Cooling fans sufficient?

Vertex 3D Printer Vertex - Issues while printing
1

Hello

I am playing around with 3dbenchy test print.

I am having issues with failed print in the ships bow, in the side cooled by the radial fan. If i turn the print, so the front of the ship is cooled by the small axial fan, then there is no problems. I am not impressed with the airflow of the radial fan, the flow duct seems to bee very restricted by the duct.

May be the machine is not designed for a heated bed. (this must requirer a more cooling)

2

You are spot on slowfoot…

I am trying to du a super slim fan duct under the XY bearing holder. I am on prototype 3 now :slight_smile: Diverting the flow from the back to the printed area is quite difficult, and also trying not to het the hotend directly.

I thought of a completely new design, do the XY bearings need cooling ?

3

Over all the Vertex printhead is a good and realy compact construction but there is much room to improve the cooling.

First “Problem” is imho that both fans are mentioned to fulfill different functions but are connected to the same output.
Second Problem is that both fans are blowing air directly towards the heater blocks so you can´t work with higher temperatures without slowing down the fans. But slowing down fans is causing problems with overheating the peek isolators.
Third problem in my opinion is that the small fan in front costs 20mm of y-axis travel

In case of my Vertex I improved the printhead before printing materials at higher temperatures.

Shortly explained:

  1. Printed a new fan Guide for another stronger and ball beared radial fan (from a 1HE server heat sink) and increased the opening in the extruder mount plate between the two holes for the tube fittings (more air between the isolators). By the way I rotated the radial fan 180 degrees to save space in front for another filament cooling fan construction.
  2. Shaped a sheet of aluminium to fit between the heater blocks and the isolator guides to prevent hot air rising towards them and to prevent the heater blocks from cold air from the fans.
  3. Shaped a sheet of aluminium to close the openings in the lower carriage and machined the lower carriage to guide the air to front side between the two isolator guides
  4. Disconnected the fan for cooling the stepper drivers from fan 2 output and connected it over PC temperature controller directly to the power supply.
  5. Added two wires to the printhead wire loom, connected them to fan 2 output of the controllerboard and on the other side to the new radial fan
  6. Changed settings in Marlin configuration adv.h to use the fan 2 output for cooling printhead instead of cooling stepper drivers.

Since that changes I print PLA on right extruder without any stucking filament and PETG on left extruder at 245 degrees without any problem.

If some of you are interested in more details then I think we should open a new topic in “Vertex - Your printer, creations, and ideas for improvements” forum