Chube Compact Update July 2026
Here I will discuss progress in direct relation to the Roadmap we released in the last Blog Post. At this point in July, we expected to be finishing up on the final Chube Component. We are not there yet.
We have finished all compact blocks needed for production. This is true as I run out the remainder of our material as I type this.
Below is a re-hashing on all of the Chube Compact components, listing out which are ready, and which are not.
Compact Parts Already Made/Acquired:
- Many Chalice Heatbreaks, which are already treated.
- Heaters
- PT1000s
- Stainless Steel Shields
- Silicone Socks
- Compact Labels
- FIN6 Nozzles for Direct Orders
- Heatsinks
Compact Parts Currently Being Made:
- Heatblocks
- These are plated externally, and then shipped back to us.
Compact Parts To Be Machined:
- Titanium Shrouds (outer shell)
- These are tumbled in-house, no other treatment
- Special Part (more titanium)
- These are tumbled in-house, no other treatment
- More Chalice Heatbreaks (more titanium!)
- These will also be sent for heat-treatment after they are made
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Before making the heatblocks in copper, we first ran them in aluminum in order to confirm toolpaths before loading the copper. This was done to waste less copper, as the cost of copper has gone up a decent bit due to world events.
Before finalizing the tooling paths, we tested several of the produced blocks for a few days before running the remainder of the blocks. This was very important to us as this copper has literally over doubled in price and needed to work right, every time. This is still the most nervewracking part of the entire system, as its final usability will be proven by field use and balancing tolerances is tight.
Yet another Calikitty printed on our in-house heatsink & Block! Note: Our in-house heatsink has improved performance over beta, which should mean an even better performance!
This change of plans plus the additional heat domes (no air con/oil chiller for the swiss, so it can't run continuously) and as of this week the additional smoke (850 AQI) have significantly hampered the update I planned, which was going to be "yup, am done with coppah"
When do you expect to ship?
Copper is almost completely out of the way, and is the most finicky material. However, I had planned on being farther than I am now, and this means that while there may be a chance of shipping hotends at the end of July, its likely they will begin in August instead.
Now for the fun machining stuff!
Here is showing one of the most challenging parts of copper, the stringing! This is before i wrote my own chipbreaker routine, which takes the CAM emitted gcode and breaks it up into infintesimal segments that "break the chip" and make the otherwise connected turnings into individual peices that are easy to blast away and keep out of the tools.
This chip bundle, when not dealt with, wraps around the tool, and then actually *displaces* the tool when it goes in for drilling, meaning breakage for that tool and followup tools, creating quite a problem, and if not monitored, can create quite a bit of scrap!
Sometimes... tools break. Sometimes, they break for no reason. Thankfully, this broke for a sane "reason" but its not the reason I expected. oh well. learning.
Setup
Fixtures for post-machining reaming. The nature of how i have to manufacture these parts creates a burr from copper preferring to deform rather than cut means we need to ream the heater+thermistor hole from threaded hole entries. we've made a fixture that allows only a few seconds per part, using printed parts + extrusion on the press!
