how do you cool you’r stepper motors??
I’ve added a heat sink to some of my motors as well as a 40mm fan to blow across them. Also adjust the POT on the controller board to try and find sweet spot to turn down amount of current just above what is needed for the motors.
Currently not at all.
The stepper driver ICs are more important to cool.
The steppers on my PrintrBot Simple are cool enough to hold my hand on, even after a long print.
If you’re within current spec, they should be fine. However, if you’re pushing them - you’ll need to add a heatsink as mentioned. A fan alone probably won’t cut it. I had a small dot matrix printer stepper for a while that was getting warm. A big CPU heatsink zipped tied to the back worked wonders! - you can see a bit of it on one the photos here (where I’m upgrading to something bigger) http://www.flyinglow.ca/flyinglow/2013/01/little-cnc-zaxis.html
as above stepper should not be warm/ hot even after 8 hours http://reprap.org/wiki/Pololu_stepper_driver_board
The only one I’m running a fan on is my extruder one as it has a tendency to melt my pla gears.
Even my extruder stepper is cool enough to hold. I suspect the current is too high on your stepper.
+1 on trim pots. My Y does run alittle hot but still doable. Might be due to friction in the Y mechanics.
Good question, I learned a lot; thank you!
@Josiah_Luscher Agreed. These communities are the next evolution of forums where we can help each other out. I’ve tried to start similar discussions on FB, and all I get are “what are steppers?” or “I wear flip flops in the summer to keep my feet cool”…
@Alex_Wiebe On the other hand, I found the RepRap.org forums a little too impatient with beginners.
thanks everyone!
Sometimes I don’t print stuff.
And for a helpful comment: have a look at how the Ultimaker 2 steppers a cooled. They have a duct pointing at the stepper with a fan on the bottom end, this blows air over the stepper and out of the hole in the top of the bot.
Oh and bear in mind, most steppers will quite happily operate up to 80 degrees without significant degradation.
North bridge heat sinks with fans work great. They are the perfect size. Add a little epoxy thermal paste to attach and you are done.
I used to run a 40mm fan on the back of one of my motors (was the extruder). I’ve since replaced that motor and the extruder. Both extruders were Wades, but the old one was standard gears, while the new one was herringbone. I think the motor struggled less with the herringbone gears, so I didn’t have to push them as hard.
With the 40mm fan, I did a hack where I removed 2 bolts from my motor (diagonally opposite, NEMA17 btw) and replaced them with lengths of threaded rod. I put washers and nuts to secure the motor casing properly, with some threaded rod sticking out behind the motor. I then put the fan on (it’s pretty much the same size) and used nuts on either side of the fan to hold it in place. Didn’t even need a heatsink, as the back of the motor housing is pretty good at dissipating heat with a little bit of air.
FWIW: I always find that motors that have gearboxes on them run hot, which is annoying specially as the gearbox itself is metal, and tends to conduct the heat right to the filament drive wheel. I found one machine was constantly shredding filament after about 45 mins operation (from cold) till we put a fan on the back of the motor to cool it down. After that, the problem went away.
As always, YMMV.
Thanks a lot! I liked the fan on the back a lot! think that is what I am going for 
thanks again