the hotend and touch the exact end of the adapter we printed previously. Make an estimate of how long you think it should be and cut it longer so you can trim it down. Put the PTFE tube in the hotend and attach your adapter. Trim the tube until the plastic of the adapter cleanly touches the hotend. I fount a hobby knife did a good job of cutting the tube cleanly.

My PTFE tube was about 38mm long

The PTFE tube should extend from the hotend

The Fan

First, my fan came with 4 screws, but only 3 screw holes. That's fine enough, but it's a slight variation from the directions. It'll come down to your personal preference on how you ultimately mount the fan. For me the bulge on the fan shroud worked best when on the bottom. It allowed me room to keep the wires and connectors on top of the fan and out of the way. Putting the wiring point on the upper outside point made it easier to put the wires into the harness.

Here's a photo of my finished hotend with new Molex connectors. Don't Freak Out. I'll go over all the directions one at a time, but I thought you'd like to see how I mounted the fan on the final product. That should help you decide how to attach your fan at this point.

Fan Attached, Next

Continue on to Wiring your E3D v6 Hotend.