Hello 3D Printing Friends! Today on the BV3D Channel, we'll see how to
fix a problem with the LK5 Pro, and make things cooler!
Stick around and we'll get into it,
right after this. I'm Bryan, and you... are watching BV3D!
Hi, welcome back! Hey, if you're new here, and you're wanting to learn about
3D Printing, 3D Modeling, and other 3D Printing-related stuff,
start now! By subscribing, and clicking the bell,
so you don't miss anything!
Okay, so today we're going to upgrade the parts cooling solution on the
Longer LK5 Pro. There's a part to be printed, and some parts to be replaced,
and it PROBABLY voids the warranty, but it works!
Back when I was reviewing this printer,
the parts cooling solution wasn't exactly the best. There didn't seem to
be enough airflow through the duct to adequately cool the model while it was
printing, and this caused the CaliCat test prints to have unhappy tails.
I have to admit, when it came to the stock parts cooling solution,
I wasn't ...a fan.
So I did a little bit of searching,
and downloading, and printing, and what I found was that the solution
to the parts cooling problem was to replace this... with THIS.
Yes, this is a printed fan duct, and it completely replaces the fan shroud around
the hot end's heatsink, as well as the parts cooling fan and its ductwork.
The model is on Thingiverse, and it's called Longer LK4 Pro Fan Duct 5015,
by Voltnik. It's thing number 4131344.
Now before we really get going, supplies must be gathered. You need some crimp
connectors and a crimping tool; more on that in a moment. You need a 24 volt
5015 blower; you need a 24 volt 4010 fan; you need two M4x20 screws to secure the
5015 blower, and you need four M3x12 screws to secure the 4010 fan.
By the way, in case you're curious, the numbers for these fans and blowers are
not just random collections of digits. They describe their dimensions.
A 4010 fan has a 40 millimeter square shape, and it's 10 millimeters thick.
The 5015 blower has a 50 millimeter diameter, and it's 15 millimeters thick.
I always have some of these on hand in case a fan or blower fails. I like the
Winsinn ones. Multi-packs of them cost about $10, so the cost per fan is
under $3 each.
Links are in the description. As you probably guessed, this upgrade will
require cutting wires to install these fans, and it will also require crimping
some connectors onto the wires.
A little over a year ago, I made a video called "Replace the Fans on your 3D
Printer for Easy Future Maintenance," and it covers the tools, and the
connectors, and the process, so I'm not going to cover that in this video.
The "Replace the Fans" video is linked
down in the description, and you can also get to it from this card right
up here. If you're more comfortable with soldering and shrink wrap tubing
than you are with crimping connectors onto wires, you can just solder new
fans into place. Although if you're going to solder instead of crimp you,
might want to give these pre-crimped, solder-ready connectors a look.
And actually, these are the ones that I used for this project. Whether you
crimp the connectors yourself, or solder in pre-crimped ones, either way
works. The idea is to have a connector you can easily disconnect when you need
to replace a fan later on.
But before we go cutting wires and crimping connectors, we need to slice
the new fan duct and print it. I did this in PrusaSlicer, using its
paint-on supports feature, so I could put supports only where I felt they
were truly necessary. So I've got some supports painted on. Every place you
see blue, that's where I've painted the areas needing support. If you use
Cura instead, the files from Thingiverse also include a .3mf file that you can
open in Cura. This will have the custom supports already in place, and you'll
see them when you slice the model for printing.
So I sliced this in PrusaSlicer, with the paint-on supports, and printed it.
And here's a quick time lapse of it printing, because time lapses are
kinda cool.
Speaking of printing, this took me about
five and a half hours to print. Even though I printed it in PLA, I do
recommend printing it in PETG or even ABS if you can, for improved heat resistance.
Support removal wasn't too difficult, and only took about five minutes.
So once you've got the ductwork printed
and the supports removed, it's almost time to get the fans installed.
Before we do that, though, make sure the printer has cooled down to room
temperature, and has been turned off. We have to remove the stock cooling
fan shroud, and we don't want anything to be hot, and we don't want the fan
spinning. So let's remove that stock shroud. And it's just held on by
three screws.
With that removed, snip all the zip ties from about the middle of this
textile sleeve down to the fans, and peel it back to expose all the wires
in the cable bundle.
I'm not able to show this because I already did it, but I cut the wires
to the fans, and added the connectors.
I did notice that on THIS printer, the blue and yellow wires are for
the heatsink fan, and the black and red wires are for the parts cooling
fan. That's backwards from an Ender-3, where the black and red are for the
heatsink fan, and the blue and yellow are for the parts cooling fan.
Now, I don't know if that's something that's specific to this particular
printer in my possession, or if they're all like that, so check to
make sure you've got the right wires for the right fan. At least by having
plugable connectors on them, you can swap them easily if you get them the
wrong way around.
Okay, at this point in the process I'm going to assume you've got the
connectors on the wires, and the stock fan shroud is sitting off to
the side. In addition to the new printed fan duct, we need that
5015 blower, 4010 fan, and the screws I mentioned earlier.
We also need to remove the hot
end from the X carriage, and that's held on by these two screws here.
The hot end is going to go inside the new fan duct, like this.
The fit is VERY tight, so you might need to file the plastic a little
bit to ensure you can get the heatsink in there.
Line up the holes in the heatsink with the holes in the duct, here,
and be careful with the wires.
The ones for the thermistor can be particularly fragile. Then put the
screws through those holes, and mount the new duct onto the X carriage.
Don't tighten those two screws all the way yet, we need them a little
bit loose so we can get the other screw holes lined up. You'll remember
we removed three screws from the stock fan shroud. This new duct has
holes for all three of those, but I'm only using these two here,
because they're easier to get to.
The only way to get a screw tightened down in that third one
is to use the short end of an Allen wrench, and that'll just
take way too long. And besides, the duct is already held on by
the two screws on the heat sink, so with these two here, it's
actually being held in place by FOUR screws, instead of the
original three. Adding a FIFTH screw isn't going to matter.
Okay, with those four screws in place, tighten them down to
secure the heat sink and the new duct.
Next, it's time to mount the fans. We'll start with the 5015 blower.
For neat wiring, I decided to pass the cable through the big opening
here. To keep the cable from being
pinched, I unclipped it from this point.
Wedge the blower's output port into the duct, and line up the
holes. The two M4 screws will hold it in place, and the holes
are sized so the screws can cut their own threads on the way in.
With the blower in place, use the four M3 screws to secure the 4010
fan to the duct. As with the previous ones, the holes are sized so the
screw will cut its own threads as you screw it in.
Here, I chose to have the wires at the top left
corner of the fan. By having the wires there, I can use a zip tie
to bind the two fans wires together, and keep them neat.
Then I can plug them into their matching connectors.
Now, let's turn on the printer and make sure the fans are doing
the right thing. The 4010 fan on the front should be on full
time, and the 5015 blower should be off. If the 5015 blower is
running full time, and the 4010 fan isn't moving at all, you've
got the fans plugged into the wrong connectors. Switch them
around and see if that fixes the problem.
Next, we need to make sure the 5015 blower is working correctly,
since it's under firmware control. So to turn it on, tap
the Tune button on the home screen, and then set the fan
speed to 255. That should run the 5015 full blast.
If both fans aren't running at this point, turn the printer
off, check your connectors to make sure you've got positive
to positive, and negative to negative, and also double
check that the crimps are tight and making good contact
with the wires.
Assuming all has gone well,
it's time to button this project up!
Turn off the printer and use
some zip ties to get the wiring neat and tidy.
Then re-cover it with the
textile cable sleeve. Zip tie the bottom of that, and then
add a couple of zip ties to secure it to the Bowden tube.
Now since the hot end was removed and reattached, it's
probably at a different height than it was before, so it's
going to be necessary to level, or tram the bed. See, I'm
transitioning to the new terminology by using BOTH words!
So run through the Assisted
Leveling process available in the Utilities page. I had to
say "leveling" that time, because that's the name of the button
That's my story, and I'm stuck with it.
So with the new fan duct installed and the bed trammed,
I printed another CaliCat test print. This was the same
G-code as the one with the unhappy tail, and it's set
to run the parts cooling fan at 100% speed.
But this time, thanks to the new duct and the 5015 blower,
the tail came out perfect!
I also printed a CaliCat with the parts cooling fan set to
50% speed, and while not PERFECT, it's still better than the stock
cooling solution. So that means I can run the fan at a lower
speed to cut down the noise it produces. I like that!
So there we go! With a few screws, a couple of fans, and
a printed duct, the Longer LK5 Pro now has what I consider
VERY good parts cooling!
And since this part was designed for a Longer LK4 Pro,
this video would obviously apply to that printer as well.
So by ADDING a blower, we ended up with a parts cooling solution
that DOESN'T blow. Which is both funny and confusing, because the
stock cooling solution DIDN'T have a blower, and it BLEW.
Well 3D Printing friends, that's about all the time we have left
for this episode. And now that we're at the end,
let's go print something cool!
Hey, real quick before you go,
I wanted to say "Thanks!" for being one of the Super Awesome
People who sticks around all the way to the end.
And thanks for all the likes, comments, and shares! And an
ESPECIALLY big thanks to those who directly support what I do.
You are wonderful for doing that, and I really appreciate it.
If you liked this episode, a
thumbs up would be great, and if you'd like to help support
the channel, check the description for ways you can do exactly that.
And hey, if you haven't already
subscribed, please do! It's absolutely free, and it's an
excellent way to help keep me making these videos for you.
Well, that's it for this one! Thanks again, and i'll see you
next time, here on the BV3D channel.