60mm fan duct for UP Plus2 and Afinia by EduSalete

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

I have tried installing several fans in order to reduce the temperature of the step motor of my UP Plus2 printer.
I tried a 40mm fan duct I found here in thingiverse but the design was really bad (don't worry, I will not show up the name). The model itself was well designed for printing, but the author didn't take much care about the physics of fluids. I used a good 40 mm fan and found out that the flow around the step motor was really low, do to the internal design of the model: the flow is not constant, it depends on the pressure; if the pressure at the exit of the fan is high, the flow will be considerably reduced. Translation: the air must have a generous escape door or exit.
So I decided to create my own fan duct. But instead of using the 40 mm fan I bought a 60 mm fan. Increasing 50% the diameter dramatically increases the flow.
Why do you need a fan? I experienced problems when using certain PLA (most of the brands) and noticed that the step motor was very hot, softening the PLA before it should and therefor preventing it from advancing ("clack, clack, clack" noise, you probably know what I mean).
I have not tried many brands of PLA yet, but the ones I have tested seem to work. So something may have improved with this.