Building the C-Bot 3D printer: Part 23 : Filament Cooling Fans

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(Note:  Since I posted this, I upgraded the fans to more powerful models.  See that here.)

Total time:  About 2 hours.

Based on previously printed calibration cubes, I knew I couldn’t do any serious printing until I got my filament coolers installed:  I printed out the pair of them, bolted some 12v 40mm fans to them, ran the wires, and quickly realized I didn’t know how to tell Marlin & the Rumba board they existed.

Long story short, this is how I wired all the fans on the board:

  • The extruder cooler fan is plugged into the Rumba’s ‘Extruder2’ / pin 6 (I hijacked it, since I don’t have multiple extruders).
  • The filament cooler fans (one on each side of the hot-end, that this post is about) are plugged into the Rumba’s ‘Fan0’ / pin 7.
  • The two case fans (that cool the stepper drivers) are plugged into the Rumba’s ‘Fan1’ / pin 8.

Then in Marlin:

Configuration_adv.h : 
#define CONTROLLERFAN_PIN 8 // Rumba Fan1:  Case stepper driver cooling fan
#define EXTRUDER_0_AUTO_FAN_PIN 6 // Rumba Extruder2 : Extruder cooling fan

pins_RUMBA.h:
#define FAN_PIN 7 // Rumba Fan0 : Filament cooling fan
Once that was uploaded, the filament coolers got to work immediately:
filamentCooler2
My only concern is they don’t feel like they have enough ‘oomph’:  They’re 12v, .1A, if I buy any more in the future I think I’ll look for something with a higher CFM rating.  But for the time being, they work!  And as you see, some real printing is starting to happen…

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Building the C-Bot 3D printer: Part 22 : Final wiring, near final bot
Building the C-Bot 3D printer: Part 24 : Tuning print settings for the Volcano
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