The Mosquito Hotend by Slice Engineering

3D Printing can certainly be an exciting hobby to really sink your teeth into, allowing almost anyone and everyone to turn intangible ideas into real life objects. However, with so many different machines, components, kits and various other parts available, it’s often difficult to identify what is actually a worthwhile upgrade, and which are simply a waste of money. Fortunately, we at DIYElectronics are always willing to test the junk so that you don’t have to, and we go through so many new products each year, with only a select few making their way past the testing phase and into the catalogue for you. However, with this amazing new Mosquito Hotend, we didn’t have to test it for very long before we realised that this is without a doubt a fantastic (and very worthwhile) upgrade, as the benefits are obvious from the moment you install it, easily taking a prime position as one of the most impressive hotends we’ve ever tried – and we’ve tried a lot!

Crafted by Slice Engineering, a team of passionate and dedicated engineers who are well-versed in the industry, The Mosquito Hotend is set to change the way we think about Hotend Assemblies, offering not only exceptionally low weight for the gantry, but also mind-blowing print quality despite the insane speeds that it’s capable of. The secret to this beautiful hotend is in the clever material composition of all of the Mechanical Components, utilising specific alloys in specific places so as to provide extremely effective heating in the melt zone, almost complete thermal isolation between the heater block and mini cooling tower, and a strong, durable bimetallic heatbreak that is protected from strain by load bearing rods. This results in fast, high quality prints with minimal (if any) heat creep, and a novel “one-hand nozzle change” technique that has never been possible before on open-source machines.

In addition to offering excellent printing results at a high speed due to the extremely low 41g weight, the Mosquito Hotend has been designed with versatility in mind, as the engineers behind this impressive brand truly do understand the industry, the Makers who are involved in it, as well as the many advancements that are continuously brought to the market each year. This is why it has been manufactured with an almost universal fit, with numerous adapters and brackets available for users to print themselves, so as to accommodate almost any 3D Printer on the market. Furthermore, the lightweight design also makes the Mosquito ideal for multi-extrusion systems, allowing users to install dual Mosquitos, or possibly even step it up with a Mosquito Magnum as the second hotend, so you can enjoy the insane printing speeds from the Magnum, and exquisite quality from the Original Mosquito.

Please Note: Although the Mosquito Hotend is made to fit E3D Nozzles, we have found that the nozzle needs to be longer than the common E3D nozzle clones. As such, we recommend using the Slice Engineering Vanadium Nozzles or similar longer design, so that the back of the nozzle can push against and thermally couple with the copper inside the heater block.

Additional Note: As of July 2020, the design of these hotend assemblies have changed slightly, and now feature higher cooling fins on the heat break, as well as a wider 3.4mm heat break top diameter. This only affects the heat break and the heat sink, however, but just keep this in mind if your Mosquito Hotend was purchased before this date.

What Makes The Mosquito Hotend So Much Better than Alternatives?

When first seeing the Mosquito Hotend, it’s quite obvious that it features a very unique design compared to most hotend assemblies available to Makers. However, it’s important to realise that there is certainly method to this mad design, as despite the tiny form factors of all of the components, with the cooling tower being particularly small compared to most alternatives, Slice Engineering have focused on using very specific materials and alloys, and couldn’t achieve such an impressively small design by just utilising the commonly used materials. This offers a range of different benefits, some of which we will cover below, and proves that Slice Engineering certainly know what they’re doing!

But enough talk, let’s take a closer look at precisely what differentiates the Mosquito Hotend from the slew of alternatives, in both the industry of original hotends, but also in the world of clone design:

• Incredible Heating, Cooling & Thermal Isolation: Because of the impressive use of specialised materials and alloys, the Mosquito Hotend is one of the best on the market in terms of temperature control and thermal isolation. The cooling tower, for example, is made of a unique copper alloy that’s even more effective than standard copper, and this means, depending on the setup and filament, it may not even require a cooling fan to operate effectively. Furthermore, the heater block is also made from a specialised copper alloy that can withstand up to 450°C, which has then been plated with a relatively thick outer layer of nickel, and this of course helps to keep the high temperatures in, while simultaneously radiating as little as possible. And finally, what really caught our attention in regard to clever material usage is the heatbreak, which is crafted out of a bimetallic alloy, with copper being the primary metal in places where it needs to conduct heat, and strain-hardened stainless steel in areas where heat needs to be isolated. This results in the thinnest (0.23mm thick to be exact) and most effective heatbreak in the entire 3D Printing industry, and this is precisely what allows the Mosquito Hotend to reach insane temperatures of up to 450°C without massive amounts of heat creep and thermal losses!
  
  
• Adaptable to Fit (almost) Any 3D Printer: It’s always difficult, when designing anything from hotends to door handles, to accommodate all of the different associated models and complementary parts that will be used with it. This, however, is something that Slice Engineering have absolutely nailed, as the Mosquito Hotend is compatible with almost any open-source 3D Printer on the market. By utilising the common E3D design and designing a good range of Custom Brackets & Adapters for the Mosquito, Slice Engineering have managed to produce one of the most versatile hotends in the world, and as long as you aren’t trying to fit it onto a FlashForge or similar proprietary design, you can be quite confident that you will be able to not only make it work, but actually enjoy the full advantages that it has to offer for your 3D Printer.
  
  
• Design that Caters to the User Experience: As experienced Makers who are very involved in the industry, Slice Engineering actually understand the common plights experienced by owners of 3D Printers. This is obvious when reviewing the ease-of-use of the Mosquito Hotend, as Slice Engineering have not only pre-designed adapters and brackets for the easiest installation possible, but have also designed it in such a way that it almost entirely removes the infamous “Nozzle Hot-Tightening” technique that very often trips up newcomers. This is achieved with a clever material usage, with the nozzle and heater block both having the same thermal expansion properties, a precision design that couples the nozzle to the heatbreak, as well as the specially designed load-bearing mounting rods to eliminate any chances of strain on the heatbreak. And while it’s kind of hard to believe at first, this allows for the “single-handed nozzle change”, and because it doesn’t need to be hot while you change the nozzle, this can even happen before the Mosquito Hotend is installed on your printer.
  
  
• Includes  a Tasty Bribe  Free Lollipops with Each Hotend: As a final value-adding factor for the Mosquito Hotend, Slice Engineering have been awesome enough to include some tasty lollipops with each hotend! This really adds to the overall value and quality of the hotend (just kidding, they’re just tasty!) and really shows their passion for the industry. They are not only providing excellent quality parts and components for 3D Makers throughout the world, but they also strive to ensure that each and every customer gets even more than they expect. We simply love this idea, and we feel that it really shows the fun and passionate personality of the brand who is bringing awesome advancements to Hobbyist 3D Printing.

After seeing all of these awesome benefits that the Mosquito Hotend offers to Makers, it’s easy to see why this hotend carries quite a hefty price tag. However, despite the fact that it’s quite a bit more expensive than the Hotend Assemblies that we typically stock, it’s easy to see that this hotend demanded a tremendous amount of research, development and expensive prototyping phases. This is precisely why there are no other hotends or even clones that can achieve what the Mosquito can, and is why, despite always striving to provide the lowest prices for SA-Makers, we aren’t simply getting clones, and we feel that this original Misquito from Slice Engineering a very worthwhile investment.

Additional Resources:

• For more detailed information about the various different products of Slice Engineering, as well as dimensions, schematics and other useful information, be sure to visit this Slice Engineering Documentation Page.
• Furthermore, if there’s anything else you might want to know that hasn’t been mentioned above, check out the Slice Engineering FAQ’s Page, where they have great answers for common questions about their product range.
• Finally, this is a handy Slice Engineering Adapters Page, which contains an awesome range of 3D Printable adapters for various 3D Printers and components. Be sure to take a look at this if you’re struggling with fitting any Mosquito products to your machine.

Finally, if you’re eager to see what the process is to unbox, install and get your new Mosquito Hotend Assembly up and running, be sure to check out the following video for a nice visual demonstration and review: (Bear in mind that the creator mentions Titanium Heatbreak, but actually means stainless steel)