The H2C is just a tad big for my current enclosure, (though I may still cram it in there), so I thought about bringing back an old (stalled) project which I never felt was tested enough to release. It's an inline booster fan, designed to draw out fumes from the X1C (or any enclosed printer with the right adapter). It should work with the H2C, and help pull the fumes out the back of the printer, where the exhaust is vented. It may also help remove any air that slips by during the recirculation filtering too.
I was gonna work up an exhuast adapter, but found a really cool exhaust duct by Clough42 on MakerWorld, which is designed for the H2 series. He kindly provided the STEP, so I reworked it just a bit to fit my existing hose couplers, and increased the standoff distance by 10mm to clear the poop chute (since it will bend to the left side of the printer). I'm printing the adapter currently, and will need to order some screws to mount it. The plan is to run a short hose from the adapter, over to an inline booster fan, and then duct it from there, out an unused doggie door. Once I get the fume situation settled, at least for a while, I can get down to really using the H2C. I also plan to (finally) release the remixed duct, along with my booster fan design, the hose couplers, and doggie door adapter, once I've got everyting running and tested (if it works well enough). I've got a spares case update planned for it, and some other projects, where it should really shine with it's multimaterial capability.
Fortunately I have all the parts to upgrade the booster to a 2x stacked 6038 fan config. Unfortunately it's been a bit of a pain to get things working, since my Delta fans seem to have a different wiring setup by default, where the tach sense and pwm lines were swapped around. Once that was sorted out, things worked though. But the problem did give me a chance to try out my handy new-ish ZOYI ZT-703S multimeter with an oscilloscope function. I wanted to confirm the PWM signal line and also check the sense return line from the fans. It's auto range worked pretty well to home in on the signal, and then I added the frequency and duty cycle functions to the screen, so I could verify the signal from the controller. It was a lot simpler than I thought it would be, since the UI is not bad. I can see this being really useful for checking PWM signals or other stuff, short of checking logic signals. I've actually avoided using this meter, since I tend to just grab my old basic meter 90% of the time (which works for 90% of the stuff I work on).
With the PWM control working, I was able to test out a few different spacers for the stacked fans, and found that a 15mm spacer seems to work best (a 10mm and 12.5mm were also tried). I'm currently running off the last few parts and spacers I need to test the stacked fan config with a live print. Hopefully the double fan booster will be enough to keep the H2C chamber temps low enough during PLA and PETG prints. If it all works out, and I have some confidence in the design, I may post it on MakerWorld. However for the money, it would make more sense to buy a pre-built inline booster fan, since I expect the total cost to be around $45, with parts from AliExpress. The fans make up half the cost though, so if they were obtained cheaply, it would bring down the cost quite a bit.
The existing design did not have room for any extra components (to support the HA integration), and I think it needed a refresh anyway, so I redesigned it from scratch, with the aim of making it easier to build and maintain. The new design is now mostly completed, but not tested (or printed). I'm waiting on a few parts to finish up some of the details of the design, which I expect will be here in a week.
So I went back and reworked the design to fit either a single (or a stack) of 6038's or one 8038 fan. My current plan is to use the 8038, since the stacked 6038's I am currently running are making noises which gives me the feeling they may wear out prematurely in the stacked config. The updated design also corrected some issues that I only discovered during the rework, and added a few new features, which I hope will make the design a bit nicer to use. The new design will also feature an ESP32-C3 and a 1" OLED with 4 buttons for making some adjustments. I decided to drop the external control pod which my current setup uses, since this design will hopefully leverage some automation using Home Assistant (though it will have a manual override function as well). I'm waiting on the 8038 fan and some other parts, but once they arrive, I should be able to replace my stacked fan setup and test it out - though I also need to print the latest design.










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