ANET A8 KISS fan mount

thingiverse

The way the fan is installed on my ANET A8 is a complete disaster. In case of clogging, I'll have to disassemble the entire thing and risk losing my precious Z-offset calibration... As many of you, I don't think the heatsink is necessary. To work properly, a heat sink needs good contact with the element it's cooling. Here, the heat sink has poor contact with the big lower aluminum part of the extruder. The size of this aluminum part is large enough to act as a pretty good heatsink by itself. ==> I can safely remove the heat sink... Now we have to support the fan and make it easy to dismount for access to the gears of the extruder. Many great options are available here on Thingiverse using printed parts, magnets or so... My solution is certainly the simplest ever, using only two M3 threaded rods on which the fan will simply slide... A Keep It Smart and Simple thing! Replace the two M3 screws at the bottom with two pieces of M3 threaded rods. Tighten the black aluminum part in position with two nuts on the threaded rods. Keep the length of the threaded rods long enough to slide the fan on those two rods. The fan will stay in position. If I need to access the extruder's gears, I'll just pull the fan... Done! If I don't have any threaded rod in my garage, I might as well use 2 long M3 screws; just remove the heads... If they're not long enough, I can connect two of them with a printed tube or glue them with a piece of tube; there's room enough between the fan and the aluminum block, and this would act as a fan spacer. EDIT: I've designed a small cover that acts both as a spacer for the fan and as a fan duct, avoiding blowing too much air downwards towards the hot end. Just slide the cover on the two M3 rods, then slide the fan on top of it. EDIT: It's possible to turn the fan the other side (sticker outside) so that it sucks air from inside, thus avoiding pushing dust towards the filament...