Fan on all metal hot end causing warping

Hi,

I have a MendelMax from Blomker.com which uses an "all metal hot end", and a small cooling fan which is glued to the side of the X-Carriage.

I had a lot of problems with warping, even of PLA on Kapton, and I realised that the issue was that the cooling fan was not only cooling the hot end, but also the right side of the printed plastic on the bed (as the fan is on the right - looking from the front).

To resolve this problem, I have put kapton tape under the x-carriage so that the air from the fan only flows horizontally across the base of the x-carriage

I want to make a better cowl from thin aluminum sheet, but don't know if the end of the hot end, ie the part with the heater resistor and the thermistor in it, should be cooled, or whether the only part that should be cooled, is the heat sink above this.

Currently the the whole hot end (apart from the actual extruder head) has kaptop tape around it, and this seems to work OK.

Thanks

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/04/2013 07:17AM by rogerclark.

Make a custom Fan Duct

Examples: [www.thingiverse.com]

The fan should only need to cool the area above the heater block of the hot end. As ddseeker suggests, a custom fan duct would be a good option, though Kapton tape would work just fine as well.

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Thanks both.

Sorry but I've got more noob questions ;-(

I've taken a look at the ducts on Thingiverse and the 2 from UltiBots seem to direct the air downwards onto both sides of the print head, (well there are 2 versions, the newer UltiBots one has duct exhausts on 2 sides their older one had a more circular duct exhaust.

But I thought that my problem with warping was precisely because I had airflow blowing down onto to the printed plastic.

I suppose that in my case, I had the air more on one side than the other, but the newer UltiBots design [www.thingiverse.com] only has the duct exhaust on 2 sides.

They also mention that the duct is for PLA. Does this mean that I'd have to remove the duct if I want to print ABS?

But I may just go ahead and print this one [www.thingiverse.com] and see how it goes.


EDIT.

I've just realised that what @ddseaker was saying, was that I need to make my own custom duct - which is fine. ;-)

I did checkout thinkiverse but the ducts like [www.thingiverse.com] are not intended to cool an all metal hot end, they are to improve PLA cooling and hence help with overhangs etc

Anyway, I'll get there in the end ;-)


Cheers

Roger

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/05/2013 07:53AM by rogerclark.