Adding Cooling Fans to Your 3D Printer Yields Crisper Prints

3D Printing & Imaging
Adding Cooling Fans to Your 3D Printer Yields Crisper Prints

Keith of Keith’s Electronics Blog added a fan to his printer to regulate how the fabjects cooled and shrank during the print process.

I connected a spare DC fan to my bench power supply, set it just outside the CupCake’s build chamber, and dialed it down until it barely spun. Holy schmoly! The left cap (you’ll need to click the image for the larger version), made with no cooling, looks like an art project woven out of twigs; the next one is extremely smooth on the side that was facing the fan — better than anything I’ve printed before!

Keith gets extra cred for printing his own fan holder (top pic) — you can find similar things on Thingiverse.

14 thoughts on “Adding Cooling Fans to Your 3D Printer Yields Crisper Prints

  1. Bill Porter says:

    Broken link or server down.

  2. Bill Porter says:

    Broken link or server down.

    1. Anonymous says:

      Working now. Must have been server hiccup.

      1. Bill Porter says:

        I use OpenDNS and it returned a failed DNS lookup earlier, but yep, working now.

  3. Bill Porter says:

    Broken link or server down.

  4. Bill Porter says:

    Broken link or server down.

  5. Harvey Summers says:

    Funny – I was just thinking about putting a thermoelectric cooler and enclosing the unit to see if it would make a difference.

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My interests include writing, electronics, RPGs, scifi, hackers & hackerspaces, 3D printing, building sets & toys. @johnbaichtal nerdage.net

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