Parametric Axial Cooling Fan Shroud by brasshopper

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

I spent days looking for a fan shroud that would not blow on my hotend but which would provide a cooling air flow. There were lots of fan mounts, but they were all designed to fit some extruder or other. I had a uniquie situation, and I just could not find a fan mount to fit. I grabbed a couple, made clips and they didn't work for one reason or another.
One of them was a parametric openSCAD ring funnel that was not parametric enough. I fixed a couple bugs in that code, learned a little openSCAD. And I could never find the right cooling fan mount for me. I grabbed a couple rings and mounted one on a special clip, and it burned up, just too big I printed another and could not figure out how to mount it. I wasted days at this, just to get cooling air, and there was no solution I could find and use. There were solutions I could find but not use and there might be solutions I could not find.
I went through pages and pages of fan mounts and other random stuff that came up when you do that search.
I finally decided to do it myself.
I mean for every single thing about this fan mount to be parametric and to be adjustable and, so far as possible, for the rest of the fan mount to "adjust" as you make a change - you change one part of the cone and the rest moves around it. You change the fan mount and the cone changes, and so forth.
The cone is designed in two pieces, what I think of as the concentrator and what I think of as the snoot. The opening can be angled, whether in the snoot or, if the snoot is left off by giving it a length of zero, in the concentrator. There is a single mounting tab defined that extends up from the fan mount a parametric amount. The height of the tab can be controlled, as can the width of the tab, the angle of the mounting tab that extends from the main tab, the slot size and so forth. The tab can be straight, angled, or whatever you like. The fan mount can also be angled acutely or obtusely and so forth. You can make the trapezoidal mount of the tab twist or move side to side. You can make small adjustments if you do something I don't calculate right.
There are STL files included in the print, but that file is just meant to be samples to show you generalities - unless you are very lucky, printing that fan is likely to be useless. To use this, grab a copy of openSCAD. Do some measurements. Figure out your fan size. Plug those numbers into the parametric section. Do previews, play around. When you are done, then you can do a complete rendering and a trial fitting. Plan on as many trial fittings as you think you need, based on your pickiness and desires. Enjoy.
I have probably printed 20 of these fan shrouds to make sure that everyrhing works.
I hope that someone else who is in my position can use this and save themselves some time. Maybe one of the artists whose creations I love and can't duplicate. Enjoy.
This is the third version of the SCAD I have uploaded. In this version I properly put the tab onto the trapezoid so that I no longer need to have a fudge factor. I also added tab twist, and the ability of the trapezoid to lean left or right so that it can duplicate some of the mounts I have seen online. Unfortunately, this now means it is possible to create a disjointed mount where the tab is a separate piece but there are adjustments to move the tab back onto the trapezoid.