How To Upgrade your Ender 3 Part Cooling Fan

Hello Guys! I am writing this new article because I just did an upgrade to one of my Ender 3’s and I wanted to share it with people who may want to try it. I was watching some videos on YouTube by CHEP (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg47Std5ywI) about how the cooling fans aren’t really doing much. I had different experience than him, and the fans did make a difference in my prints. I wondered if these guys with the larger fans are getting any real good use out of them, or if it was just a sham. I decided to purchase some 5015 fans, and try the upgrade. It also requires you to use the Hero Me 2 base and fan mount, since you cannot install a 5015 on the stock hotend fan covers.

What you will need to upgrade Ender 3 Cooling Fan

1. 5015 Fan(s)
2. Hero Me 2 Base, 5015 Fan(s) Duct, and the Base_Lock or Auto Bed Leveling Mount of your choice
3. Soldering Iron & Heatshrink -OR- Crimp butt connectors 26ga

The first thing you want to do if you are planning to perform this upgrade is to attempt and print out the Hero Me base and Fan Mounts. I ended up printing these parts three times because I would find small issues that I didn’t like and tweak the profile to change it. You can find the Hero Me Gen 2 Parts on Thingiverse, follow directions in the Thingiverse description: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3182917.

Once you are happy with your Hero Me 2 mount, you can move on to ordering the fans you need for the mount that you printed out. You could also order these ahead of time, but it’s not much use if you cannot get the mount to print properly. I purchased a two pack to have a spare for the future, or if I decided to upgrade to dual 5015 fans. Below is a link to the two pack 24V fans.

Once your fans have arrived and you are ready to make your installation, you will disable the printer by turning off power. Disassemble your hot-end fan shroud by removing the 4 bolts in the part cooling fan, and then you remove the two round head bolts holding the fan shroud to the gantry. Once the cover is loose, you will need to remove the 4 bolts inside the hot end shroud to take the hot-end fan loose.

Next you will have to install the Hero Me 2 base piece (make sure your base lock or ABL mount is in place), it will slide down over your gantry mount plate, make sure you are careful of your wiring. Once the base is mounted, you can install your hot-end fan to the base with your 4 bolts. One hint I will share is to improve the strength of your strain relief for your wiring is to find a small piece of hose that is close to the size of your wires, cut a slit in it and put around the wires before you zip-tie them like below. This will prevent your wires from spinning in the strain relief.

Now you will have to decide if you are going to remove all the shielding from your cables and lengthen the 5015 fan cables, or take the easier route and cut the yellow and blue wires near the old fan. I cut the yellow, and the blue and decided to solder the wires together and heatshrink them leaving just a small amount of slack in the wires (2″ roughly). I installed the 5015 fan with some M3 bolts, and began my test prints. I will say that some profiles will take some tweaking to get back printing, I had to adjust how soon the fan went to maximum and I also reduced the maximum. I will share my Cura cooling profile below for you to try if you are running into problems.

Regular Fan Speed: 90%

Maximum Fan Speed: 95%

Regular/Max Threshold: 10s

Initial Fan Speed: 0%

Regular Speed @ Layer # 4

Minimum Layer Time: 10 s

Minimum Speed: 10 mm/s

Have questions, or problems with your upgrade? Leave a comment and we will get back to you!