Advice on my watercooling setup

[MK-X]

Hey guys, I'm looking for advice or suggestions about watercooling my Delta printer. I'm using it to experimentwith very, very high speed printing. It's going to have a heated chamber with a max most likely around 90C.

At these temps, my fan on E3DV6 is insufficient, so I need to either to resort to watercooling or having cool air funneled in. I've decided to go with watercooling.


I'm not sure how much watercooling I'll need. I'm going to drive my stepper drivers at higher currents (2A, can I push it further? Or diminishing returns?) to get the most out of my NEMA17s to get as high as accelerations as I can so I will be watercooling an E3DV6 hotend, 3 NEMA17s, the smoothieboard stepper drivers, and at least 2 Extruders inside of the chamber (Floating Extruder setup).




I haven't convinced myself on what kind of water pump i'll use. I have thought about the Kraken hotend pump


Filastruder Waterpump



,but it's only 240L/hr and was not designed with a heated chamber in mind with multiple components.


The rest of components will draw from PC watercooling components, a waterpump/reservoir combo, and generic waterblocks (aluminum) and an RC waterjacket for the E3DV6.


I'm trying to keep all the parts in the loop aluminum due to galvanic corrosion if I introduce other metals. I'll be using a biocide to prevent algae growth which I haven't seen anyone who has done watercooling for 3d printing mention, distilled water, and most likely an anti-corrosive mix just in case since I may not be able to find an aluminum radiator block for cheap.


Now about the radiator block, this is the most important of the loop because it controls how much heat transfer is possible. In the PC world, it is recommended to have 120mm for each component (CPU, GPU, etc). Now, our 3D printer motors don't usually get to that temperature, but with such a high temperature chamber on the extruders, it may be necessary to use a 240mm radiator (I don't mind, the delta printer will be quite large, relatively). I just want to avoid so much cooling that the hotend can't do its job properly (which is my largest worry).




Any tips or critiques are very welcomed. Thanks and Happy Holidays.

[Mjolinor]

I think that guessing at components isn't going to work for this one. You need to do some arithmetic with Watts, Joules, heat dissipation and work out how much heat you want/can get shut of then buy the appropriate components.

I can't work out what you want to water cool or why you want to water cool it to begin with so I can't offer you any advice on it.

Makes a lot more sense to me to put either Nema23 or Nema 34 steppers on it and power them with some reasonable current using TB6560 or similar than to bake the Nema 17. It isn't just heat that kills things, they are designed to work within certain constraints and once you start going outside that then mechanical/electrical failure will occur.

There is a huge difference between quality steppers and the ones that these machines tend to have. I good set of German/US/UK made steppers will work so much better than the ones form China but they will easily cost you ten times as much.

Horses for courses as they say.

[MK-X]

I want to watercool my hot end and my extruders and the NEMA17s are operating within spec, they are rated for 2A, but they are going to be subjected to a high heat chamber (90C).

A fan on my hotend blowing ambient air (90C) at the heatsink isn't going to cool it down. Mine are 86oz/in steppers.

most 3x120mm radiators are rated to dissipate over 600 Watts. Thats beyond what I need, but I do have questions on how much cooling ill need to cool a stepper running at 2A which will naturally run hot + a 90C chamber.

Do you understand why i want to watercool and what I want to watercool now?

[Mjolinor]

My Wanhao works just fine with a heated chamber. I normally use it around 70 degrees as that seems to be hot enough to prevent warping without overheating anything inside. I can't see why you would ever need 90 degrees in there really.

My Stratasys also runs the heated chamber at 70 degrees.

Neither of those have anything other than forced air cooling.

[MK-X]

Stratasys recommends a chamber temp of 70-90, I put 90 as an upper limit to what I'd be hitting. Does your Wanhao use an E3DV6? I don't believe that my stepper motors can handle that kind of heat with the kind of aggressive acceleration settings that I will be using on top of that. I'm honestly surprised to hear that you can run your printer with a 70C heated chamber and not have to cool your stepper motors at all. You don't get skipped steps? http://forum.e3d-online.com/viewtopi...7adadcedc8181d

This guy's steppers shoot up to 120C without watercooling in his heated chamber so something isn't adding up. Also doesn't Stratasys use a massive air duct to force air in and out?

[Mjolinor]

My extruder is just the bog standard Replicator dual.

[Mjolinor]

The Stratasys chamber is sealed. It used one four inch fan to blow air over the back of the extrusion head, 4X4 inch fans to circulate air and one four inch to blow air over the printed material on the SST, the BST doesn't have a fan to blow the print,. The temperature is 70c and is fixed under normal use. It is possible to change it but only by "hacking" the machine and I have never found a need to, 70c is optimum for ABS, I have tried lots of temperatures above and below but 70 performs best.

My Wanhao will print for ever without overheating or skipping steps. I say for ever but the longest print I have done on the Wanhao is around 22 hours.

[elmoret]

The Stratasys chamber is sealed. It used one four inch fan to blow air over the back of the extrusion head, 4X4 inch fans to circulate air and one four inch to blow air over the printed material on the SST, the BST doesn't have a fan to blow the print,. The temperature is 70c and is fixed under normal use. It is possible to change it but only by "hacking" the machine and I have never found a need to, 70c is optimum for ABS, I have tried lots of temperatures above and below but 70 performs best.

Stratasys motors are outside of the chamber. Stratasys doesn't print PLA, if you're ABS only you don't need cool air on an E3Dv6.

[Mjolinor]

Stratasys motors are outside of the chamber. Stratasys doesn't print PLA, if you're ABS only you don't need cool air on an E3Dv6.

Stratasys 768 motors are inside the chamber.

PLA is possible if you change the temperatures.

[elmoret]

PLA is possible if you change the temperatures.

Is that speaking from experience or a personal hypothesis?

Stratasys printers don't have a heated bed, so you'll have trouble printing PLA on them - either you'll have to heat the chamber and the hotend will jam, or you'll have to print on a cold bed and you'll get part warp.

PLA has a Tg of 60C, which is where you'd want to set the heated bed (but you can't, and setting the build environment to the polymer's Tg = jammed hotend)