Patent pending supporting structure for heater block on a 3D printer.

Supporting structure for a 3D printer hotend.

With much faster accelerations, faster printing speeds and the need for longer melt zones hotends need  to be amore rigidlyt mounted than in the past. There is now a greater need for stable and rigid connection of the nozzle with respect to the the print head (sometimes called the tool head).

These requirements persuaded us to take a fresh look at accepted practice. Existing designs mount hotends at the top, typically to a heat sink. We don't hold a pen at the top when we write, so why hold a hotend at the top.

A hotend assembly includes a heat sink a heat break and a hot end. The heat sink is located at the top of the assembly. The hot end is at the bottom of the assembly. The heat sink is connected to the hotend typically by a thin walled tube that acts as a heat break. For the purposes of this design description, a hotend is defined as including the active heating element.

Our hotend mounting solution turns this thinking literally upside down and rigidly mounts the hotend to the print head via the the heater block.

Background art. There are other designs (notably by Bambu Labs) that clamp a nozzle and its associated thermal mass to a heater plate mounted to a print head. In this instance the heater is not integral to the nozzle assembly and is instead mounted fixedto the print head

The following components are identified in the attached image.

1. Extruder - predominently black assembly sitting above the hot end assembly
2. print head - Silver component that are components are mounted to
3. Heater block - blue assembly that includes the heater.
4. Heat sink - Finned component above the heater block
5. Supporting sturcture - red insulating block and orange clamp components. A few embodiments of the design are shown to illustrate possible embodiements of the invention.

Instead of mounting the heatsink to the top of the print head and then rigidly mounting the heater block to the heat sink, the key claims of the present design are:

1. The heater block has a rigid connection via a supporting structure(s) to the print head
    
2. The supporting structure may be part of the heater block or part of the print head structure or a discrete intermediatory component assembly consisting of one or more parts.
    
3.  The heater block is thermally insulated from the core struture of the print head by thermally insulating components that are situated either between the supporting structure and the heater block or between the suporting structure and the print head or the supporting structure itself my be made entirely of a single thermally insulating component that is mechanically fixed to the heater block and the print head.
    
4. The supporting structure stabilises the heat block  with respect to the main body of the print head. 
    
5. Filament is fed from the extruder through the heat sink to the heater block via a heat break tube.
    
6. The heat sink for the hotend can be mounted in a cage or frame, or be a separate component or be integral to the print head stucture.
    
7. The heat break tube is connected between the heat sink and the hotend. The filament runs through this tube.
    
8. The heater block melts the plasic filament and may or may additionally be rigidly mounted to the heat sink by other means.
    
9.  The molten filament exits the hotend assemly via a nozzle connected to the heat block. 
    
10. These design elements means that the heat break is a non load bearing component as forces exerted on the heater block are handled  by the heater blocks connection to the print head via the supporting structure 
     
11. The depiction shown in the rendered images (fig 1, 2, 3,4, 5, and 6 show a few possible  embodiments of this invention.
     

The attached images and STL and depictions of the Upside Down Pen Mount are samples only of the concept provided for protection of the intellectual property of this design and it's esisting Licenses.



The invention is published under CC BY-NC Creative Commons License This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. CC BY-NC includes the following elements:

 BY: credit must be given to the creator.
 NC: Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted.This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. CC BY-NC 

Other IP protections have been filed for and more depictions embodying other methods for establishing an rigid and stable connection between the heater block and the print head are included in these pending IP protections.

The publication of this design should be referenced in a body of prior art examples by any individual or company attempting to get Intellectual Propery rights on designs employing a similar concept. This license is currently owned by Liam Venter and may be assigned or licensed to a third party at a subsequent time. For more information please email [email protected]

Please note the first release of a hotend using this concept will look quite different from these images and the STL provided.


The concept and functionality description was first posted on the 22/9/2025


Published 25/September 2025

Updates
30/Sept/2025 clarification changes made to rendered images