Ender 3 modular ventilation and illumination system
Description
This Ender 3 hotend ventilation system has been designed changing the approach of the air flow for the heat sink. The air will be sucked from the heat sink instead of being blown on it. This allowed several advantages that are listed down here but also has the consequence that you will need to change the type of fan fto apply this design. Down here the list of improvement i think to have achieved compared to the Creality standard ventilation system: 1. Left and Right cooling air flow on the print 2. Eliminate the air bleeding on the printed part coming from the hotend cooling fan with the following advantages: a) more reliable first layers on the print because without an unwanted cooling flow at the very beginning of the print it’s possible to achieve more adhesion on the build plate and less warping b) less energy consumption and possibly more duration of the electric and electronic components because the heating block and the build plate are not continuously cooled down by the air bleeding out of the standard Ender 3 ventilation system (less on off cycles = longer life of the components). 3. Improve the visibility of the hot end tip while printing so no need to get down at build plate height to see the hot end tip printing 4. Better protection of both fan blades so that they do not risk to get tangled accidentally with plastic filaments and get blocked 5. Fast connection of a led trip light for better illumination of the print area (optional, see specs of the compatible led strip in the images attached) 6. Removable terminal cooling pipes with the following advantages: a) to allow easy substitution of terminals and also experimentation with different geometries and materials to improve print cooling effectiveness without need to printing the whole air system body again. For example the terminals can be printed in TPU to be very flexible in order to create no problems in case of accidental crash on printed parts or on the hotbed fixing clips b) once removed the terminals, easy access to the hotend heating block for maintenance. 7. Very easy to print due to a large base and almost no need of supports. 8. Compact system with clean wiring layout 9. No need of screws to connect the two fans and the system itself to the hotend heatsink (everything clips on and stay in place pretty firmly) 10. Sturdy fixing point for all the cables with the use of a simple M3 screw of about 20mm 11. Fixing holes of the old Air System left free if you need to fix an automatic bed levelling device (BL touch of similar) 12. Slight noise reduction of fans (not measured though, just my feeling) Important notes 1. I suggest to print in PETG or superior material for better temperature stability especially for the areas close to the heating block 2. You will need to change the standard Ender 3 axial fan with a centrifugal one for the cooling (specs in the images attached) 3. I tested this system with an all metal hotend from Bigtree tech (pretty similar to the Microswiss one) and it works super fine even at 250°C of the hotend; the sucking centrifugal fan keeps the temperatures of the aluminum heat sink very low and stable. 4. The clipping system to the heat sink can be modified to attach also on the geometry of a standard Ender 3 heat sink (the famous red one!); however, in this case the heat to remove is more compared to an all metal hot end; I didn’t verify if the cooling capacity of this case is enough so be aware and careful about it and make tests and measures to apply it safely. 5. I share this system with the community of makers for free and I hope you’ll appreciate it. Be aware though that it’s your sole responsibility of anything may happen when you decide to use this system in your printer.
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