FanProject - a soldering fume extractor feat a MacPro-grill

thingiverse

TL;DR first: This printer is being pushed to its limits! The mesh is made up of many intersecting shapes, which means lots of movement and retractions. I strongly advise that your printer be properly maintained before attempting to print this file. I'm not responsible for any damage your printer may incur while printing these files. That said, I've made sure everything is printable as-is, but you might need to add holes for hardware or modify the F3D-file to suit your needs. Happy printing! I recently came across "The Fumagator" by KH, which features a solder fume extractor designed around the MacPro grill. The link can be found here: https://www.prusaprinters.org/de/prints/21788-the-fumagator This sparked my interest, but I had some ideas I wanted to change and he even provided F3D-files, however, I thought it best to start from scratch. I also wanted to learn how to create the grill myself in Fusion 360. For this, I watched a tutorial by Andy Pugh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfaQbrQO2AQ This took around 6 hours from start to finish and I named it "FanProject" due to its fan feature. So, what's different about my version? - First, since I'm doing a lot of soldering, I prefer my fume extractor to be slightly higher. This one is angled upward at 60 degrees. - As I don't want the fumes blown back towards me, even when filtered, I've added a hidden wall behind the front opening of the design to hinder the fumes from coming directly back at me. This is important because not everything will be filtered out. - For the same reason, the opening in the back is slightly larger. I liked the sleek front and didn't want any buttons or DC connector on it. At the moment, I have no holes added for mounting anything, but I'll provide the Fusion-files to edit that for your own plugs and switches. I think even with a fan and plug/switch added, it won't be heavy enough not to slide on the table, so I've added 4 raised places on the edges for small rubber feet (10mm diameter). The weight of the base alone is 145g, and print time around 15 hours more or less. More details: - Everything, just like the original, can be printed without supports. - For the fan, there are 4 parts that you screw onto the fan, insert the fan, and then turn into recess holes in the base to easily secure the fan. - The filter used is a basic active charcoal filter for solder fumes, which can be found everywhere under "ZD-153" or "153-A". It needs to be cut down on one side to 120mm (the filter is 130x130). - The filter is held in with 2 "bridges", which have recess holes on both sides of the main body. EDIT: This is also a torture test for your printer. You'll need to print at a pretty low layer height to get all the details, and that combined with the interesting layout of the mesh means tons of very fine movements and retractions. I printed this on a cantilevered 3D printer, which hadn't seen maintenance in about 1000 hours of printing. This test was so stressful for that poor 3D printer that it began to show all kinds of weird stuff on the print right as it was done with the mesh. The first 3mm of mesh were printed @0.04mm layer height, and took around 10 hours alone! The rest of the print continued in a larger layer height, and so in the end, it was roughly 20 hours of printing. Furthermore, you'll need a beefy fan to pull air through the mesh as the mesh is kinda restricting. Theoretically, you could use less and larger cutouts for the mesh to get better airflow, but for them to work, you'll also need a thicker grill. In the end, I decided not to reprint this and just add a hole on the back and glue a proper connector in there, and call it a day.