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Brass vs Hardened Steel vs Tungsten Carbide Nozzles

Which nozzle material abrasive filament needs: brass, stainless, hardened steel, tungsten carbide and ruby compared, with the settings that change.

· 10 min read

If your filament has carbon fibre, glass fibre, metal powder or glow-in-the-dark pigment in it, you need a wear-resistant nozzle: hardened steel at minimum, or tungsten carbide, ruby-tipped or ObXidian-style composite if you print a lot of it. Plain brass and plain stainless steel are not wear-resistant: Bambu Lab and E3D say so about both in their own documentation, and Prusa about brass.

The rest of this guide covers why, what each material trades away, and which settings to revisit after you switch.

Nozzle materials compared

Material Wear resistance Heat transfer Typical use Notes
Brass Low Good PLA, PETG, ABS, TPU and other unfilled plastics E3D rates its brass V6 nozzles to 300°C
Plated brass or copper Depends on the plating Close to the base metal Non-stick, high temperature, some light abrasives Read the listing; some plated nozzles are sold for non-abrasive use only
Stainless steel Low to moderate Lower than brass Unfilled plastics Not for abrasives, per Bambu Lab and E3D
Hardened steel High Lower than brass Carbon fibre, glass fibre, metal-fill, glow Prusa suggests about +5°C, E3D about +10°C
Tungsten carbide Higher than hardened steel (maker claim) Better than hardened steel (seller figures) Heavy fibre-filled printing Bambu Lab rates its nozzle HRA 90 vs 74 for hardened steel
Ruby tip or ObXidian-style composite Very high (maker claims) Brass- or copper-like body Heavy abrasive use without retuning temperatures Ruby is brittle; ObXidian keeps brass profiles

The "wear resistance" column is a ranking, not a measurement. No maker publishes a wear test that compares all of these materials on the same filament.

Brass

Brass is the default on most printers because it moves heat well and is easy to machine. Prusa's knowledge base describes it as having "excellent heat conductivity" and being "tough enough to print most common filaments." It is also soft. In a 2015 test, E3D printed 250 g of ColorFabb XT-CF20 (a carbon-fibre-filled copolyester) through a new 0.4 mm brass nozzle. The orifice widened unevenly and the tip wore into a dome. E3D called the nozzle wrecked after a quarter of a spool.

For unfilled filament, brass is still the right answer. Nothing below prints plain PLA better than a clean brass nozzle.

Plated brass and copper

"Plated" covers very different products, so read the listing rather than the word.

  • Micro Swiss Plated Wear Resistant nozzles are 360 brass with a nickel-composite TwinClad XT coating. Micro Swiss says the coating is "very hard and abrasion resistant" and "will greatly improve the life of your nozzle" with carbon fibre, wood-filled and metal-filled filaments. They publish no wear figures.
  • E3D Plated Copper nozzles are nickel-plated copper for high temperatures, and E3D says they are for "non-abrasive applications."
  • Bondtech CHT Coated Brass is aimed at non-abrasive materials. For abrasives Bondtech sells a separate BiMetal version (below).

Prusa's knowledge base, describing E3D's Nozzle X, mentions "the poor abrasion resistance of plated copper or brass nozzles." That is a fair warning: a coating wears through eventually, and then you are printing through brass again. A plated brass nozzle is a reasonable middle ground for occasional light abrasives. It is not the nozzle for a printer that runs PA-CF every day.

Stainless steel

This is the one that catches people out. Stainless steel is harder than brass, so it is tempting to assume it handles carbon fibre. It does not.

  • Bambu Lab's filament guide says that for fibre- and particle-filled materials you should "not use a stainless steel or brass nozzle. Their hardness is insufficient, so they wear out quickly, affecting print quality and nozzle life."
  • E3D's 2015 wear test found its stainless nozzles wore at "around 30% the rate of brass nozzles," but "after a single spool of material you end up with a nozzle that has sustained the same damage levels." E3D says those nozzles were made for food and medical use, not wear resistance.

Stainless is fine for unfilled plastics. Bambu Lab sells A1-series hotends in both stainless steel (0.2 and 0.4 mm) and hardened steel (0.4, 0.6 and 0.8 mm), so check which one you have before loading a CF spool. Our guide to Bambu Lab hotends covers which hotend each Bambu printer takes. The Bambu Lab A1 nozzle list shows what fits that printer.

Hardened steel

Hardened steel is the practical default for abrasive filament: cheap, widely available and much more durable than brass. In the same E3D test, a hardened steel nozzle printed 2.5 kg of carbon- and glass-filled material, ten times what wrecked the brass one, with no visible wear. E3D's current product page says its hardened nozzles suit "wood fills, glitter fills, and metal fills," and that "even glow-in-the-dark filaments will abrade brass."

The trade-off is heat. Steel conducts heat less well than brass, so the plastic in the nozzle reaches temperature more slowly. That shows up as a lower ceiling on flow rate, and sometimes as a need for a higher temperature (see settings below). E3D also notes its hardened V6 nozzle is rated to 500°C but "not suitable for printing abrasive filaments at temperatures above 350°C."

Micro Swiss sells a plated A2 tool steel nozzle, heat-treated to 57–62 HRC, for MK8-style hotends. It combines hardened steel with the same low-friction coating as its plated brass.

Tungsten carbide

Tungsten carbide is harder than hardened steel and, according to sellers, conducts heat much better. Bambu Lab sells a tungsten carbide nozzle for its H2 and P2S hotends and states "HRA 90 compared to hardened steel's 74," which it says "results in a 50% increase in lifespan when printing abrasive, high-performance fiber-reinforced filaments." That 50% figure is Bambu Lab's own claim; we did not find an independent test.

Spool3D, which sells tungsten carbide MK8 and MK10 nozzles, lists thermal conductivity of 110 W/(m·K) for tungsten carbide, 26 for A2 hardened steel and 109 for brass. If those figures hold, a carbide nozzle behaves much more like brass than hardened steel does. Treat them as seller-published numbers.

Is it worth it? If you print abrasive filament every week and are tired of swapping hardened nozzles, probably. If you print one spool of PLA-CF a year, hardened steel will outlast your interest in the material.

Ruby-tipped and ObXidian-style composites

These put a very hard material only where the wear happens and keep a conductive body for heat.

  • Olsson Ruby (3D Verkstan) seats a ruby tip in a brass body. It was developed to print a boron carbide composite, and 3D Verkstan publishes a microscope image of the tip after 8 kg of abrasive carbon-fibre filament with the original grinding marks still visible. The catch, per Prusa's knowledge base: "Even though the ruby gemstone is highly wear-resistant, it's also brittle." Crashing it into a print or a bed clip is a bad idea.
  • E3D ObXidian uses a hardened steel insert in a copper-alloy body with a diamond-like E3DLC coating. E3D claims wear resistance "orders of magnitude higher than any other E3D nozzle" (no number published) and says you can "select the profile you would use for your brass nozzles and hit print."
  • Bondtech CHT BiMetal is a copper body with hardened vanadium steel inlet and tip inserts, nickel coated, for "fiber or particle composite types of abrasive materials." Bondtech says the copper compensates for "the lack of thermal performance of the steel," and that the gains are meaningful at 0.6 mm and above.

Before buying any of these, confirm the thread and hotend system match yours. Our guides to nozzle thread sizes and nozzle families like MK8, V6 and Revo cover that, and the nozzle directory lists which nozzles each seller says fit which printer.

Which filaments are abrasive

Filament type Abrasive? Who says so
Carbon fibre filled (PLA-CF, PETG-CF, ABS-CF, PA6-CF, PET-CF) Yes Bambu Lab, Prusa, Polymaker, E3D
Glass fibre filled (PLA-GF, PETG-GF, PA-GF) Yes Bambu Lab, Bondtech
Metal filled (bronze, brass, steel, copper fills) Yes Prusa, E3D, Micro Swiss
Glow-in-the-dark Yes Prusa, E3D, Bambu Lab (PLA Glow)
Sparkle, marble and glitter-filled Yes Bambu Lab (PLA Sparkle, PLA Marble), E3D (glitter)
Wood filled Listed as abrasive by E3D and Micro Swiss Bambu Lab's guide does not list it
Unfilled PLA, PETG, ABS, ASA, TPU, nylon No Brass is fine

Wood fill is the grey area. E3D and Micro Swiss both name it; Bambu Lab's list of materials that need hardened steel does not. If a filament maker's own page says "hardened nozzle required," believe it: Prusa's PETG Carbon Fiber page says carbon fibres "are highly abrasive and may damage a regular brass nozzle," and Polymaker's wiki says PolyLite PLA-CF "does require a hardened nozzle due to being abrasive."

Abrasive filament also wears parts other than the nozzle. Bambu Lab's guide warns that carbon fibre and glow filaments can grind down the PTFE tubes in the AMS, and that "the nozzle and extruder gears require more frequent maintenance."

Settings after switching to a hardened nozzle

Makers do not agree on a single temperature offset, so start from your filament's recommended range and adjust.

  • Temperature. Prusa suggests you may need to "increase the hotend temperature by about 5°C." E3D says hardened steel "can require you to bump up your HotEnd temperature by around 10 degrees." Start at +5°C and go up if layers look weak or matte where they used to be glossy. E3D says ObXidian needs no offset.
  • Speed and flow. Prusa notes that with hardened steel "some standard materials, like ABS, cannot be printed as fast" as with brass. Lower your max volumetric speed. Polymaker recommends a top of 15 mm³/s for PolyLite PLA-CF, with the nozzle at 220–230°C at that rate. Our volumetric flow calculator converts that into a print speed for your line width and layer height.
  • Nozzle size. Bambu Lab says not to use a 0.2 mm nozzle with fibre- or particle-filled materials because "the clogging risk is extremely high." Its first choice is 0.6 mm hardened steel. For 0.4 mm it recommends 0.15–0.3 mm layers and a maximum of about 100 mm/s, and it names 0.4 mm hardened as the first choice for its own PLA-CF, PETG-CF, PLA Glow, Sparkle and Marble.
  • Retune and recalibrate. A new nozzle material changes how the hotend behaves, so rerun your flow and pressure advance calibration after the swap. If you changed the whole hotend, check the hotend listings for what fits your printer.

How to tell your nozzle is worn

E3D's cross-sections of a worn brass nozzle show what to look for: an orifice that has opened up unevenly and a tip rounded into a dome. The University of Melbourne's Prusa support pages describe a worn nozzle as one whose orifice is wider than its rated size or no longer round. In practice that looks like:

  • Lines that are wider than they used to be, and over-extruded top surfaces with the same settings.
  • Fine detail and small text going soft, because the tip no longer presses a flat line.
  • Inconsistent results print to print, which E3D describes as "unpredictable."
  • A tip that looks shorter or rounded compared with a new nozzle of the same model.

A cheap test: print the same calibration part with the suspect nozzle and a new one, and compare line widths with calipers. If you have been running carbon fibre through brass or stainless, assume it is worn and replace it before printing anything that needs accurate dimensions.

FAQ

Do I need a hardened nozzle for PLA-CF or PETG-CF?

Yes. Bambu Lab, Prusa and Polymaker all call for a hardened nozzle for carbon-fibre PLA and PETG. Brass and stainless will print it, but they wear fast. The printer pages for the Prusa MK4 and Creality K1 list hardened options sellers say fit.

Do I need a hardened nozzle for glow-in-the-dark filament?

Yes. Prusa, E3D and Bambu Lab all list glow-in-the-dark as abrasive. The glowing pigment is a hard powder.

Is a stainless steel nozzle good enough for carbon fibre?

No. Bambu Lab says stainless "hardness is insufficient." E3D found stainless wore at about 30% of brass's rate, which still meant a damaged nozzle after one spool.

Is a tungsten carbide nozzle worth it?

Only if you print abrasive filament often. Bambu Lab claims 50% longer life than hardened steel on fibre-reinforced filament, and sellers publish thermal conductivity figures far above hardened steel. For occasional CF printing, hardened steel is enough.

Can I print normal PLA through a hardened nozzle?

Yes. Expect to raise the temperature slightly or lower your max flow. Prusa notes that ABS cannot be printed as fast through hardened steel as through brass.

Sources

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More guides

Bambu Lab Hotends Explained: Which Hotend Fits Which PrinterMK8 vs V6 vs Volcano vs Revo vs CHT: Which Nozzle Fits Your Printer3D Printer Nozzle Thread Sizes: How to Check Fit