Improved fan shroud

[nick-foley 4]

It's clear when you get to the fan duct assembly step of building an Ultimaker that although the duct is an origami marvel, it isn't exactly a great design. It's tedious to assemble, challenging to install (and keep installed), and not highly optimized for airflow.

After several revisions, we've arrived at an improved fan shroud which allows the printing of significant overhangs with drastically reduced curling issues and much simpler installation. The shape is probably far from aerodynamically optimized, but nonetheless it results in major improvement in print capability.

See test example below of printing a 2mm thick, 75mm dia sphere section. (220C, 0.2 Layer Height, 0.5 Nozzle, 100% fill, Diamond Age Banana Yellow PLA. Prints were flipped over after printing to show overhang quality.)

The one on the left is the most recent version of the shroud design, which produces better prints than the middle one, which was an earlier custom shroud design. The one on the right is the original UM shroud, which could not even complete the print due to horrible curling which knocked the print off the bed.

The design could certainly be tweaked further. Right now the height is set up for use with a Makergear brass tube instead of the UM brass tube, so use with a stock Ultimaker may require trimming off a few mm from the top or bottom of the shroud. The fan mounts to the shroud using #2 x 0.5" plastite screws. The one irony with the design is that it may not be printable without support using the original UM fan duct due to the overhangs...

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:107413

 

[thingster 0]

Very creative design for a fan duct. Cool!

 

[ian 32]

like it !!!! will give it a try at the weekend.

thanks for the great work.

Ian :-)

 

[armstrom 0]

From the description on Thingiverse it seems that this part will only work with a modified hot-end (using makergear brass tube) Is that accurate? I don't want to bother printing it if I can't use it with my stock V2 hot-end. Looks good though!

-Matt

 

[francis 0]

Yes, it doesn't work with a stock V2 hot-end. I tried, it's too high. Nick promised to change his design and post a new version for the stock hot-end the next few days.

 

[armstrom 0]

Great. Thanks for the reply. I'll keep an eye out for it. Or I might just grab the source CAD files and try to modify it myself. Thanks to Nick for supplying the CAD in addition to the STL.. make life easier for those of with the means to modify them!

-Matt

 

[nick-foley 4]

Yeah, unfortunately the source cad is a bit of a mess. I'm traveling for the next few days but I'll try to find time to clean it up and post the stock UM version as soon as I can.