World's jankiest DIY watercooled hotend (but it works!)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.พ. 2025
- This is a bit of a fun behind the scenes look at a suuuper junky watercooler I put together with hardware store parts, for the ender 3 hot end. I'll build a proper one soon, but I thought you should share in my amusement, and to get a better idea of the BARE MINIMUM. the pump I am using is AD010-1208D, which cost me like $3 or so, but I'll list a better pump below (it is a bit noisier at higher voltages, but still pretty quiet if you suspend it in the water tank rather than mounting it to the side where it can vibrate). I'll do more detailed testing for WHATEVER the final result becomes (IR thermal pics, thermistor down the heatbrake, etc).
TIME INDEX:
0:10 Intro
2:35 Background
7:45 water-cooling basics
8:53 cooling block design
11:14 tube bending
14:55 connecting the tubing
16:34 res and cooler
17:34 pump
19:24 noise comparison
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I just made this modification to my Ender 3 Pro, after a year and a half of failed prints due to constant heat-creep-induced nozzle jams. As jank as it is, it works flawlessly and I am printing perfect layers for the first time ever. I plan to mill a custom integrated heatsink block, but for now this is working! Thank you!
i watched your video and used it as inspiration for my own version but instead of using your cup idea i made a diy swamp cooler which turns out is first of its kind for 3d printing, it works! it works super well. All i did was make a grill on top and have a fan sucking air out of the cup which turns it into a evaporation cooler !
Nice vid, thanks! On my A8 I used a cheap dc speed controller to reduce the hot end cooling fan's speed, and printed a TPU mounting for it, just slips onto the radiator fins. Very quiet, and I can turn the speed up if I need more cooling (which I don't). And the fan lasts much longer with the TPU mount and reduced speed.
This reminds me of liquid cooling my PC years ago. Awesome Job.
VERY COOL!!! It's amazing how simple it can be.... I would have thought a rad and a cooling fan was needed....
I did water cooling of my Rep2X in 2016 using these same "jank" techniques and it solved a lot of heat creep issues. Since there was no air movement anymore I actually had a bit of an issue with part cooling (ABS). So I still recommend a *very* small amount of fan....like the smallest fan you can get and can even run on low speed to reduce noise. I tried to go back to non-water cooled and just tweak the print head but nah it's a huge pain...going back to water cooled again! :)
The wattage of the heater cartridges is pretty low. You could probably get away with a much smaller tubing like 4mm OD nylon tubing and maybe PC4-M6 connectors. Copper is overkill too. Aluminum is cheap and easy to machine or solder and has high thermal conductivity. It really doesn't take much energy to get a hotend up to temperature and the specific heat of water is really high by comparison.
I have just discovery your channel. This is awesome! Great quality! Thank you very much for your efforts!
I have a bunch of parts I can use to do this. This will be a fun project.
From my experiences with PC water cooling in the early 00's, it's worth the money to buy a decent pump. My first setup used a cheap pump, which failed and left me with a cooked AMD Athlon (they didn't have thermal throttling at the time).
Funny little project, but nothing 2x Noctua 40x40x20 fans can't handle. Mine is absolute quiet, and together with a resistor for the powersupply fan, and the TMC2208 stepper drivers, Ender 3 is the most quiet printer i own. But its always fun to do projects like this..... thanks for sharing, it was worth watching.
Fun fact - in an old interview with E3D, they mentioned that the "V6 lite" (stainless steel instead of alu) was originally meant as passive cooler, but it wouldn't work well in warmer climates. With (now) cheap-ish titanium heatbreaks, I reckon going passive is perfectly possible. Not as cool as your pimped up pipes, though!
They have cheap springs for bending. They work pretty damn good too... Slide spring over copper, bend, and remove spring. Just google it, or search at amazon directly
I have never tried those bending springs since I assumed they weren't all that great, but I'll give it a try if you have had good luck with them.
@@AlexKenis Tubing springs work very well IMO. The thing is, you can make ugly bends with ANY tubing bending method. The springs only require a small amount of technique though. You can even bend hard copper pipe with a spring without any issues. The soft copper that you purchased would bend like a dream.
Personally, I would have went up 1 step beyond what you did here. Ebay gives access to plenty of off-cuts for copper chunks or even aluminum. Find something of suitable size, drill it through and tap it for the fittings n such, then drill a blind hole next to each side of the fitting then drill a connecting hole on the face of the block (an internal L shape for water flow). Use some soft copper 1/8 tubing to create pipes coming out of the block, with a U shape connecting the 2 face holes. Anyway, it would be a fun experiment.. So many options when I think about it, would be pretty easy to make a compact little heat sink. If a person practices enough, you can get really good at hand drilling a nice straight hole, or find a friend with drill press, even a cheap one will provide results more than good enough. As long as you use good sharp drill bits.
The heat break and teflon REALLY helps with heat not transferring, so you really don't need much in the way of cooling a ptfe lined setup. Even all metal setups don't need very much. I'd be willing to bet that a silent noctua fan would have done the trick (in your setup). I'm currently testing different fans on my titan aero, and so far the results show no discernible differences for ABS or PETG. I haven't gone over 250 Celsius, so I can't say what it will do at higher temps. And yes, I know this is an exercise in creation, I approve 100%. It always a good idea to add things to a printer that aren't really needed (no sarcasm intended at all), I love to tinker with crap anytime the mood strikes me. If I had water cooling on my printer, well the next step would be a full enclosure.
There's an rc boat motor cooling sleeve you can just epoxy over the thing.
I hate PTFE tubes going down into the nozzle. Years ago I had issues printing PLA at 215c shrinking the end of the tube.
Using fan setup for hot end and when printer is printing its 35db, close range. I had 42db before its to much but 35db is nice. So whit water cooling i could achieve around 30db, lowest would be 25-26 db, there is no way to get lower than this, its the ambient noise, maybe at night only. Good video.
I wonder if you could make one with greased o-rings and a 3d printed shell for the stock hotend
It'd be nice if I could buy a block of aluminum and tap a heatbreak thread into it. And make 2 holes for water
For even more super effective cooling you could put your reservoir outside! Don't stop printing though assuming its below 0C there.
@Alex Kenis You mentioned using a thermistor for this test though you didn't show mounting it. I have often wondered what the best way to mount a thermistor to a v6 style heatsink to watch for heat creep and/or cooling efficiency. Where and how would you mount the thermistor? I've also pondered monitoring the sensor output of the 3 wire fans almost everyone has to infer the same data. In the case of the sensor output of 3 wire fans it would be more of a go/no-go failure detection type thing.
I bought a few PWM versions of fans and may use the third wire from the hal sensor for RPM data. If I were a manufacturer, I would likely go with 3-wire to better tune-in stock profiles using actual RPM data rather than just a percentage. As far as the thermistors, I take out the bowden and stuff them down the heatbrake at different points. Obviously you can't print while doing that though, so in the past I have just stuffed them against the heatbrake or drilled little divots and held them in with thermal paste and Kapton or vhb tape
I'm pretty sure the zipties make it worse because they cause the pressure around the tubes to be unequal, where it used to be equally distributed before by just the heatshrink tubing.
This video is informative, useful and enjoyable. This channel is full of valuable information.
This is actually pretty nice. The actually janky setup would be to reuse the original heatsink, and simply let water flow around it, using some sort of 3d printed chamber with fittings on it. Might just work.
I found 80x80mm radiator to be plenty for high temp dual head. You can use smaller radiators but they're harder to find and cost more. But your fancy cup reservoir seems to work pretty well.
Good to know! I ordered on off aliexpress, but it was in the "no show" order. It was like... really cheap. I may try again but on ebay.
"Jankie"??? Naw way bro! Jankie would be if you just wound tubing directly around the hot end! Excellent work!!
oh yes!
pro trick : you can watch series at Flixzone. Been using it for watching all kinds of movies these days.
@Gary Alden yea, have been using flixzone for months myself :D
@Gary Alden definitely, have been watching on flixzone for since november myself :)
Damn, I was literally thinking yesterday about water cooling hotends even if they existed at all and you just make the video. I saw some guy just move stock fan higher 10mm and to the right 10mm so it's directly on the radiator and put a slate to block air to the nozzle.
The imperfections in the copper tubing from bending could cause cavitation which could result in erosion, particularly in the pump, over time.
I have 3 working closed loop PC coolers, They are very efficient at overclocking. The pump is located inside the water block and the water block weighs a ton because of the infinity mirror illusion. I'm curious, Should i not use them? Should i use one for water cooling the power supply?
I feel your pain with the water cooling of a printer. My first setup was to use a spare heating block with a pipe through the cartridge opening with hoses out either side, $10 radiator from amazon and the same $8 pump you grabbed.
I also tried doing peltier coolers and found them to be more trouble then they are worth. The hot side needs so much cooling to keep the cold side cool it needs its own much larger cooling system to be effective. You may have found this out at this point given it had been months since you made this video. I’ve been refining my setup for the past year and a half. Hit me up if you want more info from me. I also am on the big 3DPrinters discord. Have fun with it and hope you are doing better with all the craziness out there.
I'm still waiting for the perfect fan duct video
why is that stock looking photo of the hotend form the ender 3 (i think) missing a fan blade? See 2:39 is that how they come? That would would be loud.
Very interesting, this takes me back to when i 1st started watercooling pc's and good results too.. although they looked hideous, now I use premium parts and proper coolant its easier and more reliable, one thing I have often wondered is if it is possible to 3d print a reliable water block upper to fit over a small flat plate and then sealed it with an O-ring ? nice experiment by the way I hope to see how this progresses - be careful of mixing copper and aluminium in the same loop without an inhibitor - gungy things will happen over time with that one especially if running tap water - thanks for posting, happy new year and will tune in for the next instalment
Yes, on Thingiverse check out my “Penny waterblock”, which as you guessed it is a copper penny sanded smooth pressed into a 3d printed block enclosure for cooking microprocessors like my water cooled tablet to things like my water cooled L298N duel H bridge motor drivers. For reference point, the tablet is overclocked and runs 40c cooler than stock speeds out of the box, so it’s obviously working very well.
I mean why wouldn’t it work? You only need a semi-good later adhesion for the walls, it’s like the same as acrylic blocks.
i want to try this but use a small aluminium pc water block
nice work :)im gonna try this for sure Alex ! happy new year man!
Is this still working to this day?
DISCLAIMER!!!! Wait for the copper tube to cool down before bending it by hand (there are many kids out there that don't understand the concept of video editing)
Yes! Plunge it in cold water first PLEASE! I should have emphasized that.
Why not printing a (overextruded) jacket to apply to the hot end fins? To be sealed with some hot glue on top and bottom if you want to keep the design simple, or with o-rings if you want it fancy.
I’ve seen that on J-head E3D heatsinks, it’s pretty simple and decent design. I’m going to do the same for my laser with similar design (I dremel led a couple slits so I can pump water on one end and it will spiral through each fin until it gets to the bottom), except the laser heatsink I found that a broom handle was the perfect size within 1mm diameter so I’m just going to use that and epoxy the ends. But yeah, I’ve made 3d printed cooling waterblocks before, they work fine (and yep, lol, I’ve used hot glue for holding in the hoses, haha!)
Hmmm you could also get a tiny normal heat sink and make a wall + roof for it and then use silicone glue to seal it and just dump water into the block that way ;?
I tried out a few of those type of options just for funsies. I was going to include a few more in the vid but I blabbed too much and had to cut sections out. Man, I even moulded one out of JB weld and a raspberry pi heatsink... it's not pretty but it worked
Could you integrate this into an enclousure? i would love to enclose my ender 3 but i had problems with heatcreap
Maybe, if the resuivoir is outside the enclosure. I actually updated this setup to a slightly more 'proper' DIY cooler with a radiator and that was still pretty darn cheap. I'll do an updated video when I get the time to edit the footage. This setup ran into its limits with an all metal volcano, so I found cheap aluminum GPU watercooling block with a U channel drilled as opposed to serpentine, which left an area of aluminum in the middle that I drilled out and tapped to fit an m6 heatbrake. Still DIY and cheap, but it cooled better
Can you print higher than 220C?
Impressive! That seems to have worked way better than I would have expected by just pressing onto the front of the heatsink. I would expect you'd at least have to clamp the bottom on somehow.
How much weight does it add to your hotend? I realize that it's variable since there's a water-weighted hose connected, I'm just curious how much the rest of the parts weigh. They should have minimal impact since the entire moving assembly is far lighter than the bed assembly (and the firmware treats both the same with regard to acceleration and jerk).
I'm shocked how quiet your stock power supply and board fans are! Those are the loudest parts of my printer! I guess the variation in power supply brands they use (I got one of the ones with no grounding issues and good connectors) leaned in your favor after all. :) (or did you change that out? I forgot)
Regarding the noise of that 40mm hot-end fan. That's exactly why I used the 4010 blower instead of the axial fan to cool the heatsink in the part cooler I mentioned in response to your last video. Turning it around backwards means I only get (significantly less) reflected noise. I also underdrove it (using a tiny buck-converter, I think around 13V) and it still worked fine while being super-quiet. I even ran 295C prints (some really nasty carbon fiber PETG). I only got a jam when the one of the wires going to my solder joint on the buck-converter broke (should've added a strain-relief!). I'm now running it at full voltage, and it's still quite quiet (especially compared with the power supply and board fans).
I actually DID grab the weights, but I cut that part out for length. The waterblock weighed 37g without water (didn't weight with water, I'll try to remember to do that) and that's with the extra copper tab soldered to the front, and my stock ender cooling fan + steel mounting cage weighs 66g without the bolts and full wires. I actually use a quiet 4010 fan to cool the hotend on one of my DIY printers as well, and it works even with a volcano. It still makes a whirring sound, but not anywhere near as bad as the stock ender axial fan. As far as the PSU fan... I can't remember if I modded that or not. I have another chinesium psu that is SUUUPER loud, but this one is not that bad. The fan is always-on though, so I may put a thermocouple in there. I definately modded the electronics fan, because one of those two identical fans came broken in shipping, so it think it is just a low-RPM fan pulled from an old dell power supply
@@AlexKenis Much appreciated. :) With the diameter of the lines used, I expect the water weight to be minimal. Sounds like a net improvement in weight, so a "win-win" (gag). Very nice. :^D
Alex Kenis... He's got a massive..... 3d printer
(and i have waited literally more than a year to make this joke)
Wating for parts from Aliexpress is the bane of everyone's existance. It takes 3-4 weeks to ship then when you find out its not quite right or goes missing in the post its another 3-4 weeks playing the same game. The things we do on a shoe string budget to save a a few dollars.
I super dug it.
Since it's running so cool, you could probably get away with smaller diameter tubing.
This is cool! Does the tiny pump run on a separate circuit or is it wired as the hot end fan? If actually possible...
Pretty weird ! Water cooling on a printer! If I'm using ramps 1.6 should I still use my MOSFET boards
Brilliant, what voltage are the fans for the ender 3 are the 12volt or 24 Cheers
just for normal people .... noctua 40x40x10 is enough to make it bit quiet ? :D
No, the 4010 noctua has lower CFM than the stock fan, which may induce heat creep and/or clogging. The 4020 is just about right.
THE after sounds like a De-stressed Rabbit ROFL GOOD one you could also just buy the CPU cooler and attach it to the Front of the hotend you can also just buy it...
Happy new Year
Great vid but couldn’t you get a 40mm Noctua? It is barely audible
No idea if it is true but I have heard that they do not push much air. So for normal printing probably fine and I'm sure users would have reported problems by now. But for high speed printing?
It’s a bit different. It may create some heatcreep IF the speed is low and the air is not properly constrained. I had those problems.
Now take the prusa mk3s for example: it has a noctua and it works like a charm because the air flows well inside the guide
I’m not talking about slapping a Noctua on the stock mount and calling it a day. I’m talking about designing and studying an object that doesn’t constrain as much the airflow. It looks like the type of stuff Alex is into
Yeah, I have a 40x20 noctua that i'll be trying for both parts cooling and eventually hotend cooling (when I get there... still a few vids in the way). I needed zero hotend noise for testing, but I'll definately check and see later on if it is okay for hotend cooling during printing. I heard some folks complain that the noctua wasn't enough for hotter+longer printer, BUT it may very well be that they were not using a very good shroud. WE'll see
Q1: How and where did you power the pump to turn on/off as needed? Q2: How did you support the parts cooling fan?
The current pump is just plugged into a wall wart, but I grabbed the 24v one to eventually run off the PSU. Always I. For now, but I may add some code later to switch it on and off with one of the board mosfets. As for the cooking fan... I originally had it just temporarily stuck to the heater wire with VHB tape, but that single 4010 blower alone is not very effective at all, so I immediately printed out a new fan holder that just sits behind the hotend, bolted to the x gantry carriage.
Hmmm put ice in the water xD just for fun
But if you use a better carriage with a 20mm noctua works great! Specially with a titanium heartbreak :p
Noctua is dead quiet! I love mineee
For the heat spreader, had you considered Macgyvering some copper tubing?
Oh, I considered a lot of things, lol, and I had to cut a bunch of other crazy stuff out. If this setup doesn't remove enough heat when I test higher-output hotends, I'll wheel out the other ideas.
Great video as always
You are awesome :-)
Thanks for sharing :-)
I have subsequently burned down my fingers. How should I proceed?
And an AIO (all in one) Watercooling system was no option ?
AIO would work great but also overkill. We don't need a lot of cooling. So smallest AIO is fine.
@@ColinMacKenzieRobots haha old comment, well you know i probably spend more time by upgrading and modding my 3d printer than actual printing something^^ meanwhile the print bed has a size of 100 x150cm and print high of 90cm...and everything started with an ender clone, an Alfawise u30 for 150,-€....its all this guys fault^^ th-cam.com/video/VzjJFon4c8E/w-d-xo.html
It looks like we could just use this u pipe and 10x10x20mm copper stock, drill out the center for heatbreak and push fitting and we are golden :D gotta try that
First i read the Titel, i guessed u would take the "HotEnd Heater", Create a kind of Box outer of it with fitttings, and use it like a PC Watercooling system^^
How many manhours?
Did you use any paste? And by the way, my ender doesnt display whats printing?
Yes, I just used the generic white silicone heatsink stuff. As far as the print display, its running one of the bigtreetech 32 bit boards , and still the crazy "turn on all the options" marlin firmware build I did a few vidos ago
@@AlexKenis ok thank you. and have you had any experience with noctua fans for quiet sound? just wondering what that's like compared to potentially hearing a pump. thanks again, sorry for the bother
Soooooooo cool...for extruder of course
wish we saw more PoC on this channel
Since your video, that pump's price has been increased. Coincidence? xD
Glad you don't steal my bacon!! LOL!
There is little proof that he won't. We only have his word on that.
@@DavidMulligan... He always has seemed a little shifty!
@@christophergrove4876 Sorry but I can't agree with that. I just found it oddly specific that Alex wouldn't steal bacon, like it needs to be said which implies it has happened before or something.
I pinky promise not to steal anyone's bacon
its cool and all. but a noctua 40mm fan woulda sufficed.
Anyone getting in to 3d printers should know why they’re as cheap as they are.
If you want FDM quality you’ll need ball screws, servos, or at leased closed loop steppers, watercooling, and a heated enclosure.
Those components dont come in any off shelf printer.
Rule of thumb if you pay $500 for a printer, 5-7x that cost at a minimum to upgrade to these better features.
If not then accept terrible print quality limited to cheap filaments.
Truth be told.
Btw that looked decent afterwards. Have you attempted to print anything on composites or peek to see if you could reach higher temps using better filament now?
Hey Alex I was just wondering if you could suggest a new main board for my replicator 2. I would like to keep the printer running but bring it up to a more modern state
By the way your channels awesome
You recycle your failed/test prints I know some contain fillers and stuff that make it impractical wondering what the best good to use for reusable prototyping would be if there are any? If you have time I mean and well I am fairly sure you don't. Just ignore this and do what you do.. this is way more interesting than playing captain plastic planet.
I hear ya. I have actually saved all my failed prints and support in canvas bins in case someone comes out with a nifty recycling or reprocessing option, and if not, i'll just compost them someday. I salvaged a treadmill motor a long while back, intending to use it in a setup to extrude new filament from recycled parts, but until then, I just hang onto them
is it just me or did u lose weight? you look great
Wouldn't this work a little too well? I haven't watched yet.
You cool the cold end of the hot end, if it makes any sense, i know nomenclature is very confusing in 3D printing. And no, it wouldn't work 'too well', since you have thermal gradient over the throat and your cold end is still only room temperature, not like absolute zero.
@@SianaGearz i understand now after actually watching the video, thank you
Good in a fight? haha what happened?? also how can i be sure you won't steal my bacon...
HAHA, just a combo of growing up a martial arts geek, combined with a traditional refusal to stand by while bullies get away with their bull$h17 in my presence
Lol... Balls in the air... Mmhrmmhmrmm
to amateuristic, to complicated, not designed, no thinking upfront; not entertaining
First
"But it works" 20 min video explain why and how you build it, not a single clip of it actually working...
this was alot better in 1.75 speed