Mega BBQ Heatermeter Fan

thingiverse

I currently own several HeaterMeter devices that I built from scratch, and I've been looking to create a more customized high-volume fan housing for my 80mm fans. My goal was not to make this housing as compact as possible, so please keep in mind that it's designed to be larger rather than smaller. Living in Texas, where everything tends to be big, definitely influenced my design choices. To connect the fan housing to a 1-inch threaded pipe, I used a 1-inch galvanized pipe. You can purchase pipes of any size you prefer. To make the pipe fit snugly into the BBQ Guru Air inlet port, I ground off the threads on one end using my grinder. Here's a link to my adapter: https://www.bbqguru.com/storenav?CategoryId=2&ProductId=14 When designing, I strive to achieve two main objectives with all my projects - minimizing the number of supports needed and ensuring that parts fit together snugly without requiring glue. To make the fan housing work, I had to include supports to build up the raised floor for the fan. Although I didn't quite reach zero supports in this build, they are minimized. Here's a link to the 80mm fan I purchased from DigiKey: http://tinyurl.com/y35ekqol. I liked its size and airflow performance. Please note that you'll need to secure the fan to the housing using M4 or M5 screws and nuts. I made two cutouts for screwing them in, and used short M5 screws and nuts to fasten it securely. Note that the fan label is oriented towards the BBQ as this is where the air movement will be directed. For the servo, you can use an MG90S servo. They are sturdier and relatively affordable. I bought mine on eBay: http://tinyurl.com/yxtcj588. The servo simply gets screwed into the housing or glued in if you prefer. For the Cat5 connection, I used a standard keystone connector. With some filing, it fit snugly in place. I took pictures to help guide the configuration of the keystone with the wires, but here's the wiring diagram: Keystone # Servo Fan 1 na na 2 na na 3 5V Red na 4 Fan/Servo Ground Brown Black Note that these are wired together and then connected 5 Fan Power na Red 6 Servo signal Orange na 7 na na 8 na na The damper blade gets screwed in last, making sure to note its orientation after connecting it. I recommend first connecting the damper to your HeaterMeter to turn it on and set for manual 0%, then you'll know the servo is in the correct orientation. Also, check your configurations for the servo pulse range. Mine is set at 570 - 2700. The build does take some time. On my printer, it took 11 hours to print the fan housing, 9 hours each for the pipe end and damper housing, and just an hour for the damper blade. Update: August 23, 2019 - I made changes to the base of this design so that no supports are needed at all, making it even stronger than before. I've built several of these now for others, and they work perfectly, especially for larger Eggs or BBQs.