Nema 17 Stepper Motor Forced Air Cooling Shroud

Last crawled date: 4 years, 2 months ago

Designed after the NASA Langley Research Center's paper on high temperature printer modifications:
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20170000214
It's a good read. The point of the shroud is to use a pump with a 3/16" connector to force ambient air from outside of your heated printer enclosure into the enclosure and around your motor to keep it cooled below 55 C. The heated outlet releases into or outside of the enclosure depending on your needs. I imagine this can be modified heavily to use with a radiator and liquid cooling technique, but I'm not that smart.
The design presented here is for a 40mm tall Nema 17 stepper. You can modify the FCstd file if you have FreeCAD. The part was designed so you only need to modify the "Motor_Fit_Cut" and "Primitive_Nema" extrusion profile lengths in the parameters. You can modify the Flow_Chanel extrusion length to make a wider channel for a longer/shorter motor.
Testing will inevitably be conducted to see how well it works based on differing parameters like channel thickness and flow. I got a C+ in fluid mechanics so we'll see how that goes.