Cutting holes in the sideplates.

[rick 0]

Hey guys,

Here's my problem. The 2 40mm fans on the side of my UM2 printhead seem to get out of alignment pretty fast by the movement of the printer, after which they make noise like theres no tomorrow at lower rpm's. I don't exactly know why this happens, but i've replaced them about 10 times now and the problem keeps coming back.

So my idea was to go the crossflow way. I have some nice 120mm corsair AF series fans that i would like to mount on the side of my printer. This is obviously only possible if i make 2 120mm holes in both side panels.

I would like to have some opinions about this from the community. Also (and heres a pretty dumb quistion, but gonna ask it anyways) i want to know how UM will deal with this warranty wise.

As in: will this even void my warranty ?

if so, can i get new side panels if the need arises ?

 

[IRobertI 521]

Have you replaced 10 sets of fans and they all make noise? That sounds like the worst luck on the planet if that's the case. If it's simply that the same fans keep shaking loose I would look at maybe changing how they are attached. Perhaps try longer screws and secure them from the back with nylock nuts?

I don't know how they would handle warranty on something like that. I mean, they've been known to be very lenient and help people out even when the user is at fault but if you go and start hacking the panels apart with a saw... They wouldn't replace the panels for sure (although I'm sure you could buy new ones) but they'd probably help you out if something else on the machine fails as long as you don't do something really stupid. If I were you and I wanted to do a mod like that I would replace the panels instead and keep the originals unchanged. Make new panels out of some cheap wood/plastic and attach those instead of the originals.

 

[rick 0]

Hey Robert !

Thanks for the reply. I dont know what happens with the fans, maybe the steel mounts are a bit bent so the blades of the fans scrape them and after a while make the fan go out of alignment. But as you can imagine i'm pretty much done with the 40mm's

Yeah i was thinking about making some new side panels to experiment with, but was just wondering how far i could go with "mods" before UM would say it voids the warranty. I'd like to keep the original panels partly because of the esthetics.(the printer is in the middle of my living room)

 

[jonnybischof 60]

Mounting 2 120mm fans into the sides of the printer doesn't have much to do with a crossflow setup!

A crossflow fan delivers a directed, flat, but wide stream of air. For example 200mm wide, but only 1-2 cm high, blowing (more or less) evenly and horizontally away from the fan.

Your 120mm fans would result in a 240x120 mm "window" of undirected air flow. That means you'll cool everything inside the printer, including the nozzle.

If you really want to try this, then make sure that you block the nozzle from the airflow. This is also necessary with an actual crossflow fan, but with your setup you'll probably have to make a much bigger shield.