TAZ 5 Fan Wiring

I received my TAZ 5 a couple weeks ago and am having an almost unreasonably good time with it. That said, I have a lingering question that I haven’t seen an answer to. There are two fans associated with the Hexagon Hot End on the TAZ 5. One is a small fan that points at the heat sink above the hot end, and one is a large fan that points just below the nozzle on the hot end. The wires from the small fan are small, and the wires from the large fan are larger, however, the connectors into which you attach these wires are identical, and have identical wire sizes. My question is, does it matter which connector you plug which fan into? When I turn the TAZ 5 on, the little fan is always on, and the large fan speed is determined by settings of the firmware or the GCode that you are running. Is this correct, did I just get lucky in my wiring? Should I have control of the fan on the heat sink of the Hexagon hot end? Just asking…

Mark -

You got lucky :slight_smile:. If you look closely at the connectors there should be a dot of color on the male and female. Those two should go together.

The little blower for the heatsink should always be on, and the one pointed below the nozzle tip is adjustable through your slicing software and the LCD.

FYI - If you plug them in the wrong way you will fry the tiny blower. Its a 5v blower and the other fan is 24v.

So always look to the dots before plugging in those fans.

Thanks!
Steven

Pretty sure I fried my tiny blower. That or it isn’t running with Repetier. Has anyone seen a location to purchase one?

Call or Email support. From the threads here they seem to be taking care of people.

Thanks!
Steven

You’re right, I was lucky. I checked for dots on the small fan connector and I had it connected correctly. One would think that if there were a chance of burning a fan up they would have mentioned the “Dot” marking on the connectors in step 7. However, what step 7 says is: “Connect the extruder assemblies’ 4-pin connectors: match the Orange/red wire connector pair for the hot end and the mixed color wired connector pair for the extruder motor. Connect the matching pairs together so they lock and click”. It says nothing about the fans, and nothing about dots. If the small fan burns out when incorrectly attached, I’m surprised that doesn’t happen more often.

Mark -

The heatsink fan is new to the TAZ5 since the TAZ4 had the ceramic hotends. I’m guessing it’s an oversight in the documentation. Personally it seemed pretty intuitive to look for distinguishing markings when plugging like connectors.

Apparently not intuitive enough if people are burning up their small fans… In my experience critical connectors can not be miss-connected because they are keyed differently.

Mark -

I must have been very lucky as well. I didn’t notice the colored dot on the fan plug and the other molex connector until I had to take my extruder apart after a jam. The funny thing is i noticed it almost right away when I was reconnecting the wires. If they are going to continue to use the hexagon hotend , this is definitely something that needs to be added into the instructions. As Mhbradner said, I made sure I had the big connectors connected properly as per the documentation. But when there was no specific mention of the smaller wires, I figured oh well it’s just two fans, it must not matter which one gets plugged into which.

Yeah… I guess it was second nature for me to check since I usually number or mark connectors of this sort for RC.

As far as I know, there are no keyed molex connectors… its tabbed or untabbed 2 wire connectors. Maybe they could do a molex and JST (trapezoid)… or reverse the connectors. But the latter two options would go against industry standards from an electronics perspective… driving up costs for custom production.

The micro-mini blower seems really hard to find, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they went back to a 20x20 box fan with a duct.

Wouldn’t it be easy to put a female connector on one fan connector, and a male one on the other? Then they could only connect to the correct connectors in the wiring harness…

Mark -

Sure… but I think industry standard is female on the side of live power, male on accessory side. Doesn’t really mater for these connectors, but its generally not good to have exposed live prongs. :slight_smile:

I suppose, but they would only be exposed before you applied power. They wouldn’t be exposed after you connected them, which is when you would apply power. I’m just thinking a little more effort on their part, whether in the manual, or in the connector design/identification might save them the cost of replacing a lot of small fans, and customer frustration. Just sayin… :slight_smile:

Mark -

Well that’s the whole point… If there’s a possibility it could have a live voltage, that end of the connector needs to be protected from a possible short. Its a safety thing not a convenience thing. Look at any wall outlet, ever seen a live prong sticking out of the wall? :slight_smile:. In the case of the printer, the ceramic hotends don’t require the second fan… It would be dangling with the possibility of a short.

Of course, I could be completely wrong with the plug orientation… I haven’t unplugged mine to check.


You’re right though. They need to add a sentence about the color coding for clarification. Can’t assume anything about end users.

Well mine just died. FYI, only one end is marked on my TAZ.