Back to my CaF printer. As of right now I’m really getting this thing dialed in and I’m getting halfway decent usable parts out of it. However, I have noticed that the better printers have some kind of fan that seems to blow air on the filament as it comes out of the nozzle. From what I can gather it’s to harden the plastic faster so that you can print over gaps without supports all over the place. Is this a correct statement? If show, I thought I would just design and print my own and buy a fan for it. Thoughts, suggestions? How much air is necessary to do this? Can you push too much air? It seems like it would cool the nozzle down and cause issues.
Yes, the fan is for bridging, and ideally you want the air flow on the extruded plastic, not on the extruder itself. There are many examples of fan shrouds and attachments on Thingiverse and Youmagine. Check your board schematics and firmware, it likely has a set of pins already dedicated to a fan, and most software should support some form of fan control.
A good cooling fan will greatly improve PLA print quality on fine detail, overhangs, and bridges. Helps a little with PETG. Not typically used with ABS.
You can overcool most plastics (causes warping) but not really PLA.
@Ryan_Carlyle well pla is what I use so would you suggest I use a cooling solution then? Also, my printer has a fan control option, I just don’t know which plug runs it. I’m sure a little trial and error will do the trick.
Something like this is optimal: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1025471
If you want to design your own, just make a simple duct pointed at one side… without CFD modeling or a lot of trial and error experimenting, you’ll get the airflow totally unbalanced.
Radial blower fans are vastly more effective than axial box fans.
@Ryan_Carlyle Thanks! Probably what I’ll do is just download one of these and just design up my own mounting system.