this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2026
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I have zero experience with 3d printing, but I'm dubious that a printed fan would be as smooth and balanced as you'd need for an efficient quiet fan without some serious/laborious post printing refinement.
Ready to be educated.
Edit: I realize that doing it because you can is entirely valid, I'm more interested in what the process would be.
Which is why they don't mind releasing the models.
With resin printing, you can definitely get a nice clean fan blade easily.
With warp and very brittle.
Its a large chunk of what this channel does. Most of the time the prince are either louder or less performant. But there have been a few that came close to the noctua.
I don’t think so
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This made my night!
Heh fair catch. Damn speech to text. Lol always gotta double check.
prints?
There's a whole series on youtube (fan showdown) where different 3D printed designs are tested against one another. Seventh season currently.
Seems like that's the one:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHLn2U7i45M_EXIsnqUyI-nqCCk-wfCU9
Its not too hard to even most print surfaces with solvent and heat treating
Sure spend hours and hours and money on filament, printer, solvent chambers etc. Or just buy a $30 fan.
Nobody's buying a 3d printer just to print a fan. This is useful for people who already own one.
A solvent chamber for smoothing a fan blade could be just a plastic box from the dollar store. A kilogram of filament could cost you less than $15, and the fan itself would use up maybe 15 grams of that. The printing time depends greatly on printer and settings, but that's idle time anyway, not time spent doing actual work. You can do other things in the meantime.
Your argument is like factoring in the cost of buying a car to buy groceries and cook at home instead of eating at a restaurant.
This was not advice for your average gamer, getting another fan for their PC build. It is more for the "I have this weird shape and geometry where I need to attach a fan with such weird geometries that their is no commercial viable alternative" crew.
Also a solvent chamber is just a jar ideally with lid but even thats optional.
That'll help with smoothness but at the speeds CPU fans run small balance issues can make noticeable differences in sound output. Then you have to weigh the time spent refining vs the value of your time. But sometimes it's fun to print stuff just to prove you can, even if the savings are minimal to non-existent.
I think it's possible in theory but getting the setup needed to print with the proper materials and fidelity would be expensive enough to not be feasible unless you were doing it in bulk.
I'm curious to hear from some experienced 3D printing nerds around here too - balancing a simple 120V, low rpm fan is hard enough.
But maybe home/hobby printing today has achieved the needed level of accuracy.