This is an article from 10 years ago but so far I have not seen any 3D printers actually use this.
Currently I’m designing a new toolhead for my 3D printer and I want to make the footprint as small as possible to maximize the usable print area. I’m redesigning an Ender 5 so that the bed of an Ender5Plus fits into the frame of the Ender5 and that most of the area is accessible by the nozzle. The toolhead is one obstacle.
My current toolhead has two 5015 blower fans, one on each side, and they add a significant amount of bulk to the toolhead. The fan ducts are also quite bulky.
Have any of you tried a small aquarium pump with a length of Bowden tubing and perhaps a blunt syringe tip at the end? This way you can precisely direct airflow to the plastic flow and not cool the nozzle down too much, which is unavoidable with blower fans.
I’m thinking towards those cheap 5v USB aquarium fans that you can buy for a few euros from China.
finalarbiter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
The precision of the part cooling fan is largely a function of the ducting, not the fan. For that reason, this is a commonly redesigned part and findable on thingiverse/printables for most standard tool heads.
Alternatively, you are halfway to reinventing a CPAP (yes, like the sleep apnea machine). This is fairly common on high-end Ratrig and Voron builds. They were designed for enclosed printers where the air that a traditional part fan would use is already hot, so the fan gets moved outside to get cooler air and pumps it through a tube to hit the part.
Rolive@discuss.tchncs.de 2 days ago
Indeed and that’s a bit of an annoyance. Hundreds of slightly different fan ducts all claiming to be optimal but the reality is that none of them are ideal.