Cooling Fan for Flashforge Creator X

thingiverse

I printed AndyGadget's excellent design at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:652185. It seemed like a great fit for my FlashForge Creator X with metal frame, which is essentially the same printer as the FlashForge Creator Pro but without the plastic cover. After installation, the 5015 fan case was sitting about 3mm too high on my FlashForge Creator X. This caused the fan to crash into the printer's metal frame before hitting the Y-axis limit switch located at the top right rear of the printer. I had to make some necessary modifications to the original design. I had already printed the original AndyGadget design, but after discovering the conflict with the printer's metal frame, I modified and re-printed the plate portion. I then physically modified the duct part using a pair of side cutters. I took AndyGadget's two STL files and cut them using Slic3r by 3.6 mm or so. After modifying the duct STL file, I didn't reprint that part, so hopefully I got the virtual fit about right. If you find it too long, just sand it down a bit; if too short, there may be a tiny gap, but pretty much all of the air will go into the duct anyway. You can see the result in the photo. After mounting the parts, I discovered yet another conflict: two of the four top attachment screws for the Z-axis were too long. Luckily, I had two 7 mm long screws in the plastic bag of bits provided by the manufacturer, so I replaced the two 11 mm screws with the 7 mm ones using a 5.5 mm nut driver. No hex wrench was needed on top for the screw head. I had mounted a 12v LED strip on the head carrier (super illumination now), so I just tapped into that 12v bus for the 12v fan using a polarized JST RCY connector pair with 2.5 mm pin spacing as a quick connect. Since the printer's power supply is 24v only, I added a 7812 12v linear regulator alongside the power supply for the LEDs.