Replacing fans?

Any try replacing the fans in the R1 with something less noisy?

I print ABS a lot, so I'm mostly talking about the power supply fan though the fan over the RAMPS board is also up for question. Replacing the RAMPS fan seems easy enough... but what about the power supply? Is the most noise from the fan itself or the restricted airflow into the printer body?

 

You know I just printed some of Mike Kelly's feet for my printer to install my LCD controller and I did notice a noise improvement just getting the printer up off the table more. I wasn't expecting that last night. I will be taking it apart this week to wire things up, but will take a look to see if I can see anything with fan placement that can be improved. I agree she is not a quiet bot with the fans. I did see on Thingivers a customizer for clips for fans for the RAMPS that allowed you to put larger fans over it. That might help to have a larger fan that doesn't have to rotate like a cyclone to move the air. Do you have the lid underneath yours as well?

 

So my feet I printed off the last 2 days didn't pan out with the bottom cover on. So I took it off tonight. I was surprised to see the one tiny fan (40mm?) over the RAMPS board attached to the cover. Be careful removing the cover because the fan unplugged quick. Robo has changed the layout a few times from what I've seen. I think the betas didn't have any, then the R1 had one (bigger than 40mm from what i saw on the video) added that blew across the board from right to left, and now this little guy. I would say to take a look at this in thingiverse (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:166045) and get a larger fan. That should help with the noise from down below. That's if you are OK with no longer using the bottom cover. I might go without the cover now that my new feet for my LCD controller are interfering. I don't want to cut the case either...yet.

The PS is huge on mine. Not sure what to do there.

As far as the extruder fan and cooler, those are some small fans as well. Not sure how much bigger you can go on those.

 

I'd be OK running without the bottom on, but I really think the main source of noise is the power supply fan. I have some experience opening power supplies... I wonder how much improvement I would get if I opened the power supply and replaced the fan...

Anyone know the specs?

 

It's a 60x10mm fan. The PSU itself is 30A at 12v

 

Thanks!

 

If you figure out a good alternative cooling fan for the PSU that kills noise, please share.

Mike, do you notice a noise drop when using your enclosures for prints?

 

Yup. The enclosure makes it super quiet. @daniel871 would probably agree

 

Can confirm that the enclosure dampened the noises that come from the actual axes/print head/etc.

Lost some of that when I modded out to a dual bowden (the extruder steppers are fairly noisy when they're going full bore), but it's in a huge shop building now instead of the bedroom so the main benefit to the enclosure is that it takes print warping to a minimum.

 

Mike, for the PSU fan, would a 60x25mm fan fit you think?

 

Yeah but I can find name brand "silent" 60x25mm fans for days... 60x10mm... not so much, off brand names like Gdstime and the like, I am just wondering, going to replace all my fans with silent ones if I can, the PSU being the most obnoxious one.

 

A 25mm fan won't fit without extensive modification

 

Dang, well I am thinking about getting another PSU as they aren't that much more expensive then most fans, I can also try some mods to it like getting another fan if that one proves noisy, remove the fan grill and seeing if that helps with noise reduction.