Maker farm i3v rear-mounted cooling duct by cperiod

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

After installing a servo, I found that my side-mounted cooling fan wasn't going to work, and I didn't want to add more crap to the front of the hotend. That only leave the back of the extruder as an option and while I've had it in mind for a while, it's a tight fit, at least with the relatively short (55mm) Hexagon hotend.
This fan duct mounts to the back of the carriage using a pair of M5x10mm bolts through the two holes beside the bottom wheel mount. That wheel leads to a somewhat convoluted internal shape, but it seems to work out okay.
A 40mm fan mounts with M3x10mm screws.
The design is parametric, so it should be possible to alter it for a different hotend or larger fan.
The duct can be printed in one piece, or two separate pieces and joined with a M3x10mm screw. If you need to play with the vent size/shape, it's a lot faster to print just the vent and attach it to an existing frame.
Update 2016-02-06: added an option to skew the vent tip inwards a bit to focus air closer to the center. Haven't tested, though.
Update 2016-02-13: added ability to load X carriage and hotend models to show the relative positions and a crude concept of airflow. Redid the Hexagon duct (testing shows significant improvement) and added an E3Dv6 version.
Update 2016-03-05: v3 of the Hexagon fan with better wheel clearance and maybe 20% more airflow. Haven't uploaded the SCAD for that as I need to tweak it for an E3D version.
Update 2016-03-13: v3 SCAD and E3Dv6 versions uploaded. I'm going to call it done.
Update 2016-10-16: Pegasus + E3Dv6 version.