12V quiet fans in an Ender 5

When not destroying laser cutters, I like to do a bit of 3D printing.
I have an ender 5 that I bought 2 years ago to which I’ve fitted a number of standard modifications (BTT SKR mini E3, direct dirve extruder, Meanwell power supply etc.)
The E3 controller made things a lot quieter with the TMC2209 drivers which left the main source of noise as the fans.
As finding quiet, 24V fans is near impossible, I’m doing the modification as covered by Teaching Tech Buck converters: Quieten your 3D printer with a Noctua fan & directly power your Pi - YouTube. To make things a little tidier, I’ve designed a PCB to hold the DC-DC buck converter and some JST connectors. I’ve also added a second DC-DC converter to run the Raspberry Pi (Octoprint). After a few iterations (it’s been many years since I designed a PCB), finally sent the files off to have them made.


I’ll know in a few weeks if I got it right. (Total cost for 5 boards with shipping was $A16)

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It’s amazing how inexpensive it is now to get PCBs fabbed! :relaxed:

I’ve thought about doing something like that, but adding a MOSFET for controlling a 12V part cooling radial fan, because the 24V radial cooling fans I have are not the highest quality parts. Funny that it’s way cheaper to stack the modules on top of the PCB than to just make a single PCB with all the parts.

I was thinking about FET control for an extra fan but decided I didn’t need it. The current controller has 2 x PWM fans which this board will handle (part cooling and hotend cooling). It supports two extra always on fans, one of which will be the controller cooling fan.
As you say, they are so cheap to get made, I can just make a new board for any extra features I decide I need.

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Now that I’ve had my morning coffee, I remember why I didn’t do that: just limiting duty cycle to 50% will let you use a 12V fan instead of a 24V fan for PWM-controlled fans…

PCB’s arrived and I’ve assembled one - still to add the JST connectors (when I find them!)
It MAY just fit in the Ender 5, if not then a friend has offered to trim it down the required amount. THere are not tracks near the edge so this shoudl work.

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