i watercooled my p1s and it was pretty easy.
I was annoyed by the hotend fan and had the watercooling parts here from an older printer.
Hardware:
The Hotend is based on the TZ 3.0 Upgrade hotend.
I just replaced the copper fins with an 10x10mm aluminium square edge that i cut to size. With 2 Screws i can switch back.
I added holes for the mounting screws (M2.5 insets), 2 for the cooling pipe and 2.8mm hole for the heatbreak. As Pipes i bent copper pipes, needed a few attempts but flow is more than good enough. Thermal adhesive and paste on the pipes and heatbreak.
An Arduino nano is used to fake the fan tacho signal. I plan to add a feature to read pump signal / flow and use this to trigger the fake signal. If the pump fails the printer will get no fake signal and stop with the hotend fan error. Also Pump can be controlled from regular pwm signal.
As pump i had the syscooling 67 (phatus kit) and i also use a 90w heater (awesome!!).
Software:
void setup() {
pinMode(13, OUTPUT); // Setzt den Digitalpin 13 als Outputpin
}
void loop() {
digitalWrite(13, HIGH); // Setzt den Digitalpin 13 auf HIGH = “Ein”
delay(1000/750); // Wartet eine Sekunde
digitalWrite(13, LOW); // Setzt den Digitalpin 13 auf LOW = “Aus”
delay(1000/750); // Wartet eine Sekunde
}
Forgive my ignorance, but why? I know why I water-cool my CPU in my gaming rig, but those benefits are not applicable to a printing nozzle. Plus, my gaming rig is static, so the risk of a leak is low. I only see peril with moving PVC hoses filled with liquid around on a core X/Y axis printer. In fact, those hoses are not designed to be flexed repeatedly, so it is only a matter of when, not if, they will ultimately fail. I can also see that many of the advantages of a core X/Y are negated when one must move the additional mass of the water in the hoses. It’s a big reason why Bambu uses carbon fiber rods which this mod completely negates. So, I am genuinely curious as to what benefit this modification achieves. If noise abatement is the sole reason, I can think of a half dozen other methods that could have achieved the same objective without the potential risk of destroying the printer. What am I missing?
I wrote it in the first comment, i had the parts and i didnt like the fan noise. I sometimes print abs, nylon and also have insulation and active heating so it helps to prevent clogs, but thats not why i did it. To be totally honest, just for fun and because i can
I just wanted to share this here for people that are interested.
In fact, those hoses are not designed to be flexed repeatedly, so it is only a matter of when, not if, they will ultimately fail. I can also see that many of the advantages of a core X/Y are negated when one must move the additional mass of the water in the hoses. It’s a big reason why Bambu uses carbon fiber rods which this mod completely negates.
Well in fact you dont know what you are talking about You could have asked about weights and tubing before making assumptions.
You cant compare pc tubing with this. These are extremly flexible silicone tubes. They already had approx 1200h print hours on them and no wear at all so i still use them for the bambu now.
The original (tz) heatsink is 15g and fan removed. I just measured a whole heatsink without bore (prototype) at 5g. So it will be more than 10g lighter. The tubing up to the cable chain is approximatly (silicone with water, 1.2g/mm^3, 5mm diameter) also <5g.
So i even saved some weight at the toolhead or lets assume i take the whole tubing in account as worst case its 5g more. I hope you agree that this wont bother the motion system. Now that you say that i didnt even rerun calibration…
I can think of a half dozen other methods that could have achieved the same objective without the potential risk of destroying the printer.
I and many others would be happy to have you list them here
Before i posted this here i tested ~150h of printing. To check for clogs/function 50% of that time multicolor/material. Only issue was the fan cable coming lose once. I have designed a cable mount by now. Its still WIP
Of course i acknowledge that water cooling has more points of failure and higher risks. Thats the reason i did at least a few hours of printing before posting.
//Edit
Forgot the 2 nuts to secure tubing~1.5g. On the other hand i also removed few mm of aluminium from the cage. I think its clear i didnt add or remove siginificant mass.
//Edit
I also hope the arduino method to prevent fan error is beneficial to the community for other mods.
This is some fantastic work! I’d like to duplicate or iterate on your design, do you have any additional photos/information of the water block assembly? That’s the only part I didn’t quite understand from your post.
Tools + Parts for the hotend only.
TZ3.0 Hotend
drill press
blow torch
square metal (10x10 or 15x15mm) i used aluminium because its easy to handle
copper pipes 3-5mm diameter
Hand drill
drills in different sizes
glue, thermal glue
Build:
As reference for hole diameters i used this model:
Design drill helper: I used tinkercad because its faster for me. I exported the two relevant housing parts on the left in the picture and remodeled the hole. On the right side is my drill helper that sits on the aluminium part that will replace the copper heat sink.
Drill the screw holes and drill the hole for the heatbreak. For the heatbreak i first drilled undersized and slowly took more material to get a snug fit.
I used 3.5 mm holes and glued some thread inserts into it. A better way would be m2.5 tap/thread cutter but i only had m3 tap.
Cut the sides of the aluminum part to fit in the outer housing. Because i used the inserts i remove a bit of the fin material to get more material.
Cut the holes for the copper pipe close to the heatbreak. I did this without any extra preparation by hand.
Heat the copper pipes until they glow (look up some videos about bending copper pipes) and then bend them very tight. I inserted some filament and used a screw clamp to prevent the pipe from collapsing. It took me 3 tries and is not perfect.
Optimise the holes using a hand drill or dremel so the bend also has good contact with the tube.
Glue the pipe into the block with thermal glue. It should look something like the part in the middle or my pictures in the first post now,
Assemble to your liking. You can basically control how wide the heat break is by moving or cutting the block and how and where the outer cage connects the block to transfer the heat from the screws.
I left the distance like the originial tz3.0 and used a 2mm spacer at the top to transfert the heat.
You could have asked about weights and tubing before making assumptions.
, search vzbot water cooling