printed fan shroud in PLA or ABS?

[lance-greene 7]

hey so i was looking at a couple printed fan shrouds for the UM2 and noticed none of them mentioned whether they should be printed in ABS or PLA, does it matter?

 

[yellowshark 153]

My understanding is that fan shrouds should be printed in ABS. Whether that is "must" or "better to" I do not know. I have some shrouds I want to print but I was told they should use ABS, so fearing that the cr*p will muck up my nozzle, they keep getting deferred from the print queue!! I assume their proximity to the extruder dictates (or suggests) a higher melting point than PLA

 

[chrisr 18]

I've used two fan shrouds and both were printed in PLA. Each had provision to fix a small metal shield, cut from a tin can, which follows the contour of the heater block. The "Zetoff" fan shroud did exhibit a tiny amount of distortion from heat on the bottom edge near the heater block, but only after a lot of use. It didn't affect it's working well though.

https://www.youmagine.com/designs/fan-base-um2

The second one, https://www.youmagine.com/designs/ultimaker-2-fan-mount-dual--2

I'm using without any heat shield and there has been no distortion at all.

Of the two, personally I prefer Venkels design, as it's a bit smaller and neater and doesn't quite focus the airflow so much onto the nozzle. It has a bit more broader spread of air. Also you don't need to remove the fans to take it off.

Ultimately, they're both really good shrouds (imho) and well worth printing out :smile:

One other thing, you could always use XT for a bit more heat resistance or that new PLA-HT stuff which looks promising?

 

[lance-greene 7]

with the venkel design, do you use the duel extruder version or the single extruder version? seems like the single extruder version might be more prone to deformation with itsposition

 

[lance-greene 7]

also how about infill settings for it? 100%?

 

[chrisr 18]

I used the single extruder version (Fan-base-v6-rev01.stl) and printed it solid flipped 180 degrees upside down. No support.

I also cut the base off by (I think it was) 0.1 to remove the logo

It looks pretty cool in transparent PLA ;-)

 

[tinydancer 0]

What is the advantage of these shrouds?

 

[lance-greene 7]

they provide better cooling by placing the duct of the right side fan closer to the hotend, the stock one is designed with the duel extruder in mind, but it isnt really needed unless you have 2 extruders, so the printable version places the duct closer to the hot end providing better cooling, its really noticable on the ultimaker robot print, where his right ear is always a bit melted because of the stock fan shroud design, if you print one with the printable shroud it fixes his ear problem.

 

[tinydancer 0]

Interesting, I will give that a try.

 

[eldrick 65]

ABS or other high-temperature material, as PLA will discolor and sage from the temperatures.

 

[tsagos 8]

I also have the one that venkel design, https://www.youmagine.com/designs/ultimaker-2-fan-mount-dual--2

printed with pla with 0% infill. No problems so far but its really early to say. Only 30-40 Hours print time since I got it on.