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Hello,

I removed the heat sink and the fan from my extruder on my A8. The hell with it. It’s much easier now to see and clear extruder clogs as nothing is in the way. I wanted to push my hot end into the extruder more to make the filament entry closer to the extruder gear, which also lined up the cooling nozzle in a much better position to my hot end. Prints are great, and extruder stepper motor is still cool. Am I crazy or do they just put this heatsink on there because it’s a good idea in theory and that is how it’s always been done? I always push PLA onto the table at 230 deg and its working beautifully.

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Doesn’t sound too crazy to me, especially if it’s working out fine. I would think that if you start getting into higher temp filaments, you may want to put it back just in case a the tube starts to overheat and your left with a big blob in the extruder and motor. I thinks it’s mainly there to keep the tip hot and to not let it get too soft before that point.

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I replaced the fan with a radial one mounted above the stepper (ANET A8 Alternative Extruder Fan Vertical by tsh2 - Thingiverse ). I think with a long (many hour) print in a hot environment, you might see problems if there is no fan at all.

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Hi,
Since the heatsink and the fan are there to cool down the filament inside the duct, the fan needs to be turned ON at the beginning of the gcode file and OFF at the end, correct ? Why the Slicers do not do it while creating the gcode file ?

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The heatsink and fan are there to cool down the filament inside the duct,
Well yes, but its also a part of the heat brake. Which means that you dont melt the teflon tube.

and…

to help prevent the heat from getting to the the extruder motor etc.
The more electronics heat up, the less longer they last.

I think the reason why its the fan is on always is because its simply easier.
Its to be assumed you turned the printer on to print something.
As soon as heat is being applied from a print, the fan needs to be on.
These are 8 bit cards you are dealing with, slow clockspeed, low eeprom and memory footprint.
Kiss, keep it sweet n simple.
I would assume if you were using a 32 bit card, options like this would be available, but again, following kiss, I doubt anyone would bother…

To the op, I would be making sure I have extra motors available, especially at 230 degrees for pla. I wack mine out at 205 and get great prints…

DJ