Bell-mouth fan inlet by chadbot

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

There are some excellent fan ducts for the Printrbot - such as this one - that improve considerably on the default duct. However, every one I've used seems to suffer from the same problem, e.g. the fan is trying to push more air through the duct than it really can handle. Part of the problem is that the flow in to the fan is in no way helped by the shape of the fan and how it is mounted.
I decided to try a classic bell-mouth inlet and center body; this is a common strategy to improve flow for wind tunnels and other systems where efficiency and smooth flow are important.
My non-quantified observations (putting my fingers up next to the inlet; listening to the flow; feeling the airflow coming out of the duct by the extruder tip) indicate that using this inlet helps quite a bit!
Even if it didn't make any difference at all to the performance -- it makes your Printrbot look awesome :-)
You will need slightly longer M3 screws to attach the inlet to your fan. I tried to trim down the flange enough to work with the stock screws, but it ends up too thin.
To attach the inlet, the machine screws are left loose enough for the inlet to be put in place, and then rotated 45 deg into position with the screws in the slots. This technique allows the screws to be put in place through all the other hardware first.
The "spacer" is optional - it fills in a few mm gap between the bottom of the center body and the fan. If you use it, just glue it to the bottom of the upper inlet.