Fan for motherboard  

RE: Fan for motherboard

Hi Antonio, 
I guess that depends to a great extent upon the ambient temperature in your printer area

my printer is usually in the region of 20 centigrade and I have had no problems with either my mk2 of my mk3S's, 

regards Joan

RE: Fan for motherboard

Posted by: @antonio-d6

I've a question: usually all motherboards I have seen since today have always a fan to keep temperature low.

Prusa not. :/

 

It is very strange..... Does it is necessary? I did a print. A test print of few minutes but is bacames warm....

As Joan said, if the electronics are in a space with ambient temperatures under 30C you really shouldn't have anything to worry about. I know others leave the electronics in their enclosure and can get over 40C without problems.

A central processor chip will typically get hot to the point you don't want to touch the chip's case even when the ambient air is 20C, but that is normal - it is still within operation specifications (most CPU's start to have problems when the chip gets to 60C or above - and if in the course of normal operations it doesn't exceed 60C, there's no need for cooling).

That said, I've never measured the chips in my MK3s while printing, so it would be a good experiment to see how hot they really get.

RE: Fan for motherboard

thanks, I'll do this test... 

can you share your "cable-management" for the motherboard, please?

thanks again 🙂

RE: Fan for motherboard

Posted by: @antonio-d6

thanks, I'll do this test... 

can you share your "cable-management" for the motherboard, please?

thanks again 🙂

You don't want to see mine, it's far from optimal, and rather packed due to all the slack (and no better place for "slack management"). One of these days when I do preventive maintenance on the printer I'll rework the wiring, but it's not something I would show off at this time.

RE: Fan for motherboard

Some of us have fitted low profile raspberry pi heatsinks to the stepper motor chips, but on the back of the board not on top of the chip since they are designed to dissipate the heat this way, you can get a kit with the small heatsinks which also come with a larger heatsink which fits perfectly on the Atmel microcontroller (This time on the actual chip).

As already stated, you do not actually need to have any cooling as such unless you are in a particularly warm environment or have mod-ed your printer with different motors, improved nozzle heating etc, where basically you are drawing more power and things do start to run quite warm.

But it won't hurt adding heatsinks and is best done with the board out of the case as you will need to fit heatsinks to the stepper drivers on the back of the board. Note depth is limited so only low profile heatsinks fit.

RE: Fan for motherboard

Regarding your question about the lack of a fan on the motherboard, it's actually quite common for certain printers not to have one. However, if you're concerned about temperature, you might want to consider adding a small fan or improving ventilation in your printing area to help keep things cool.

Additionally, monitoring the temperature during longer prints is a good idea to ensure everything stays within safe operating limits.

RE: Fan for motherboard

Stepping in late here, but having built 2 Prusa I3s and one just recently, I remember reading in the manual that the motherboard for Prusa printers has been designed to be heat resistant and not require a cooling fan.

Cheers

-Bob

RE: Fan for motherboard

Higher temperatures  are not a problem for the board of the MK3**, but are a problem for the board of the MK4 if you want to print PETG, ASA, ABS, PA or PC filaments, no matter what the manual says. The printer will crash very often. Installing a fan on the electronics case took care of that problem for me. The temperature of the board will be about 20 °C lower with the fan.