Prusa i4 Cooling system modification

thingiverse

After using Prusa i4 for a while now and following closely the small problems people face, I must say it is a well designed Printer – especially for beginners. However, Prusa i4 has one major issue. The control board heats up. Most of us add fans to cool the board. I discovered 2 issues with the i4 design that are easy to solve. 1) The control board Heating up 2) Some challenges to maintain print quality especially if you are printing a temperature sensitive material such as ABS. Fortunately, both issues are solved with one solution. If you check below the hotbed, the power supply unit is equipped with a cooling fan (its speed changes with the heat level). Above the power supply unit, there is the acrylic cover and the rest is covered by the hot bed! PROBLEM! This means the heat from the power supply unit can’t escape the base unit. All the heat from the power supply is actually distributed within the base affecting the control board! The second effect of this design is that the hot air is blown partly to the table and onto your print! Hence affect your printing quality to a small degree (trust me, if you do the mod suggested here, you will notice a difference and you will be 100% in control of your settings, no external factors to affect them). The solution is to take the power supply fan out, mount it on top of the base (still connected to the power supply original connection point) and provide chimney to direct the air away from the table...and of cause, you need to cut the acrylic cover to allow for smooth air flow – use a dremel, simple. I believe the pictures below are self explanatory. You will need to remove the fan connector plastic using a pin (figure it out) and return it back once the wires pass through the base.