So I have seen a few different designs posted for left-side 40mm fan upgrades, and I’ve noticed that if you decide to add another 40mm fan to the left side of the extruder carriage, you basically get to choose between having it replace the little 5V fan (which I did because that thing was crazy loud) or having the air flow directed towards the print to improve PLA printing… Then I saw some pictures of the TAZ 6 prototype here: http://devel.lulzbot.com/TAZ/Mangrove/photos/Mangrove_Photos and I noticed that third fan mounted in the center of the extruder carriage, which seems like it could allow you to do both.
I don’t know that much about how open source works, so I could be wrong about this, but don’t they publish the dev files? The reason I ask is because I haven’t seen anybody try to add this third fan on a TAZ 5 in my many hours of googling, and it seems like a really good idea. Being an open-source noob (and only having owned my TAZ for less than 2 weeks), is there a reason why people aren’t trying this?
Oh cool, I somehow hadn’t managed to look around in these dev files until now.
I see two fan ducts (left and right) and the extruder carriage appears to have a hole to mount a third fan, so I guess the fan in front just hangs on with the one screw? I could also just be I’m missing a piece… I’m new to this. I’ll have to look again later.
I tried a few times to print and use piercets reinforced extruder mount, which I believe is based on this TAZ6 carriage, but I couldn’t get it to fit quite right in my x-carriage… it just wouldn’t seat quite right. I realize now it would probably work if I used the carriage guide for the TAZ6.
I guess what I’d really like to try is piercet’s reinforced carriage combined with this triple fan setup, but I may need to work on my modeling skills a bit more to make that happen.
The offset side fan works really well for ABS. I suppose I could change it out to a center fan for PLA and use the side mount for a stock filliament cooling fan. I’ll add it to the project list, but it will be a while.
Oh you don’t have to do that, I really want to practice 3D modeling anyhow so I’ll see if I can come up with my own solution… Once I get an enclosure for this thing I figure I’ll probably print almost entirely in ABS anyway so it’s not high priority.
Am I right about the carriage guide though? I printed 3 total of your reinforced extruder carriages and no matter what I did I just couldn’t get it to sit properly in the x-carriage. Hadn’t occurred to me until today to see if the guide model was different for the 6.
You must have got the 1.0 version of the model. It had a minor issue with a thingy in the way of the guide that needed to be trimmed off. The currently posted version in Thingiverse has that fixed. The guide actually is different for the 6, but only in one area that doesn’t affect how things sit. The reinforced extruder mount i designed should fit any of the Taz mounts. Assuming you have the latest version that actually fits heh. Extruder_Carriage_3_1_b.stl is the latest. Extruder_Carriage_3_1_b.stl (828 KB)
Hmm, yeah I saw on thingiverse where you mentioned that there was a problem you had fixed. I must be doing something weird with my settings so it doesn’t come out quite right, because that’s definitely the same file I used… they didn’t want to seat fully on the right side, so I started removing material a little bit at a time until the screw at the top lined up with the insert… but once I got there they had too much freedom and they just wiggled around and weren’t held in place firmly. I’ll try slicing it in a different program and see what happens.
There is a change on the carriage guide that removes the plastic in the way of the right side fan. I also had to modify the original carriage guide when I tried it.
I just printed the new olive left and right fan ducts for my taz with mangrove mount. They have a small lip to direct the airflow away from the cartridge heater and thermistor
