Linear Fan Door

thingiverse

I have my 3D printer in my garage to keep the mess isolated there. Because I live in a climate that is pretty cold most of the time I built an enclosure for it to keep the cold air out. However, this means that the box needs to be vented to keep the heat from getting too high. So, on the enclosure I have two 120mm fans mounted. One on the top as an exhaust and one on the side as an intake. However, i wanted to have a way to close off the two fans to keep the heat in when not in use and when heating up the enclosure. I've tried many different linear actuator mechanisms but none of them really worked very well. I think I have finally come up with a solution that works. It is all based around this part from Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B6TWQW5V It is a 250mm lead screw kit that comes with all the necessary pats (pillow bearings, adapter, etc) all in one pretty cheap kit. I then use a Nema 17 motor to turn the lead screw and a piece of MDF as the actual door. It's designed to print with no supports necessary and make placement and assembly as easy as possible. See the attached PDF for the process I went through to build and assemble it. As far as the controls for the steppers...I used an ESP32 board and two DRV8825 motor drivers to control the two motors and the associated fans (and relays). They are controlled via MQTT.