Have you heard of the FIN standard for FFF 3D printer nozzles?
There are multiple nozzle styles for desktop FFF 3D printers, typically designed by the 3D printer manufacturer to optimize their profits, while providing the required thermal functionality.
Perhaps the most well-known nozzle format standard would be the V6 style developed by UK-based E3D.
But there’s been a problem that’s developed only in the past couple of years: multi-material 3D printers. These devices have exploded on the scene, with Bambu Lab’s AMS, Prusa’s MMU, and similar devices including toolchangers.
These machines are constantly switching filaments as jobs proceed. One of the issues is that nozzles must heat up quickly to begin printing, but also cool down as well when not in use. Thermal changes are slower when there is more metal involved.
That’s why Slice Engineering devised the FIN standard about a year ago. FIN stands for “Free and open-source Insulated Nozzle”, and they have indeed open-sourced this design.
The FIN standard describes a smaller nozzle format that will be more thermally responsive. And that’s not all. Slice Engineering lists the key features of the FIN standard:
- Thermal expansion – As temperatures rise, nozzles made to the FIN standard better maintain interference (seal pressure) between nozzles and hot blocks made of materials with different coefficients of thermal expansion by reducing the length of thread engagement compared to legacy nozzle geometries.
- Silicone boot interlock – FIN is designed to completely interlock with a silicone cover (boot or sock) such that the boot can locate on the nozzle instead of the hot block. This eliminates the issue of boots sagging off of the hot block and allows for a positive, palpable interlock so you can know that you know that you know that the boot is on.
- Insulation – the I in FIN stands for Insulated. The silicone boot completely envelopes the nozzle in such a way that cooling air is deflected from all but the very tip of the nozzle, keeping the nozzle closer to the intended printing temperature and improving mechanical properties of printed parts. As an added benefit, it also significantly reduces the likelihood of plastic adhering to the nozzle and causing blobs or other failures in the print.
These are all excellent properties, and it seems that at least from a functional perspective, a FIN nozzle would be a good choice.
However, it seems there aren’t a lot of hot ends that are designed to accept the FIN standard. While FIN-compatible nozzles are produced by Slice Engineering, Bondtech, and Micro-Swiss, the only FIN-compatible hot end appears to be Slice Engineering’s Mako hot end. The Mako is a drop-in upgrade for the Bambu Lab X series.
It may be some time before we see additional manufacturers using the FIN standard, but that’s usually how standards go: they’re not used much until they catch on.
