Sunday, Jan 21, 2017
First try
Didn’t stick
One of the items I found on thingiverse was this fang style fan duct. This will cool the filament on both sides of the nozzle. I hope it will lead to slightly better prints. I started printing it today but about 2/3rds through it broke free from the bed and the printer started spewing filament into the air. I’ll try again tomorow.
Monday, Jan 22 2017
2nd try, bigger brim
I increased the brim to 12 outlines and rotated the part 90° on the build table. The part rotation was so the larger movements at the top of the model occur in the X direction instead of in the Y direction. That will minimize bed movement and any related vibration. I hope.
Printed
Support material removed
It printed. It took about 10 minutes to carefully remove the supports. I think this will work quite well. I picked this particular design as it uses the stock fans and will let me better see the nozzle when printing. Now to take the current hot end appart.
Part fan detached
Cover detached
Cover removed
4 screws and the part fan and duct are removed from the hot-end fan housing. Another 2 screws and the housing comes off the carriage, giving access to the 4 screws that hold the hot end fan in place. Lastly, 2 screws removed the hot end from the carriage.
Trying not to break anything
Mounted
There is a set-screw on the hot end heat block that stopped it from sliding into the fan duct housing until I whittled away a bit of plastic with an X-acto knive and a round file. Once I got the heat block installed and lined up with the screw holes in the housing I attached the assembly to the carriage. The lock washers used in the stock set-up had to be removed to have enough threads for a solid mount.
Hot End fan installed
Broken plastic
The hot end fan was mounted using the stock hardware. Then things went wrong.
When trying to screw the the part fan to the mouth of the fang duct the very small block of plastic surrounding the screws split in two between layers. That part of the fan was solid fill. I should have drilled out the holes before trying to attach the fan. This wasn’t a case of over tightening. The part split trying to get the screws started.
Cable ties
After some thought I decided to use some cable ties to hold the fan to the duct. Almost perfect. The fan wanted to list to the left ever so slightly. A couple of drops of super glue on the right side fixed that issue. It will be easy to break free in the future should I need to make changes.
A test print shows that everything is working as expected.