lunedì 10 aprile 2023

The solution is riddled with problems

So, what's the problem than?

The problem is not enough cooling of the heat-sink by the air flow so it needs more cooling to stop the jamming consequence.

More cooling? Alright, bigger fan, jump from a 30x30x10 fan to 40x40X10, it sorted it out? Yes, passing from PLA to ABS, that bullet missed me by a span. That of course meant redesigning the fan to heat-sink holder to funnel from a larger fan but still match the same heat-sink (did it for Volcano, Hemera and others).

Going up in temperature, going nuts, jams again, so... bigger fan, 50x50x15 this time, so enhanced funnel to same heat-sink system.

PETG sorted, also HTPS.

Rising temperatures again, approaching 300C,warping occurs more and more often, solution, enclosed printing chamber (easy peasy, transparent Lexan sheets, made walls and doors, sorted or so I thought), now the fan sucks in hot air from the heated chamber... this really sucks. Jams again. Plus fans give in from working in hot environment. OK, let's try 80X80X15 fan... well jamming did not really stopped, just happened less often.

Going wet, since introducing cold air from outside would of maybe worked on the heat-sink, it would of also skewed awry the chamber temperature leading again to warping, water be it.

3-4 years ago I started experimenting with water, first take... pricey like hell, radiator, container, hoses, pumps, and feeble, all made to fail in days. But some of my prints take weeks to complete.

DIY steps in, I buy a 3.5 litre jar of transparent HTPS full of... something to eat, I remember I eat that, large lid, I could put my fist closed trough the aperture down in the jar, also bought a cheap radiator for computers, and a membrane mini pump, hooked all together Frankenstein style and... no more jams. Hurray... but it looked dodgy.

So I undertook the task to design a holding device to keep the jar from tripping, to keep the radiator by the jar, than my pump was getting hot enough to fry the motor, so I made a twin fan shroud to put on it.

Happy days, some week long printing sessions went perfect, even two weeks. Than the pump membrane ripped off. Another pump, after all they are cheap. By my count every 100 hours of printing another 10 USD was out the window for a new pump. 100Hours of printing for me is just about a week or two.

Well if the membrane sucks (and when it rips of water enters the motor and fries it) shall we try dual gear pump than, also cheap... it lasted 5 minutes, got that hot not even the two 40x40x10 fans were keeping it at bay. The problem was water volume, the heat-sink head would take a litre a minute, the pump was pushing around 20 Litres per minute, encountering opposition, and dying.

Here we go again.

Peristaltic pump be it.

It worked for a few months before the little elastic hose in the pump cracked, so it pumped well over 2000 hours. 10 USD new pump, plus another 4 to spare, juts in case. Also bought new rubber hose to change it, since the motor was not damaged at all. I tried with elastic silicone hose, but is not elastic enough to pump water unfortunately.

So here is my saga of a series of solutions riddled with problems. Maybe next step is a peristaltic pump with pressure reader that I can set to a certain Litre per minute self adjusting RPM and let it run on it's own, but those cost almost like a small 3D printer.

However in the link (that is this entire text by the way) you have access to all I designed for this solution to print yourself the bits and bobs and go wet yourselves, and if you go to the site map page from there you can see more things to enhance your 3D printer that I did for myself and now you can print and use on your 3D printer.

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