COMBINE COOLING FANS

Did anyone ever combine an extruder cooling fan with a "print" cooling fan.
I would like to use the fan that cools the hotend, to cool the abs/pla when needed.
Any suggestions?

I made this using a RAM Cooler







Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/2014 11:53AM by ShadowRam.

Quote
Fri
I would like to use the fan that cools the hotend, to cool the abs/pla when needed.

What happens when your extruder needs to be cooled but you don't need/want to cool the print? Or you need to cool the print but not the hot end? With a combined system (either multiple fans with a common power source or one larger fan cooling both) you lose control over when the fan blows and how much. Just something to think about.

Well, my hotend cooling fan generates quite some airflow, I would use this air to cool the print, if I need only very littel cooling of the print,
the fan would be slightly reduced in speed which would still cool the hotend adequately. Thing is, it needs to be controlled by the rambo board

Quote
Fri
Did anyone ever combine an extruder cooling fan with a "print" cooling fan.
I would like to use the fan that cools the hotend, to cool the abs/pla when needed.
Any suggestions?

You can't have one thing do different things at different times without having a way to toggle the functions. The only way you could do it with just a fan would be to have it blow on one thing forward and another in reverse, but that would likely wind up being a bit too complex/bulky and limits you to performing only one function at a time, not to mention standard pc fans don't work so great in reverse if they go in reverse at all. That leaves you with using an external actuator, such as a servo, solenoid, etc, to divert the airflow. Doable for sure, but more complicated, more expensive, and less reliable than just putting on one fan for each separate function.