3D Printing: Diamond Hotend Part Coolers Design Reviews

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The past weeks (2019/09) I adapted existing Part Cooler designs, and redesigned them in order to work with the Diamond Hotend, as I have been searching for a good part cooler option and did not succeed with what’s out there already.

So here my 3 designs so far with a short review of their use quality:

Dual (or Single) Short Fan Shrouds

At the first sight this looks a promising design, but in reality there were major drawbacks:

  • adjustment of height (vertical) was critical and required fine-tuning
  • tendency to cool down the nozzle instead of the molten filament, in particular at lower layers near the bed
  • max cooling was 35% with my 5015 blowers

Rating: ★★★★★

See details at Dual Short Fan Shrouds.

Ring Cooler

As next I designed the ring cooler, with small holes around the nozzle, also adjustable in the height (Z), but the cooling wasn’t really sufficient, as the nozzle still was cooling off a lot (no more than 45% cooling fan with 5015 blower was possible) – quite a disappointment for the rather sophisticated setup, but this general “ring cooler” design has failed for me also for other printheads like E3D V6 or so, and I switched back to “bull horn” like fan shroud.

Rating: ★★★★★

See details at Ring Cooler.

Single Directional Cooler

This rather simple design turned out the best option so far:

  • wide: 5015 blower runs at 80% without cooling the nozzle too much
  • narrow: 5015 blower runs at 50% without cooling the nozzle too much
  • creates sufficient disturbance around the nozzle to cool opposite side as well

and the XYZ 20mm Hollow Calibration Cubes came out quite well, on all 4 sides the letters were printed OK – not as good as E3D V6 and other printheads.

Rating: ★★★★★

See details at Directional Cooler.

Addendum: Dual Directional Cooler

Although it seemed logical to use two direct cooler, but the amount of air around the nozzle in operation was too much, and it required 20% fan cooling so the nozzle was still properly heated, but this was too low to provide any sufficient part cooling. So this option, without silicon sock on the Diamond Hotend, is not suitable.

Rating: ★★★★★ 

Summary

The winner is the Directional Part Cooler as it brings the cool air close enough where the molten filament exits the nozzle, without affecting the bare nozzle too much. As mentioned, either way a silicon sock would be recommended when using a part cooler with the Diamond Hotend – so far (2019/09) there is no commercial source but DIY approach with this thing.

As you can see I used simple E3D V6 Fan mount in combination of LED Strip holder to lighten up the tip of the nozzle and the printing operation.

That’s it.