Cooling Stepper Motors?
I am looking forward to receiving my Prusa i3 MK2S kit in about five weeks or so (if the seven week lead time holds)! 😀 In the meantime, I have been watching YouTube videos and reading up on various aspects of 3D printing. I have been developing some designs in Fusion 360 and I bought Simplify3D for slicing. I did a lot of reading and research before I got into all of this, and the Prusa i3 MK2 clearly came out as the best printer in every category.
I have not spent a lot of time on this forum, but other sites have mentioned a general concern about overheating stepper motors in some 3D printers, especially when enclosing the whole printer in a DIY heating chamber or box. It seems like this sort of enclosure would be helpful for materials like ABS, but I would see how the entrapped heat might also take a toll on the electronics. A few questions:
1. Has anyone experienced overheating stepper motors with their MK2S? With or without a DIY enclosure for the printer?
2. Has anyone added cooling fans to their x/y/z axis stepper motors? I see some extruder/hot end fan upgrades on Thingiverse (like this
one - https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2342067 ), but little to nothing for the other stepper motors.
3. Is the RAMBOmini board able to directly support extra cooling fans? Or would I need a separate electronics setup of some kind?
Thank you!
Sincerely,
Alex M.
Re: Cooling Stepper Motors?
I've been on these forums for a while now, and printing many hours on my own MK2. Cooling the steppers seems unnecessary to me. I've never heard or experienced any problems with stepper temperature.
My encosure has air vents, so it doesn't get much over +5C above room temp, i guess if you have a fully enclosed one maybe even with additional heating things might be different, that i do not know
Re: Cooling Stepper Motors?
Thank you, Stephan! That's good to hear - I am glad that overheating does not seem to be an issue with the MK2. I guess you get what you pay for, even down to the motor quality.
Out of curiosity, how big are your air vents relative to the enclosure? Do you have some kind of active circulation (i.e. external fan), or do you just let it vent? I have some 2 inch pink insulating foam lying around from a project around the house and I was thinking of building an enclosure out of that. Thanks again.
Sincerely,
Alex M.
Re: Cooling Stepper Motors?
The box is roughly 50x50x50cm i've cut openings all alongs the top of the enclosure 2,5 cm wide. Plus some sort of a funnel going to the vents in the power supply. I initially planned to print covers for them, so i could adjust airflow, but never bothered to actually do so, since i was quite happy with the temperature even after 24h prints. No fans were added, i just grabbed the printer and stuck it in the box, power supply close to the funnel.
I am not printing in ABS, mostly PLA and PLATec so i wanted to keep temperature low inside. All I was looking for was to keep dust, little fingers and dog fur out. And to shield it from drafts. It's a very simple approach, but it worked out for me.
Re: Cooling Stepper Motors?
Thanks for sharing, Stephan!