Bowden blower fan mount

[rampeh]

I have been printing exclusively in PLA and have needed a decent layer fan solution. I was previously using this: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:170317, but noticed that my prints would be nice on one side but ugly on the other. I attributed this to poor cooling performance.

I noticed a while back in a previous thread someone had the idea of having a bowden tube to a blower fan mounted off the carriage, and liked this idea, however the length and stiffness of tubing required for mounting off the end effector seemed too much so I decided on carriage mounted fans with bowden tubing to direct airflow to the end effector. This has the advantage of not impeding the travel when near towers! Here's my naive solution. I'm sure it can use a bit of work, but initial prints have been good quality! The volume of air is far stronger than my previous fan shroud.

I used cheap chinese made blower fans (http://www.amazon.com/Brushless-Blower- ... B00BKE27V0) and 10mm tubing.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/WEDx3gO.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i.imgur.com/kBEdCeJ.jpg[/img]

I've posted my design on thingiverse if anybody is interested. I am new to that site so I may not have got all the files on there: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:292663

[Eaglezsoar]

Excellent idea and you pulled it off quite well.
Great job!

[Tinyhead]

Really cool! I like how it keeps the area close to the build plate free from the bulk of the fans.

[teoman]

I suppose if you re- engineered the whole carriage, you could use the sucking action of the fans to cool the extruded.