I hope this doesn’t rub anyone at Lulzbot the wrong way because I love everything you guys do and stand for but i’m trying to find a less expensive alternative source to buy the 5V Mini Blower. It seems to be almost a one of a kind. I’ve found a couple of places that sell it and one maybe in a couple of different voltage setups but I no one lists any prices and it appears they have to be bought in bulk or I have to request a price quote. I’m really not THAT much of a cheapo but $18 bucks is a little tough to swallow and I blew the first one I got by accidentally plugging it into the wrong power source it appears.
I’m in the process of building the Dual V2 and need two of them (or to figure out an alternative which i’m considering 2 25mm fans that I have already). Any thoughts?
They do appear to be a bulk item unless you go through Lulzbot.
Did you call support to see if they could help you replace the one that you accidentally fried?
As for alternatives, I have used various designs to employ a 20mm for cooling like Lulzbot is doing on the upcoming Taz6. However, I do not find the price of the micro blowers all that back for the nice compact size, so I tend to use the micro blowers.
piercet has a very nice design that uses a 20mm fan but you will need to build a new x-carriage mount for it.
Tried contacting their upstream supplier (as listed in the BOM) myself, never received a reply. Contributing factor to my decision to just buy quality extruders from AlephObjects.
The high price does make it hard to use these for risky experiments, like operation under 24V PWM as part cooling fans…
I believe he is building the V2 dual extruder (https://ohai.lulzbot.com/project/dual-extruder-v2-tool-head-installation/accessories/) which is the new one with the big metal plate frame. it looks like they use two of the small 5v fans to cool the barrels, and the other two 20mm fans to cool the extruded fillament. Given how tight everything is grouped together in there, theres not much room for a larger fan somewhere else. I can see some potential for a front or back mounted fan with a large split duct, but that would be a challenging print to say the least.
I’ve been giving dual extruder designs some thought recently.I don’t like the idea of a hybrid bowden setup, because one of the extruders is still having retraction issues, and a dual bowden is out for the same reason. That leaves two onboard extruders, which is one of the thing the direct drive ones do a bit better than the wade style extruders - fit into compact space. There are a whole host of other reasons to stick with a Greg wade style extruder, and even with my belted variants and loosing the outer support leg, you can make them narrower, but you can’t make them much more compact with 2 motors. I’m actually considering a stacked motor design, motors inboard and one on top of the other, belts down to the two hobbed systems and two hexagon nozzles in a common mount block with height adjustment for one of them, etc. Would be alot easier to cool off anyways.
But none of that helps sourcing those fans. I checked Digikey, and they didn’t seem to have any of them.
Thanks all. It does seem like a fair price. in the mean time, i’m trying alternate solutions at least for my self-assembled Flexystruder. See pics. STL attached.
