Analysis of various cooling methods

The blowers do much better with restrictive flow, so it's not a surprise to me that they work better. It's only surprising that more printer companies aren't using them stock.

I do a lot of new user training courses for 3D printing and one of the things I teach is, if there aren't posted makes, there is a good chance that the file may not be printable / don't work. Fan shrouds and upgrades are an exception to this. There are so many fan shroud designs posted that people make, post pics of, but they don't actually work. They duct the air to a location that helps some prints, but restrict flow so much that it doesn't help in that many cases.

I will say that the one result that surprises me is the difference between the open shroud with blower and open shroud with fan.

 

I have a ducted fan shroud on one and the stock fan mount (no shroud) on the other.
Honestly... I don't see a lot of difference in prints.
It may be because the duct is on the volcano machine and the non-ducted on the high detail (but non-volcano) hotend (0.2 nozzle).

Even in testing with larger nozzles though I never saw a huge difference between the two. I certainly noticed problems when there was NO fan

Interesting link though, thanks.

 

I am a fan of radial fans (pun intended), but no one really designs ductwork to work with them. Axial fans are also available in many more sizes and are more plentiful. Besides, when you talk about quiet fans, Noctua seems to be the number 1 response (as Steve Harvey says 100 people surveyed and the top answer on the board). Noctua does not make any radial fans.