Once all the parts were printed it was time to put it all together.
Mounted Blower Fan with duct hose running to the outside
I bought 50′ [15.25m] of 3″ white marine duct hose online for $40. This was a nice inexpensive way to get the fumes out to my basement window. The hoses are attached to the blower adapters with pipe clamps.
1" flexible hose leading tot he fume extrator nozzle
1″ blue “super” flexible duct hose was run to the extractor nozzle on the extruder. I even designed and printed 3 little parts to clamp the hose to the Z stage.
View of completed fume extration system
The above image is before I wired up the blower fan. This was quite simple because it is an AC motor and can be directly plugged into a standard electrical outlet.
The fumes needed to be extracted from as close to the extruder nozzle as possible (as this is the main source of the fumes). To do this, I designed a a special fume extractor nozzle which would get as close to the extruder nozzle as possible without interfering with a print.
The Nozzle
1″ flexible duct hose is sealed into the bottom of the nozzle with hot glue [not pictured above].
Nozzle Close-up
The print came out quite well for one of my early prints. It did not warp at all even though it is quite thick. This may have something to do with the fact it was printed on fresh polyimide film.
Nozzle mounted to the extruder
Above, the nozzle fits right into the black accessory mount, which was printed on a commercial 3D printer. This mount was designed for future add-ons, like an 80mm muffin fan or, in this case a fume extractor nozzle.
Next up was printing the 3″ duct hose exhaust adapters.
Exhaust Adapters
These adapters just press fit onto the exhaust end of the blower fans. The 3″ duct which leads to the out of the house is secured to the adapter with a duct clamp.
All four adapters mounted on the blower fan
The images above and below show the adapters mounted onto the blower fan.
Angled view: All four adapters mounted on the blower fan
Just to clarify, the events of the majority of these blog posts are from the summer (2010) when I was assembling my machine. I have a lot more posts to catch up on before I really get to the machine as it currently is. I only created this website awhile after I had completed my printer and I felt that sharing its progress from the very beginning would be of interest to the community. So stay tuned for more posts :)
