Ender 3 / 3 Pro Hot End Fan Replacement / Silencing upgrade

thingiverse

#####This is a mod for the original Ender 3 Pro nozzle cooling fan. It can help you if you happen to break one of your fan blades, or if you just want your printer to work a bit quieter. #####PRO TIP: If your fan has a broken blade and you want to print this to save it, break off 2 more blades so you are left with 6 blades in pairs of two. This will help to keep the fan in balance to be able to make its last print :D ###WARNING: THIS MOD IS NOT IRREVERSIBLE: YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO RETURN TO ORIGINAL FAN STATE! ###WARNING#2: THIS FAN WAS DESIGNED TO BE PRINTED WITH ABS. IF YOU ARE USING DIFFERENT MATERIAL, YOU MAY NEED TO RESIZE YOUR FAN A BIT. The idea came to me after I accidently broke one blade from my original fan. After closer inspection, one can notice that the fan has 4 supports on the inlet (metal extruder grille) and 3 supports on the outlet (the fan body). When deciding on the number of blades, it is important to make them not dividable by any of those numbers, or prime numbers that make those numbers (in this case it would be 3, 4 and 2). Original fan had 9 blades, which caused them and the fan frame to meet in 3 spots at once, causing additional noise by resonating. After noticing that, I decided to make blade count higher. Since it cant be 10 which is dividable by 2, I decided to go with 11. I also made 7 blade version, haven't tested it yet tho. That makes fan much less noisy due to removed resonation sounds. After that and quick measuring with digital calipers, I jumped straight into Fusion 360, and a couple hours later the brand new fan was already installed and ready to rock. ####HOW TO INSTALL THE FAN: 1. Unscrew 2 extruder shield screws and 4 longer screws holding fan under it. 2. Carefully remove the fan from the extruder shield. The fan sits very tight and you may need to use a bit more force to get it out . 3. VERY carefully remove the fan hub from the fan body. 4. Using knife or side cutters, remove all the blades from the hub. Make sure that the hub surface is perfectly flat, with no blade leftovers. 5. Push the new fan blades on the bladeless hub. put them upside down on a sturdy flat surface, and then use both your hands to push the hub inside. It should fit tightly, without any glue needed. 6. Put the fan base and hub back together, and power up your printer. Make sure it does not vibrate. If it does, make sure you installed it correctly once again and if that doesnt help you can try to balance it using little blobs of hot glue, plasticine or whatever else. 7. Turn off your printer and put everything back together, it should be 4 long screws and 2 shorter ones to mount the extruder shield back on the printer. 8. Enjoy your brand new silenced Ender 3 fan, like the post and show us how it came out! ##THIS DESIGN IS A WORK IN PROGRESS. I'LL TEST DIFFERENT DESIGNS TO GET THE QUIETEST FAN THAT STILL WORKS, THE BEST PERFORMING FAN AND THE SWEET SPOT FAN. STAY TUNED!