The beginning of 3D Printing (for me)
I have begun the journey down the path of addiction. And by that I mean, I now own a 3D Printer.
Specifically, I am now the proud owner of an AnyCubic i3 Mega S. I did get it as they were clearing them out as they moved on to the Kobra series, so take anything I say with a grain of salt.
Noise reduction
There are a large number of small upgrades you can do in the beginning to make it quieter, faster, and more precise. What makes this so much fun is you can print much of what you need for these upgrades. Using your 3D printer to make your 3D printer better! The absolute first one I’d suggest is the PSU cover upgrade with much quieter fan. I recommend using CubPrin’s Designs. My printer required version 3.
I specifically bought the Noctua 60mm fan for mine, but there are other variants based on the different PSU designs.
You should also replace the hot end cooling fan with a Noctua 40mm fan, which will move more air and be significantly quieter than the stock fan, which is a fairly cheap off the shelf 40mm fan. I haven’t found a good upgrade for the blower fan yet, but I’m still looking. I will update this page when I find a solution I like.
The second big upgrade I would make is to upgrade the stepper drivers. Specifically 2208 V2.0 stepper drivers.
Using the 2.0 drivers means not having to rewire the stepper motors. My printer is using the 1.4 drivers, and I had to flip the sockets on the motherboard; you can do that or update the firmware to use the inverted drivers. All the solutions give you the same results, much more refined stepper drivers which run significantly quieter and with better precision. I saw the results immediately after making the upgrade. I could run the printer on the workbench behind me without it really annoying me.
Finally the last thing I’ve done for noise reduction is build a cabinet to run it in. This I did in my wood shop, and if there is any interest, I’ll gladly post designs; but it’s a very basic cabinet for now. I am planning on making upgrades to it, and I’ll post about those later.
Heat Management
There is a LOT of heat generated by 3D printing. Obviously.
But one thing that generates a good deal of heat is the controls for the bed and the hot end. I’m not thrilled with the mainboard design that runs the 12V lines through the board for them. To that end, I’ve added MOSFETs for the two, which use the signals from the mainboard. I found this dual MOSFET holder on Thingiverse, but it’s meant to be mounted inside the printer. That design would help move the heat off the mainboard, but keeps it inside the printer, which causes the fans to keep running.
I took it upon myself to make a wall mount version for my cabinet. Mine is based on these MOSFETs. I moved them outside the case with some longer, thicker gauge wiring.
Additionally, I had printed a 50mm fan cooling duct for the new stepper drivers. That fan isn’t as quiet as I would like, but it seems Noctua doesn’t make a 50mm fan. I did order a pair of “ultra-quiet” fans, but they’re nowhere near the level of a Noctua, so I won’t share a link for them.
This is just the beginning of my 3D printing journey. I am expecting that I will post significantly more as I learn more and make more changes to my setup.
I also hope that this will help me make much better woodworking pieces over time; which would be so much fun to work with!
Watch more about my 3D Printing on my Chef Tom Builds channel on YouTube!
