3D printer toolheads often have large blower fans with big fan ducts ending in small holes and I wonder how necessary that is.

These large part cooling setups are most of the size of the toolhead and significantly reduce print area. Blower fans also do not produce much pressure so those fan ducts greatly reduce their effectiveness.

Does it make sense to, instead of using a blower fan, use a small compressor like for an aquarium and have the airflow delivered Bowden style to a small nozzle? The airflow would be substantially higher than from a fan. Noise isn’t really an issue for a tiny compressor.

Has anyone tried this? I might eventually but don’t have the time to set it up now.

  • paf@jlai.luEnglish
    1·
    6 days ago

    Cooling duct are used to precisely cool down plastic right after it was lay down without cooling down build plate (to avoid warping issue), this enable you to print bigger overhang without the need of support which end up in greater details.

    Unless you have knowledge to create CFD trace, I would avoid it, they were/are tons of poor designs like ring duct which are very ineffective/unprecise. You don’t need really high pressure but blower fan are better than radial fan for almost all designs is why you see them the most (they are also more than pressure which are to take into account but don’t recall).

    As of reducing print bed, it doesn’t, But if you wish to full the plate with parts and use the “print one object at a time” setting, it will reduce the number of object you can put on a plate, otherwise it will knock down parts.

    As an exemple, my first printer which was the OG ender 3 with petsfang duct get better overhangs than my bambulab A1 with stock duct.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8qnCQ7YZhVA