Monoprice Select Mini V2 original hotend fan

-April 21, 2020

Since I have spent so much time on this, I’m publishing!

Look essentially, I wanted to completely redesign a heat sink and part cooler around the Noctua 40x20mm fan. I have had issues with partial clogs due to excessive lithophane printing. This is still a work in progress. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!

I have added MPSM Cooling Fan V18 and part blower V2.7. This is still a work in progress but i would love some input.

-April 5 2020

Since December 2017, I have been using my Monoprice faithfully.

When I bought it, my plan was to learn 3D design when used with 3D printing as an output. I think I’m achieving that goal.

Since I like to print lithophanes, I have had clogs. Lots of clogs. I’ve had to tear down my factory hotend so many times, I’ve lost count.

The biggest problem with the hotend is something called heat creep. The heat from the heater block starts to creep up and warm the throat of the hotend. This causes a softening of the filament within the throat. If retracted many times, the cooler edges of the filament will start to buildup with in the nozzle. Once that buildup start, it causes under-extrusion which shows itself in many forms.

THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS

I wanted to design a drop-in replacement heat sink / part blower fan. Simple installation with superior cooling results. I believe that I can use a single fan to accomplish two tasks – Cool the heatsink and the part being printed.

After seeing other’s designs, none of them really worked well. Some were contraptions but most were just half designs.

Dual fan/blower combo – I confirmed that there was just too much material which affected the center of gravity.Just too clumsy and no clean solutions

Dual stacked-30mm fans. Worked well, except when printing on glass with clips. I could not find a design that worked to use a two fan design that worked well for my setup.

The Noctua 40mm fan is a really impressively engineered design. For the price, I can’t think of a better part to design around.

Designing the base to adapt to the Noctua fan – was the easy part. Then I had to craft the mounting solution. What I have designed, is a form that fits around the factory half-shell which holds the hotend. Using two – 4x -1 1/4″ wood screws the entire assembly is held firmly.