anet a8 extruder fan repositioning

thingiverse

reposition of the extruder fan to allow visual access to hotend and filament. this thing adds an aluminium heatsink and moves extruder stock heatsink and fan 23mm far and 20mm right from extruder motor allowing for visual inspection of the extruder, it maintains or even improve heatsink funcionality by expanding its total surface (IMHO). i designed 3 pieces, fan cover, fan gasket and the heatsink. you can find two versions of the heatsink file, 20 and 23mm deep. the reason is that i only have a 20mm square aluminuim tube from which i manually cut and drilled the piece. if you have the right tools (fold cut & drill an 1,5 aluminium foil) you must build the 23 mm version otherwise you have to use spacers like i did (please see pictures). if you decide to use spacers cut a small piece of aluminium 20,10mm and use it instead of nuts, if you have it, place the cpu cooling paste between each spacer, motor and heatsink. mount the fan so that it pulls off air from the heatsink, the grey label should face left. picture #1 shows the handmade aluminium heatsink; from a 20mm square al tube. picture #2 shows how to install gasket and the fan. cover is totally optional, the stl loaded here is different in that the new has caps for the bottom screws instead of holes. picture #3 shows the final improvment. note also that if you want to use the stock screws you need to add spacers because the screws are too long; not needed if use craft the 23 mm version. print quality has not been degraded nor improved, for sure all the filament +extruder+hotend issues can be better troubleshooted and in most cases solved without the need of disassembling the whole extruder. for other parts please visit my collection: https://www.thingiverse.com/aRGiRob/collections/my-anet-a8 ciao