http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:671135

This is my 80cm fan cooler for PLA printing. Specially for difficult prints that have overhangs, without a fan I wasn't able to keep the curlings out. Prior this I used a fan on the side but the air didn't reach evenly.

I used a 80cm fan, because that's what I got in hand. I had it usb connected directly to the printer, but I turned on after the 3-4 first layers, specially if they are the brim/rafts.

Print it on ABS (because the heat too close to the nozzles) and to avoid hard-to-remove supports, print it on slic3r/simplify3d at 90 degress (stl it's already rotated), so you don't get any supports inside the air-exit. If you print it flat you might have problems removing the supports.

Remember to keep the door open since it's the only area that it will hit.

The clip and fan have a really nice grip, on fast prints it stays put, but if there's too much x-y shake, it might move, it shouldn't.

Use it at your own risk.

The design it's inspired from http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:553792 by mordiev, but the measures and clip holder didn't did it for me so I have to start from the scratch.

Note: Both parts do 'clip' ok, but if you are going to print with it, please glue both parts to avoid surprises.

Extra note: I wont be improving this, since in a week or two I'll have an Ultimaker. If anyone on europe it's interested on my DaVinci 2.0A (no more than 60h printing time) for a really special sale price, just send me a msg.

So, for the final design I'll:
- Make 40-50cm size for others fans. (this design it's for one fan I'm gonna use of 80cm)
- Improve the union of both parts so it's harder to break.

Here some photos of the final print, as planned the support its minimum and it printed quite nicely at 0.3, a bit of warp on the 0.3 wall size since this is printed on ABS so it can hold better the heat (PLA might melt). Also this might melt... Who knows I need to test it XD. At the worse case scenario this would make a really great fan since it grabs to the metal bars and behind the connectors so it might have very little or zero 'movement' while printing.

Next post, the final stage and some PLA printing with / without.

Have you done any other mods to print PLA?  Are you successfully printing PLA?

Thanks,

The part that was more challenging was to avoid support, and I was able to do cut the supports to a minimum, and more important the inside air exit has zero supports

Cura or CraftWare does a great job (as does S3D).  CraftWare has S3D's customizable support feature.

I recently made a bracket, and in the vertical direction it had a gap halfway up.   Like this (the gap was part of a spool hanger on thingiverse, so I couldn't just flip it on its side):

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Slic3r insisted on making an elaborate support structure to support the gap.  Except this support structure was always too close to the bracket and would fuse with it (unless I printed extremely slow with a ridiculous cooling time).

CraftWare just printed a "shim" in a direction orthogonal to the "grain" of the gap.  Essentially making an easily removable shim with few contact points.  No elaborate support structure was needed.

Also this it's a beta. I'll post the files on thingiverse this weekend after I make a few ajustments.

My fan box:
- Hangs to the motors and gets a little grip arround side connectors (not cables)
- Pass though the space of the rails.
- Can hold a 'heavy' fan without problem.
- Get's the grip of the metal of the x and doesn't hit on sides so the extruder moves freely.

Problems so far:
- The supports inside the fan are hard to remove, but easy if printed with S3D.
- The front door must stay open. It's the only area where it 'hits'.
- I needto test it futher on 'shaky' prints.