Can someone inform me what exactly the 50 mm radial fan at the top does ?
It seems to me its only purpose is to blow a lot of air onto the X/Y bearings of the head. Do those guys really need cooling ?
Also, what triggers the fan to turn on ?
It should cool the printed part and is controlled by gcode.
Dylan
The purpose of the top fan is cooling the PEEK tube(s). It prevents these tubes from melting.
I am currently doing some changes on the print head so I cant check right now when it runs or not but I cant recall it runs all the time ?
It seems to be blowing very off distance to the actual print so if indeed it is for cooling the printed part it must be a very erratic cooling.
The small fan should be able to clear away the hot air around the printed part but is actually intended for cooling the PEEK, confirmed by Velleman.
This stupid fan, controlled by firmware, is always blowing and cooling down the printhead when you load/unload the filament but it does not blow when you heat up to start to print.
“is controlled by gcode.” I guess what you actually say is there is no controll temp sensor involved but it calculates when it should turn on !?
There seem to be a very big lack of temp sensors in this build.
Raby: There are no openings towards the peek in the head, only small ones past the bearings downwards. Anyway I hope your right since Im currently are replacing the hot end with a E3D V6 hot end so it will have no purpose anymore.
Still a bit confused though since Velleman confirmed to me that cooling the peek is the work of the small fan!
The 50mm fan is blowing through a small duct on the rear of the PEEK tubes. From day one I’ve put the small fan horizontal so it can pass above the front rod and I can use the front part of the bed (200 mm instead of 180). I’m printing only ABS so if it was this fan cooling the Peek tubes they would have melted a long time ago.
Nope, the fan hasn’t any feedback of a temperature sensor.
Today it was the 4th time the PEEK element jammed (I made no modifications on the fans), I am seriously considering about buying an E3Dv6 with a metal ‘PEEK’ element.
Dylan
In the slicer settings.
Lower the retraction to 4mm retraction speed 110mm