11/9/2025 12:11 PM - Researched Parts

I started this project by researching parts I want to use for this hotend.

I first looked at different existing hotends, including Tricorn, which uses multiple different heater cartridges to give more surface area for heat transfer, rather than one larger one. Tricorn uses 3x Volcano heaters, which give much more surface area than a supervolcano heater, while staying compact.

I decided to take inspiration from Tricorn, but give it even more surface area by using the massive 110W heaters from a supervolcano hotend.

These heaters are massive, and a single one would be overkill for most hotends, but this is not most hotends. I will be using three of these.

11/9/2025 12:19 PM - Begun Heatblock Design

I started the design of this with the heat block. It has three 6mm holes for three supervolcano heaters, each with three m3 grubscrews to hold them in. It also has an M6 tapped hole in the center where the nozzle will go, along with a 1.8mm hole through the center where the filament will pass through and melt.

On the other side, it has an M7 tapped hole for the heatbreak mounting, as well as some m2 tapped holes for the bolts that will attach the heatsink to the heater block. Since I like triangles, there are three holes.

11/9/2025 12:36 PM - Heatsink Design

I designed the heatsink in this session. It was fairly simple, just a cylinder with holes for the heatbreak, as well as mounting holes on the top and pass-through holes on the bottom to allow me to tighten the heatsink down to the block. It uses three M2 screws to clamp down on the heatbreak. It has some complex geometry inside, which allows the heatbreak to fit inside, as well as thread in and allow the filament to pass through. It has a hole in the top for the 4mm OD PTFE tube to fit in and push up against the heatbreak. The fins were made using a revolve operation of a sketch I made of each fin.

11/9/2025 12:43 PM - Heatblock Fixes

While doing a test fit in CAD, I realized that the wires for the supervolcano heaters won't be able to get out from the heater block and under the heatsink. I want it to be easy to use IRL, so I added some cutouts for the wires to be able to come out of.

I also added M3 tapped holes for the three M3 PT1000 thermistors that will measure the temperature across the entire melt zone. This is important as it can vary slightly across the melt zone, so we could average it out and get a more accurate measurement.

I added the thermistors to the CAD as well.

Here's my full test fit with the block, heaters, thermistors, and the nozzle.

I colored it orange because I may end up using nickel-plated copper for the block, as it has good thermal conductivity from the copper and good hardness from the nickel plating. This is fairly common with high-quality hotends.

11/9/2025 1:33 PM - Cad Assembly

I added the heatsink and heatbreak to the CAD in this session. You can see the filament path here, as well as way everything goes together. I need to test if the heatsink fins are large enough, as this hotend will be dumping a ton of heat into the heatbreak and subsequently the heatsink.

11/9/2025 1:48 PM - Made BOM

I made the BOM in this session. I used AliExpress and Trianglelabs for most of the parts, but the CNC parts will be from JLCCNC, and the heaters were from Fabreeko. The total price is around 200 dollars.

1/27/2026 7:31 PM - Received the Parts!

I finally got all the parts in!! The SLM parts are a little warped, but it should be fine because none of the dimensions are super precise anyway.

All of the aliexpress parts also came in, they look great! the heaters are so much bigger than I imagined lol.

I accidentally ordered the wrong size heatbreak, which means that I needed to buy a new one as well as drill out the heatsink to the right size. It has a nice snug fit!!

This is what I ordered origionally ^^

And this is what I wanted. It wasnt too bad to fix but I needed to buy a drill bit and a new tap.

1/27/2026 7:37 PM - Partial Assembly

Here it is after being tumbled and partially assembled. Its really cool that your able to see the difference in color between the steel heat block and the aluminum heatsink! The nozzle and heatbreak went in well after tapping the m6 holes.

The top looks really cool! the m3 taps for mounting and the bolt heads, along with the filament path through the middle make it really interesting to look at. im really happy with this!!

Here you can see how the screws go from the heatsink into the heater block. Hopefully they dont conduct too much heat which could lead to heat creep.

And heres a view from the bottom, where you can see the nozzle and the holes for the heaters.

Overall im really happy with the assembly so far!

1/27/2026 7:41 PM - Designed Stand

While waiting for some parts, I decided to make a nice stand for it! Since this is a gift for my friend, i thought a way to display it would be nice since its not very practical to use. This didnt take me very long, maybe 2 hours, but I went through a couple iterations before landing on the current design.

Here you can see the first design (really ugly)

And here you can see the final desigh (pretty clean imo!!)

I printed it out and it looks pretty nice!

1/27/2026 7:45 PM - Its Finished!

Its finished!! My friend did some super nice cable braiding for the super long heater cables and I think it looks super good!

He also wrapped and shipped it out to my friend!! I had so much fun designing and building this secret santa gift...

1/27/2026 7:47 PM - Gift Delivery!!!

My friend loved it!!!
This was his first reaction:
Screenshot 2026-01-27 at 7.45.48 PM

And heres a pic of it on his desk. TYSM blueprint and Hack Club for giving me a grant for this project!!