Part cooling fan duct (again!)

DocTrucker

@smece said in Part cooling fan duct (again!):

...zero improvements in performance, air flow looks identical even on high speed camera, but sound levels drop significantly...

How did you visualise flow?

DIY-O-Sphere

@DocTrucker
Just a question, do you use an external power supply connected to the boards 5V input?

DocTrucker

@DIY-O-Sphere yes. Think it's a 2A one.

DIY-O-Sphere

@DocTrucker
Are you also using a 5V part cooling fan?
Can you switch that power supply to an other one?
The reason is, I just remembered, that I had a similar problem in the past with my ramps.
The temp was freaking around the set point. And it was caused by a bad stabilised LM2596 DC step down module.
After adding a big capacitator to the 5V rail everything worked fine.

A Former User

@DocTrucker said in Part cooling fan duct (again!):

visualise flow?

the ones I was designing myself I was using some plugin for solidworks and later I was trying some plugins for onshape... not really very useful to me, neither of them, as I don't know 90% of the things they ask me to set before simulation + the printed part has so many imperfections + air source from the radial and axial fans makes a lot of difference and I have no clue how to set that up so.. it was interesting to play, useless for final design...

so I decided to go with the old proven way and use smoke and high speed camera ... high speed is on phones (I don't have real high speed camera, just bunch of samsung, google and apple phones that have that feature... lot of phones, my company makes apps so we have ton of phones for testing purposes, some have high speed capability ) and smoke I tried number of sources ... burning ABS smokes a lot, cigars (not cigarettes) have good thick smoke, vaping devices produce good smoke (it's I think vapor but who cares looks like smoke, visible..) etc etc .. but the best results I had with some heated oil for train models and smoke machine I lend from my brothers club... black background and good lighting ... now, last time I did it was over two years ago but I doubt any of my findings would be different these days.. and btw results from real life test vs simulators - 2 totally different things can't even compare

now the simplest test I seen ppl do (never tried myself) is with ball of water... it actually gives you air pressure info too so should be done when designing a duct (you put a ball of water under the hotend and look how the airflow disturbs the water surface - check example here 2:44 https://youtu.be/xmZCwJDyxYU?t=164 )

DocTrucker

@DIY-O-Sphere good to be aware of issues like that but no thanks, it's a 12VDC radial blower. The temp plot on tue web control looks smooth and noise free.

DocTrucker

@smece Cheers, thanks I was meaning how do you make it visible. I'd thought of the smoke bombs used to test gas fire exhausts but thought there was far too much smoke. Model train engine smoke generators is a great shout. Someone had mentioned the water trick before and I had completely forgotten!

zapta

@smece said in Part cooling fan duct (again!):

so I decided to go with the old proven way and use smoke

Would this help? https://www.draeger.com/en_uk/Products/Air-Flow-Tester

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=smoke+testers+air+flow&atb=v88-4_g&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images

A Former User

@zapta oh yes, it would, they use them in wind tunnels and a bunch of other places, but I can't find that locally, no store sells them... I even pinged some ppl that work in the air tunnel and they have no clue where I can buy them locally (they order them from some company that brings them all the consumables, and they can't spare any as .. dunno why actually, probably they don't like me enough ) ... I never held that in my hand so no clue how it actually works but I've seen it being used from the far and I'm sure it would be great for duct testing ... but, train smoke oil works ok and smoke machine is great (unfortunately don't ahve access to one any more, brother closed his club and moved to murica )

zapta

I wonder if a IR camera would be useful here. E.g. take an object, warm it a little, place under the nozzle with fan on, and observe the cooling temperature. After all this is what we care about, the cooling pattern.

https://www.amazon.com/Seek-Thermal-Compact-All-Purpose-MicroUSB/dp/B00NYWAHHM