TwoTrees Sapphire Plus/Pro E3D V6, Dragon Mount "The Mint Mount"

cults3d

The Mint Mount (TMM) This is a refit of the NF Smart mount for the Sapphire Plus and Pro to fit the E3D V6 and should also fit the Trianglelab Dragon hotend. I am still using the NF Smart version of this mount and had no issues so far. If you already have an E3D V6 style hotend this mount might be the one for you but i recommend buying a copper heat break for better thermal performance (4. link below). If not i would recommend buying the NF Smart because of the better thermal performance and reduced weight. There are two different versions of the main "Mount_Front" the easy fit version is meant for printers with higher tolerances. The "Advanced_Fit" version is meant for printers with tighter tolerances and may provided better heat break cooling due to the extended cooling channel. After looking at all the options for a hotend mount here on Thingiverse and Facebook i decided to design my own mainly for the Sapphire Plus but it should work for the newer Pro models aswell. I did not like a few things about the other mounts which were mainly loss of build area, non modular fan ducts and the way the mount is secured to the U shaped carriage bracket of the printer. After starting to design the mount for the E3D V6 clone my NF Smart from Mellow arrived so i created a second mount to fit the NF Smart. Now having two mainly identical mounts just for different hotends, i was able to test them on their thermal performance. The test setup consisted of a 12V 40x10mm SUNON fan a NTC 3950 100 K thermistor, a multimeter and a 40W heater cartridge. The thermistor was pushed inside a piece of PTFE tube to get consistent measurements between the hotends. The PTFE thermistor probe was then inserted into the hotend just touching the heatbreak. The temperatures for each step was set for 10 minutes after which i took the resistance value of the probe using the multimeter. I could then use a online calculator and a datasheet for the NTC 3950 100k thermistor to calculate the temperature. The results can be seen in the screenshot of the excel file. Because the NF Smart outperformed the E3D V6 clone on average by about 4.43°C i decided to go with the NF Smart. Back to the hotend mount itself.. My goals were to make the mount and the whole assembly as light as possible, provide the best possible cooling for the hotend, keep or expand the build area and make it look clean. And i think i acheived all of my goals. By using this mount with the NF Smart i was able so safe about 50g of weight compared to the original metal shroud and hotend. I even added heat break cooling to my design which should help the heatsink stay even cooler. The Z height of the carriage is about 10mm shorter then the original so you have to make sure that the carriages of the linear rails are not coming of the rails. In my case i just had to move the endstops upwards and unscrew the bed leveling screws by a few milimeters. All the necessary parts needed are listed in the BOM. I hope you enjoy the mount as much as i do.