Noctua just released a 24V to 12V stepdown for their fans for 3D printer use.
noctua.at/en/noctua-presents-na-vc1-24v-dc-to...Posted Jun 20, 2023, 11:06 AM UTC
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noctua.at
Not every 3d printer hobbyist can solder or understands electronics. This is a nice clean unit for those people specifically.
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You can get an equivalent, no soldering involved for much much less
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This is aimed at those people who click Buy Now on Amazon without doing any research... Like those people who sell two-bottle spice packs for 500% the price of a single spice bottle.
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^^ This is the correct answer for “who is this for”
It’s small, clean, plug and play, and from a reputable company. Are there cheaper products that can do the same thing with a bit of effort? Absolutely! But this isn’t for the DIY 3d printer hobbyist, it’s for the consumer 3d printer hobbyist.
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I’ve done the Buck converter for my psu and main board fans. I haven’t done a hotend fan replacement because of airflow. I would have preferred to purchase a part from a reputable manufacturer rather than do spend the time and research doing it myself.
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And that’s perfectly fine! Hell, if it wasn’t $25 I’d buy it right now to replace the tumor on my hotend lol.
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I highly doubt that those people who will blindly buy 25 dollar adapters are the same people who replace fans on their 3d printers.
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25 bucks? Sheesh
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I like the idea, it's super compact and easy to put in, you basically don't have to find a place to put it, but at that price point I might as well buy a 24V fan. The TSR-2-2450 is also quite expensive for example, but for ease of use in prototyping I still pay for it. I don't think I'll pay for this converter though.
I can see there's 25$ worth of great engineering in this, but there's not 25$ worth of utility in it.
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Just get a Sunon MagLev 50% cheaper than a noctua fan at whatever voltage you need.
Actually I was planning on exchanging the fans on my Ender 3 Pro, but after printing a reverse airflow shroud I just put my motherboard fan to 60% and my hotend fan to 80% via PWM and it's as silent as the PSU, which is not that much. It went from. 55dBa to only 48dBa, it's weird now not hearing when the hotend fan kicks in.
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Bought into the sunon hype when I changed the fans on my printer for the first time and I'll be honest, it was pretty awful. They were actually LOUDER than before! I bit the bullet and got the noctua and trust me, you get what you pay for with the silence and premium quality.
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Sunon has multiple lines of fans, mainly high performance and quiet. You probably bought the high performance one. Don't worry, if your board has 3 PWM channels you can still lower its speed and basically make it as quiet as a noctua.
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If I remember correctly it was the quiet one, to be honest, I may have ordered the wrong one either way. I still prefer the noctua though as it comes with everything you need and the price difference is not too much if you are ordering in the UK
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Lol 25$ lolol
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I love me noctua fans but that's basically an additional $25 per fan if it's going on a printer...
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I think it’s probably a decent plug and play buck converter, but it ought to come in a four-pack or something for that price.
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Prusa owners throwing money while screaming
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If it's lighter than a 2€ dc-dc step down from aliexpress then it might be of use for hotend fans to save weight. Otherwise wayyy to expensive
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Couldn't you also just operate at a max 50% duty cycle?
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noctua fans are only alright for the MCU/PSU, would never even try putting them onto the hotend
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Sorry to be a downer, but you can get a DC to DC step down converter for like, a dollar
Will that work with PWM control (like for the part-cooling fan) ?
$25 is like insane for this indeed. But I do like the idea of more silent Noctua fans on my 3D printers..
Yes, depending on wiring. On Duet boards for example the output is +24v and signal, where signal is a transistor output to ground doing the PWM stuff.
If you connect your 12v PSU GND to your 24v PSU GND, send +12v to your fan and connect fan GND to the PWM signal pin the fan works fine with PWM control.
Now I suspect its a bit different for 4 wire fans but I can't quite remember. I am sure there is a way,
Yes, it will work on most mainboards.
Most 3d printer mainboards are doing it's PWM stuff on GND.
So, connect Buck converter to your main power supply (make sure that ground input of buck converter is connected to ground output of main power supply).
Then connect "Fan +" to Buck converter output and "Fan -" to AGND output of your mainboard (basically "-" output pin for fan or heater).
When this approach does not work for your mainboard, then "arduino mosfet board" ($1-$2) in combination with Buck converter will work.
They are more silent and less powerful
Not necessarily. They can be more quiet and move as much or more air with better quality bearings and better fan design.
I don't know what type of fan you are trying to replace but the ones i am using are much more powerful than the noctuas
If this also level-translates the pwm signal, that's definitely a plus. But on my printer the hot end fan is just power and gnd, so I went with the cheap buck converter module.
You would have to check to see if the input is 24V tolerant. My guess is that most would be, it just feeds a transistor, so it's super low amperage. The transistor would just be saturated and not be able to go any higher (already 100% on, can't be on any more, which is the definition of PWM).
Worst case it's not 24V input tolerant and you can make a little voltage divider with two resistors.
So that thing looks nice, but if you want to make it work and look a little janky (it's a 3D printer that you're already modifying, not the Mona Lisa) you can do all this for less than $2, plus a few minutes soldering.