TEVO Tarantula Compressed Air Nozzle for stock dual extruder.

thingiverse

In a bid to minimize print head movement and counteract the noisy 5015 fan that was obstructing airflow from my 30mm cold end fan's radiator, I've designed an air jet nozzle that connects directly to an external air compressor! First things first, you'll need compressed air, which I recently sourced from a dead 2005 Japanese massage chair. The chair's tiny super quiet 120v air compressor provides relatively low-pressure compressed air in my home. Since the goal is to focus a precise jet of air just below the hot nozzle, I figured I would generate a straight nozzle in OpenSCAD and then refine it in 3D Builder to get it into the right shape and mounted properly on the printer. It works fantastically well! I tested the jets with a dish of water and created perfect divots. During printing, bridging was perfect, and when I shut off the air supply, edges began curling up, clearly indicating that the system is doing its job. The main downside is the loud noise produced by the air jets hitting the part, especially tubular objects. Just imagine the hissing sound of a jet of air escaping from a tire valve for example, and it changes and varies depending on where the jet is aimed on the part. The 9.5mm OD tubing I'm using from the chair has an inner diameter of 6.5mm. The air compressor found in old massage chairs only produces about 25psi, so if you connect this nozzle to your existing shop air supply, you'll likely need some sort of regulator or valve setup to adjust the pressure and flow. The chair also had a bunch of 12v solenoid valves, which I plan to integrate with my printer's 12v fan output, possibly in a way that offers multiple pressure levels, as well as connecting it to my delta so one compressor can feed two printers. I don't have the stock single extruder hot end, but if anyone has a need for measurements or knows of STL files of it, I can create a version with a single nozzle.