Correction, I had forgotten about testing the unswirl in my V400 Review, during that test I used 3d printed tpu gaskets with it, with the gaskets it did beat out the cheater. I was going by how the fan was sent to me. When the new A12x25 come in we will have a head to head showdown between the unswirl and cheater with new prints on new fans with gasket to see who once in for all is the current top dog.
This, the point of a turbo is to convert high pressure air into high flow. That leak would have caused a non trivial pressure drop, which in turn will decrease the flow output.
I will say that I'd be interested in seeing some gasket work and tweaking of that fan. I don't necessarily believe it would come anywhere close to beating the Cheater but the design deserves some additional love and screen time in my opinion.
OMG, I can’t believe I made the Showdown! I don’t even care that my Turbinator design didn’t break any records, it was designed for fun and to see what a properly thought out radial flow design could do. Thanks James, you made my day! 🙏
@@Cybernetic_Systems you should, I'm sure the design has more potential than shown here. Proper gasket, a longer, properly optimized intake runner and well optimized blade geometry would really do wonders. It might not beat the cheater but it would definitely come close. Maybe even come in second. It would also be very hard to beat.
I was not too surprised personally... The bump on the hub acts like a Noctua fan, helping it take some of the air mass off from around the center of the hub. You would never guess it works like that unless you know about the math.
@@rusg.8347 That one wasn't the bio mass. The bio mass was the one that had the blades divided out into an inner, middle and outer section with different blade angles
@@dustinroberson1865 but looking at the hub it's sometimes the small things that actully make a big difference. So yes it is. Though it may not be the nicest looking spot on the plastic, but it's still there.
The turbo designs will not work very well ever due to the limitations of compressor rpm. They will generate high pressure but low volume until you can get them really spinning. Figure the average production turbo compressor wheel is spinning at well over 60k rpm under load. I love the design and thought behind the designs but they all have the same flaw of needing significantly higher rpm to get the volume. Not to mention the flaw with the wind tunnel itself being 120mm in diameter vs the turbo design outlet being a mere fraction of that size contributes greatly to pressure and volume lost upon exiting a 20mm opening into the much larger 120mm wind tunnel tube.
Yup. If the fans were tested on their resistance to backpressure or flow restriction, this would probably destroy the cheater. As it stands though, it's a Ferrari competing in a tractor pull.
@@Dominik189 Not really. Radial compressors are not designed for high flow rates, but high pressure rises. If what you want is flow rate, you go axial. There's a reason fans are axial and not radial.
Biomass was the most impressive. Visually, it was taking in a lot of air without typical turbulence... and moving it swiftly through, without much exit turbulence. If it were printed with Thinner walls... I think it would have an even greater potential.
I also noticed how you could see the twist in the air that was exiting the Biomass fan, which was pretty neat. It worked really good for just being a random and different idea.
@@Sartek It was a very interesting and different design choice. Seeing someone go with something other than the tried and true fan blade design was a good change of pace. The open and varied blade pitch design of the Biomass made the exiting air cork-screw out the back nicely. I wonder how affective it would be on a radiator or tower heatsink.
@@Slane583 Hi! I designed the biomass fan and was pretty surprised by the results too! I didn’t have a Noctua fan to test it on, just a DC motor that I printed a hub for to test. I think the fan’s frame helps a lot. Seeing the smoke test and results sort of motivate me to try updating the design a bit. Although, I do sort of wish there would be a classic and open category, where fans can be a bit more defined based on practicality. Haha
@@BRUXXUS It's very interesting indeed. Vastly different than a normal fan. I read a comment on here of someone mentioning maybe thinning out the blades a little bit. Though I'm no engineer myself. I wonder what it would do if you filled in the middle that mounts on to the fan hub and made it into a bullet shaped nose-cone.
When you get the gaskets, it would be a great episode to just re-test the top 10 fans with the gaskets, plexiglass partition, the new sound setup, and the wind tunnel. The setup has changed so much from season to season I'd love to see if the rankings change too.
Purely educational, I think retesting the turbonator with the gasket will grant designers a data point on how much efficiency they can gain by leveraging the geometry of the gasket.
The golfball is probably the most misunderstood aerodynamic phenomena. The dimples actually increase drag by creating turbolence, but on a ball shape the turbolent air can follow the curevature of the ball for longer, thus the ball has a smaller wake and the overall drag is lower. If your wake is already small (such as from a thin blade) dimples will only increase drag.
Biomass is just brilliant, varying each set of fins angle of attack depending on how far from the center they are, reminds me of this concept called "Modularization", each set of fins is designed depending on the role they have to develop, the set located farthest from the center has wider angle of attack resulting in much more drag, while in the center much narrower angle of attack results in less drag and less noise, and less material used, so effectively the fins under heavy load are the outer ones and to some degree the middle ones! Brilliant!
You should have the Turbonator guy redesign the inlet to be longer. With a longer runner, the air approaching the turbine blades would have more velocity and should improve CFM. This is why the inlet of actual turbos are as long as they are😁😁👍👍
Hey! My BioMass entry finally got in! Thanks for testing it. Did better than I expected. :) Believe it or not, I designed it in TinkerCAD, imported into 3D Builder, and used the smooth edges feature to create the smooth lines. I think maybe I should properly model one to be more efficient.
0:56 many fans you have tested have variable angle of attack. It is standard practice to decrease angle of attack for parts that are moving faster through the air, and increase it for parts that are moving slower. Almost every fan is shaped like this so the blade closer to the center is tilted more, and further it gets from the center it will be twisted less.
All these fans are quiet nice, but imho the biomass with its low profile (fits in the dimension of the original fan) and performance (considering the smoke test) is medal worthy.
I love this show. I know absolutely NOTHING about any of this stuff, but I've been happy to watch since season 1 simply because you make a great show! I'm amazed at the quality improvement of everything, how you learn and change to improve the testing and even including the acrylic screen as well as the tunnel device! Great job as always! Thank you again for doing this stuff!
That pitch on the FS1 was nails on a chalkboard Also the biomass fan looks sick and I'd use it on builds even if it wasn't as good at airflow as the original. Might be able to tweak the blade angles for static pressure instead of airflow for a rad radiator fan
Heck some of the other multipart fans need those gaskets too. However the turbinator definitely needs those gaskets as at least a third of the air flow is leaking.
The Turbinator is a turbo, so it's naturally better at compression instead of outright airflow. If there was a way to test the static pressure of the fans, I bet this one would be quite high up there (With gaskets of course)
The wind tunnel could have some kind of resistance, maybe just a simple 120mm radiator, so we test how well these fans work on water cooling rather than as a case fan. I'm sure a lot of designs would shift around because of that.
Could use 2 gutted 120mm fan frames (1" each) to make a very short "tunnel", then hang a cover of lightweight, finely masked screen (to simulate the characteristics of a fin stack or a radiator, instead of a solid surface) down in front of the exit, hinged up top. Then test static pressure by measuring degrees of deflection of that hanging screen. The result metric wouldn't be ideal for comparing with manufacturer specs for commercial fans, but Fan Showdown fans are one-off prototypes in an isolated testing regime, so the test and its results would be perfectly fine for _this_ use case. If you want "the real deal" for testing static pressure with millimeter/inches of water result metrics, you make a closed box for the fan to mount to, with a transparent pipe mounted vertically out of the bottom. The pipe needs to make a 180° U-bend and be open ended. Then fill the pipe up 3-4 inches from the bottom of the U-bend. Run the fan, and the resulting mm/inch delta between the water line on the two sides of the pipe bend is your pressure metric.
The Turbonator is a beautiful piece, for sure, but biomass was the most impressive from this episode IMO. Really interesting concept. Worth to keep developing it.
I really enjoy this UA-cam channel/community. I look forward to new fans and testing. I really wish more channels could capture the same vibe this one has. Thank you for your dedication and hard work!
printer tips: 1600 or lower acceleration, lower is better but 1600 should be fine on pretty much any printer clean your nozzle and hotend, make sure the PTFE tubing is perfectly flat on the end that goes to the nozzle. For the nozzle, the PTFE tubing, the top mounting point at the hotend for the tubing, the pushfit thingy, tighten them not fully, then heat the hotend to 240, THEN tighten all of them, and press the PTFE tubing down all the way only then. Otherwise, you'll have gaps. For the lock nuts (not the 1 larger adjustment nut if your printer has this setup) at the v-wheels of the Z carriage, Y carriage AND the X carriage, they aren't meant to be fully tightened, or else you'll put too much pressure on the bearings. Tighten so that the wheel moves when the printer (not your hand) moves the axis, but not much further than that. This is major. DRY YOUR FILAMENT. If your filament has been sitting out for a while, especially if it's one of the more hygroscopic ones but this REALLY fucking counts for PLA as well, it'll make dogshit prints no matter what you do. Put the roll (while on the plastic thingy, its fine) in the oven at 50-70 degrees for an hour or 1.5 hours. maybe more if you need it. But heat the oven BEFOREHAND, not while they're in. kitchen ovens overshoot during heatup like youve never seen before. voila, perfect prints. Tune your settings. No, not those settings. The settings you don't think about. You might even need to recompile firmware if you need to change some values for steppers etc. Retraction settings: fix that shit. direct drive needs really fucking low values, while bowden usually needs really fucking high values. Retraction tower will help you with this (cura has a calibration shapes plugin, the github for it has the instructions for each of them, makes life easier). Some setups with some speeds don't even need retractions at all. If you use pressure/linear advance, you dont need as many retractions as you used to, like at all. Maybe not even any retractions. Print temp, retraction, speed towers. Use 0.6 nozzle while using the same layer height, if you use cura. shit works wonders with the new engine. leave "enable bridge settings" enabled permanently in cura. it will know where things are needed for you, you dont need to worry about it. Dual gear extruder. ya need it. but if you have it already, make sure you don't tighten it too hard, not loosen it too much. you want the filament to grip well but not get crunched up by the gears. Switch to klipper. Seriously. fucking out of the box better quality for me, even before I changed any settings from the default config for my E3V2. If you use a BLTouch, you have to calibrate the Z offset for it OFTEN, this is important as hell. idk how easy this is with marlin, but with klipper its excessively easy, and really accurate, AND you can do the babystep method during a print, and use a command to "apply" the offset to the Z Offset when not printing. PID tune your hotend AND your bed heaters, EVERY time you make ANY change to your setup that could in any way, shape or form affect temperature while printing. Even changing your nozzle will require this. (it would also require calibrating Z offset for a BLtouch). Dual 5015/4020 part cooling fans will be fantastic for you. You can run them at lower speed for less noise and better cooling than 1 fan at 100%. 4020 is great, but 5015 is what all the custom ducts support, so its a safer purchase. Ahem. do, uh, NOT use supports, as often as possible! removing supports always leaves scars on your print, and fucks with tolerances and aesthetics, especially if you use top/bottom support interfaces, which usually don't come off when the other supports come off, leaving you with an ugly surface even if you try to cut it away. Thats all ive got off the top of my head, hope some of it helps!
The bio-mass sounded almost silent to me. Was there an issue with the sound for that clip? If not, that would be a win, honestly. I’m rather sensitive to high-pitched sounds, make me exceptionally irritable. Hence the reason the only boosted vehicle I might drive is a diesel.
I had an idea… Classes for the fans to compete in. Class C: fans that fit inside the A12x25 frame. Class B: fans that extend beyond the frame Class A: fans that have additional attachments or shrouds beyond the frame. That way you could have a combined leaderboard, and an individual leaderboard for each class.
Damn, turbinator works wonderfully! You can really see how much vacuum there is at the inlet. The outflow is nice and stable too. Great job on the design, especially the attention to detail and testing to ensure it would print well.
On Biomass, the multiple blade segments with different angles of attack totally make sense. Most blades we see on the fan showdown have a twist to them to give a consistent angle of attack at different radii. The multiple blade segments are just a piecewise approximation of that, using a fixed angle for each segment, but change the angle of each segment depending on its radius.
We all wanna see the turbonator with gaskets, we understand it won’t beat the cheater but everyone deserves a chance to prove their real potential. Even if it only moves them up 5 positions from 1000 it’s still a improvement. Especially considering how much effort he put in to make it work perfectly with a gasket of some sort in mind.
Biomass looks fantastic, with all the different pitches I think that the sound spectrum would spread out nicely to make a "silent" fan, for the CFM produced.
Was watching you about a year ago but forgot to subscribe. As expected, UA-cam decided to show me other channels. The other day, I just remembered the fan showdowns and rushed here. And oh my! I love growth when I see it. Improvements are everywhere! In sound, studio, production, and even printing if I dare say. Congrats man! Also, I have subscribed now.
I just sat down to eat after a garbage day, and this was the first thing in my recommended. Thank the algorithms for knowing I needed this today 🙌🙌 (also ty MH for uploading obvi lol luv u bb ❤️)
Yeah, we've seen quieter fans, but the way it spreads the load across the spectrum makes it so much harder to pinpoint. Sounds like the background noise of an old office building.
That Turbinator definitely deserves a revisit with a proper gasket on the back. It looks absolutely amazing. Just from the losses to the side I'd say it could go a lot further when properly sealed.
Video quality, especially the editing are just on point. Well done. I'm thinking the Turbinator deserves a place on the wall, that much effort doesn't belong in the recycle bin.
There is something to be said for designs that produce a more laminar flow. The fan will have greater time exposure to the fins of the radiator vs a fan that kicks the air out in all directions (FS1 vs Biomass).
Hey James! Simplify3D has an amazing "Print Quality Troubleshooting Guide." You can use the thumbnails to visually identify a printing issue and then click on it to learn how you can fix it. :)
Biomass is quite possibly the coolest simple fan design.But that turbinator my oh my that is a beauty. I bet once you get the seals it will drastically improve. It lost so much pressurized air.
Turbinator is great. Immediately wanted one upon seeing. Also what i think you should do is divide designs by sub-categories. Like, based on a standard noctua fan size: "Base, double, triple the height". And sure thing get a "ultra-large". :D That way Cheater is not so unbeatable for some really nice designs.
Personally I would try to smooth out those prints with acetone. Would be interesting to see if there is an improvement in airflow with the surface of the blades not being so rough.
Biomass fan was suprisingly pleasant sounding. The decibels don’t bother me as much when the fan makes a nice hum, and Biomass has been a favorite so far.
Biomass had quite an impressive draw range! All 3 of the other fans had smoke that piled up and bounced against the plexi, but nothing escaped the biomass and it maintained a tight spiral out the other end.
for the one from derrek i would have brimmed the print and done no support most printers can do those anglew without support. also a fiber gasket is cheap and would have fixed the side leak
Have you been using the same A12 all season. Have you checked it recently with the baseline fan to make sure its within spec cause that motor has had to spin some chonkers and may have taken some performance loss over time?
I'm wondering if the next season will have a divide between: - "designs that fit within the default working volume" (i.e. a "normal fan" like the Biomass) - "designs that exceed default working volume" (i.e. anything that goes outside the standard bounds but is a single component, like the Body12) -"Designs that exceed the default component count" (i.e. The Cheater Fan. This might also need to be split between those that stay within bounds, like clockwork/gears, and ones that work outside the normal volume, The Cheater) Mostly because I'm a bit tired of "Can this topple The Cheater?" No, because it's following the original spirit of the first ruleset by being a fan you could actually fit into a normal case / onto a normal CPU cooler.
In terms of tuning your printer for quality, you could start with trying out the most recent Cura / prusaslicer alpha with the Arachne engine. That alone can make some wild improvements.
2:28 this has been tested on a car by the Mythbusters to reduce turbulence in the air. The main issue is that it doesn't work well on modern cars because of the well thought through aerodynamics. But on older cars it showed to improve airflow. This could work on a fan, but probably not on one as streamlined and efficient as this one.
I think that a good test for the channel, possibly revisiting the top 20, might be static pressure. Because, as we all know, you can have velocity unloaded, but without static pressure, you cannot move that velocity across a radiator. CFM and static pressure together in a vector diagram would then give you more precise cooling results, as compared to a simple heatsink test. Possibly even a heatsink with a heater attached, setting a threshold for failure, then measuring the heatsink fin temp, and base temp, which will provide a fairly accurate dt for the sink, as well as proving that velocity doesn't always equal cooling. That test could have a variable power supply, such that, as the current is increased (read power) the dt across the system is measured, up to a set point. This can be accomplished with a DCV power supply (bench/ lab unit) and 2 thermocouples.
I had a feeling the Biomass was going to turnout well it looked downright HUNGRY in the smoke test and the design, while not particularly planned, was actually pretty smart. I'm surprised the Turbonator didn't do better, maybe it needed a larger intake? (or maybe a smoother print? I've actually wondered if print quality effects the airflow.)
For the printer tuning. First off. Use cura. It’s the best. Second. There are multiple tuning things to do. E-steps for x,y,z and e axis. Ensuring layer height it correct. And lastly. To get the best print quality. 0.2mm nozzle with a much slower speed. Something like 30mm/s.
Try the turbinator without the rear housing... we don't need pressure or air velocity, we need volume... all those little slots were killing performance.
Am I missing something on the soundtest of the Biomass fan? That thing sounds whisper quiet compared to the others. Throws me of that the db wasn't much lower. Not gonna say it's the best but that has to be on the top 3 list of the best sounding fans compared to performance or is there something that's not coming through properly?
there is this print design called a temperature tower that is essentially a tower printed at different temperatures with the temps marked on their relevant block. what this does is that when you print a certain material you can use this tower as a reference as to which temperature works best so that you don't need trial and error. just one temp tower print and you have all the info needed to get perfect prints everytime
The Turbinator had a boost leak, also the compressor wheel could be designed to be a little more snug so there isn't a visible gap and it'll compress the air a little better
an interesting additionnal measurement would be the actual power drain of the fan during the air flow test, with a voltage swipe, since it's a 12V motor that starts turning around 5-6V, we could have a plot power consumption vs volume displaced. That would be a very interesting metric
You should do 2 separate air flow measurements, 1 unrestricted, and 1 with a restriction, so you can also test for static pressure, and that is probably where the turbo design really shines.
Hearing numbers is nice, but an important part to this video is the visuals, especially for those of us who aren't particularly familiar with the field, let alone anyone who doesn't work with Imperial scales. The smoke is a good way to showcase how a fan pulls in air and especially whether there's leaks in the system and how the exhaust looks; but I feel like there might a way to improve it, in particular on the intake side of things. You see, different fans start to pull in the smoke from different distances, but without some frame of reference, there's no real way to just 'see' that. Perhaps an idea would be to mark a grid on your black paper that corresponds to regular distance intervals from the fan, that way you can see "oh this one draws in the smoke from 2 squares further away than the other one, but is less good at pulling it in from the sides," that sort of stuff.
I love the fan showdown but I think the ending section could be done better. Put the fans on podium with how they did and put the numbers next to them or something like that. The ending has always felt off.
I set up a car radiator a few weeks ago with an 18" floor mounted fan in a bit of ducting. My hope was that I could use ambient air to heat my swimming pool or at least partially when the temperature delta was large. It was a massive fail. Whilst the fan had enourmous flow it had almost no pressure and was unable to push air through the radiator. I suspect the same is true of many 'case' fans being use to cool radiators. They just don't have the static pressure.
Correction, I had forgotten about testing the unswirl in my V400 Review, during that test I used 3d printed tpu gaskets with it, with the gaskets it did beat out the cheater. I was going by how the fan was sent to me. When the new A12x25 come in we will have a head to head showdown between the unswirl and cheater with new prints on new fans with gasket to see who once in for all is the current top dog.
That is going to be such an awesome episode
Put gaskets on both so it's an even playing field.
Isn't the point of a turbo fan, not to increase feet per second, but to increase the pressure / velocity of the moving gasses?
I saw they made an article about you Jalopnik!
I was most impressed with how tight the output on the Biomass was. Noticeably tight air stream.
Derek deserves a re-test with those gaskets. That was *most* of the air leaking out the sides.
Duct tape is always an option! What better application is there for duct tape, than a literal air-duct leaking?
I agree
✊
This, the point of a turbo is to convert high pressure air into high flow. That leak would have caused a non trivial pressure drop, which in turn will decrease the flow output.
I will say that I'd be interested in seeing some gasket work and tweaking of that fan. I don't necessarily believe it would come anywhere close to beating the Cheater but the design deserves some additional love and screen time in my opinion.
OMG, I can’t believe I made the Showdown! I don’t even care that my Turbinator design didn’t break any records, it was designed for fun and to see what a properly thought out radial flow design could do. Thanks James, you made my day! 🙏
Man, good job on that design. So clean.
@@Lk95rulez Thank you. :)
The blade angle seems off to me. Did you take your time with a simulation software in the development stage to optimize the flow for the low RPM?
@@Dominik189 I didn't do any simulation - it was just for fun.
@@Cybernetic_Systems you should, I'm sure the design has more potential than shown here. Proper gasket, a longer, properly optimized intake runner and well optimized blade geometry would really do wonders. It might not beat the cheater but it would definitely come close. Maybe even come in second. It would also be very hard to beat.
I was honestly impressed with the Biomass fan. looked cool and did quite well!
I agree, the sound produced was so easy to tune out, and the velocity was insane!
Yeah it pushed way more than I thought it would. Very impressed
I was not too surprised personally... The bump on the hub acts like a Noctua fan, helping it take some of the air mass off from around the center of the hub. You would never guess it works like that unless you know about the math.
@@rusg.8347 That one wasn't the bio mass. The bio mass was the one that had the blades divided out into an inner, middle and outer section with different blade angles
@@dustinroberson1865 but looking at the hub it's sometimes the small things that actully make a big difference. So yes it is. Though it may not be the nicest looking spot on the plastic, but it's still there.
The turbo designs will not work very well ever due to the limitations of compressor rpm. They will generate high pressure but low volume until you can get them really spinning. Figure the average production turbo compressor wheel is spinning at well over 60k rpm under load. I love the design and thought behind the designs but they all have the same flaw of needing significantly higher rpm to get the volume. Not to mention the flaw with the wind tunnel itself being 120mm in diameter vs the turbo design outlet being a mere fraction of that size contributes greatly to pressure and volume lost upon exiting a 20mm opening into the much larger 120mm wind tunnel tube.
Yup. If the fans were tested on their resistance to backpressure or flow restriction, this would probably destroy the cheater. As it stands though, it's a Ferrari competing in a tractor pull.
Yep. Based the power of the fan, lower pressure high volume is what it’s designed for. Need to maximize the area, not restrict it.
A Smaller turbo would work better with less rpm, as far as I'm aware.
It can work well if the turbine is properly designed for the low RPM of the fan base. It could work, but it needs serious work.
@@Dominik189 Not really. Radial compressors are not designed for high flow rates, but high pressure rises. If what you want is flow rate, you go axial. There's a reason fans are axial and not radial.
Biomass was the most impressive. Visually, it was taking in a lot of air without typical turbulence... and moving it swiftly through, without much exit turbulence. If it were printed with Thinner walls... I think it would have an even greater potential.
I also noticed how you could see the twist in the air that was exiting the Biomass fan, which was pretty neat. It worked really good for just being a random and different idea.
For 52dba, the biomass was surprisingly low key on the sound signature
@@Sartek It was a very interesting and different design choice. Seeing someone go with something other than the tried and true fan blade design was a good change of pace. The open and varied blade pitch design of the Biomass made the exiting air cork-screw out the back nicely. I wonder how affective it would be on a radiator or tower heatsink.
@@Slane583 Hi! I designed the biomass fan and was pretty surprised by the results too! I didn’t have a Noctua fan to test it on, just a DC motor that I printed a hub for to test. I think the fan’s frame helps a lot.
Seeing the smoke test and results sort of motivate me to try updating the design a bit.
Although, I do sort of wish there would be a classic and open category, where fans can be a bit more defined based on practicality. Haha
@@BRUXXUS It's very interesting indeed. Vastly different than a normal fan. I read a comment on here of someone mentioning maybe thinning out the blades a little bit. Though I'm no engineer myself. I wonder what it would do if you filled in the middle that mounts on to the fan hub and made it into a bullet shaped nose-cone.
love the biomass straight air flow, looks good
When you get the gaskets, it would be a great episode to just re-test the top 10 fans with the gaskets, plexiglass partition, the new sound setup, and the wind tunnel. The setup has changed so much from season to season I'd love to see if the rankings change too.
Purely educational, I think retesting the turbonator with the gasket will grant designers a data point on how much efficiency they can gain by leveraging the geometry of the gasket.
Thats only half of the issue. The outlet produces to much resistance. All in all to tight of a channel.
The golfball is probably the most misunderstood aerodynamic phenomena.
The dimples actually increase drag by creating turbolence, but on a ball shape the turbolent air can follow the curevature of the ball for longer, thus the ball has a smaller wake and the overall drag is lower.
If your wake is already small (such as from a thin blade) dimples will only increase drag.
Biomass is just brilliant, varying each set of fins angle of attack depending on how far from the center they are, reminds me of this concept called "Modularization", each set of fins is designed depending on the role they have to develop, the set located farthest from the center has wider angle of attack resulting in much more drag, while in the center much narrower angle of attack results in less drag and less noise, and less material used, so effectively the fins under heavy load are the outer ones and to some degree the middle ones! Brilliant!
You should have the Turbonator guy redesign the inlet to be longer. With a longer runner, the air approaching the turbine blades would have more velocity and should improve CFM. This is why the inlet of actual turbos are as long as they are😁😁👍👍
damni love the npc show,good to see our taste is quality.
Yeah a better intake runner would definitely help
I wonder if it would make a difference if the spike coming off the back of the fan was elongated to something more like an aerospike nozzle.
@@the_chomper Thank you! ^_^ /
False. For best flow just a little stack. Never been at the dragstrip? Turbos are just sticking out of the hood.
Hey! My BioMass entry finally got in! Thanks for testing it. Did better than I expected. :)
Believe it or not, I designed it in TinkerCAD, imported into 3D Builder, and used the smooth edges feature to create the smooth lines.
I think maybe I should properly model one to be more efficient.
You did great, I knew it will be good right after the smoke test.
@@RedStefan Thanks! ☺
I LOVED THE BIOMASS
@@OriginalForce-x8m Thanks! :D I've been wanting to design an "Evolution 2" for it, but haven't had much time. Eventually!
Biomass did a lot better than I thought it would, well done Bruxxus.
Thanks! 😅 did better than I expected, too.
0:56 many fans you have tested have variable angle of attack.
It is standard practice to decrease angle of attack for parts that are moving faster through the air, and increase it for parts that are moving slower. Almost every fan is shaped like this so the blade closer to the center is tilted more, and further it gets from the center it will be twisted less.
All these fans are quiet nice, but imho the biomass with its low profile (fits in the dimension of the original fan) and performance (considering the smoke test) is medal worthy.
Gotta see that biomass fan really evolve now.
I love this show. I know absolutely NOTHING about any of this stuff, but I've been happy to watch since season 1 simply because you make a great show! I'm amazed at the quality improvement of everything, how you learn and change to improve the testing and even including the acrylic screen as well as the tunnel device! Great job as always! Thank you again for doing this stuff!
That pitch on the FS1 was nails on a chalkboard
Also the biomass fan looks sick and I'd use it on builds even if it wasn't as good at airflow as the original. Might be able to tweak the blade angles for static pressure instead of airflow for a rad radiator fan
The BIOMASS blew right into my heart
Heck some of the other multipart fans need those gaskets too. However the turbinator definitely needs those gaskets as at least a third of the air flow is leaking.
The Turbinator is a turbo, so it's naturally better at compression instead of outright airflow. If there was a way to test the static pressure of the fans, I bet this one would be quite high up there (With gaskets of course)
The wind tunnel could have some kind of resistance, maybe just a simple 120mm radiator, so we test how well these fans work on water cooling rather than as a case fan. I'm sure a lot of designs would shift around because of that.
Could use 2 gutted 120mm fan frames (1" each) to make a very short "tunnel", then hang a cover of lightweight, finely masked screen (to simulate the characteristics of a fin stack or a radiator, instead of a solid surface) down in front of the exit, hinged up top. Then test static pressure by measuring degrees of deflection of that hanging screen.
The result metric wouldn't be ideal for comparing with manufacturer specs for commercial fans, but Fan Showdown fans are one-off prototypes in an isolated testing regime, so the test and its results would be perfectly fine for _this_ use case.
If you want "the real deal" for testing static pressure with millimeter/inches of water result metrics, you make a closed box for the fan to mount to, with a transparent pipe mounted vertically out of the bottom. The pipe needs to make a 180° U-bend and be open ended. Then fill the pipe up 3-4 inches from the bottom of the U-bend. Run the fan, and the resulting mm/inch delta between the water line on the two sides of the pipe bend is your pressure metric.
The Turbonator is a beautiful piece, for sure, but biomass was the most impressive from this episode IMO. Really interesting concept. Worth to keep developing it.
BioMass! I want to see the evolution of this monster!
I really enjoy this UA-cam channel/community. I look forward to new fans and testing. I really wish more channels could capture the same vibe this one has. Thank you for your dedication and hard work!
I highly recommend Teaching Tech's 3d printer calibration guide. It's really good.
Seconded!
3rd.
No.
@@Techpriest1010 Yes. Infinity no tagbacks.
Thank you kindly for this!
The quality of the flow with the biomass was impressive!
printer tips:
1600 or lower acceleration, lower is better but 1600 should be fine on pretty much any printer
clean your nozzle and hotend, make sure the PTFE tubing is perfectly flat on the end that goes to the nozzle.
For the nozzle, the PTFE tubing, the top mounting point at the hotend for the tubing, the pushfit thingy, tighten them not fully, then heat the hotend to 240, THEN tighten all of them, and press the PTFE tubing down all the way only then. Otherwise, you'll have gaps.
For the lock nuts (not the 1 larger adjustment nut if your printer has this setup) at the v-wheels of the Z carriage, Y carriage AND the X carriage, they aren't meant to be fully tightened, or else you'll put too much pressure on the bearings. Tighten so that the wheel moves when the printer (not your hand) moves the axis, but not much further than that. This is major.
DRY YOUR FILAMENT.
If your filament has been sitting out for a while, especially if it's one of the more hygroscopic ones but this REALLY fucking counts for PLA as well, it'll make dogshit prints no matter what you do.
Put the roll (while on the plastic thingy, its fine) in the oven at 50-70 degrees for an hour or 1.5 hours. maybe more if you need it. But heat the oven BEFOREHAND, not while they're in. kitchen ovens overshoot during heatup like youve never seen before. voila, perfect prints.
Tune your settings. No, not those settings. The settings you don't think about. You might even need to recompile firmware if you need to change some values for steppers etc.
Retraction settings: fix that shit. direct drive needs really fucking low values, while bowden usually needs really fucking high values. Retraction tower will help you with this (cura has a calibration shapes plugin, the github for it has the instructions for each of them, makes life easier). Some setups with some speeds don't even need retractions at all. If you use pressure/linear advance, you dont need as many retractions as you used to, like at all. Maybe not even any retractions.
Print temp, retraction, speed towers.
Use 0.6 nozzle while using the same layer height, if you use cura. shit works wonders with the new engine.
leave "enable bridge settings" enabled permanently in cura. it will know where things are needed for you, you dont need to worry about it.
Dual gear extruder. ya need it. but if you have it already, make sure you don't tighten it too hard, not loosen it too much. you want the filament to grip well but not get crunched up by the gears.
Switch to klipper.
Seriously. fucking out of the box better quality for me, even before I changed any settings from the default config for my E3V2.
If you use a BLTouch, you have to calibrate the Z offset for it OFTEN, this is important as hell. idk how easy this is with marlin, but with klipper its excessively easy, and really accurate, AND you can do the babystep method during a print, and use a command to "apply" the offset to the Z Offset when not printing.
PID tune your hotend AND your bed heaters, EVERY time you make ANY change to your setup that could in any way, shape or form affect temperature while printing. Even changing your nozzle will require this. (it would also require calibrating Z offset for a BLtouch).
Dual 5015/4020 part cooling fans will be fantastic for you. You can run them at lower speed for less noise and better cooling than 1 fan at 100%. 4020 is great, but 5015 is what all the custom ducts support, so its a safer purchase.
Ahem. do, uh, NOT use supports, as often as possible! removing supports always leaves scars on your print, and fucks with tolerances and aesthetics, especially if you use top/bottom support interfaces, which usually don't come off when the other supports come off, leaving you with an ugly surface even if you try to cut it away.
Thats all ive got off the top of my head, hope some of it helps!
The bio-mass sounded almost silent to me. Was there an issue with the sound for that clip? If not, that would be a win, honestly. I’m rather sensitive to high-pitched sounds, make me exceptionally irritable. Hence the reason the only boosted vehicle I might drive is a diesel.
I had an idea… Classes for the fans to compete in.
Class C: fans that fit inside the A12x25 frame.
Class B: fans that extend beyond the frame
Class A: fans that have additional attachments or shrouds beyond the frame.
That way you could have a combined leaderboard, and an individual leaderboard for each class.
It would have the additional benefit of if you wanted to use one of the designs, we could look at the leaderboard for the class.
Damn, turbinator works wonderfully! You can really see how much vacuum there is at the inlet. The outflow is nice and stable too. Great job on the design, especially the attention to detail and testing to ensure it would print well.
I wouldn't believe if somebody say to me that NOBODY make this joke before: this channel would have to be called ONLYFANS
The video quality on this episode seemed especially good, loved all those smoke tests. Great work as always!
On Biomass, the multiple blade segments with different angles of attack totally make sense. Most blades we see on the fan showdown have a twist to them to give a consistent angle of attack at different radii. The multiple blade segments are just a piecewise approximation of that, using a fixed angle for each segment, but change the angle of each segment depending on its radius.
We all wanna see the turbonator with gaskets, we understand it won’t beat the cheater but everyone deserves a chance to prove their real potential. Even if it only moves them up 5 positions from 1000 it’s still a improvement. Especially considering how much effort he put in to make it work perfectly with a gasket of some sort in mind.
and put a huge pipe on the runner to extend it about 10 inches.
The Biomass looked cool and performed pretty damn good.
Biomass looks fantastic, with all the different pitches I think that the sound spectrum would spread out nicely to make a "silent" fan, for the CFM produced.
Was watching you about a year ago but forgot to subscribe. As expected, UA-cam decided to show me other channels.
The other day, I just remembered the fan showdowns and rushed here. And oh my! I love growth when I see it. Improvements are everywhere! In sound, studio, production, and even printing if I dare say.
Congrats man! Also, I have subscribed now.
this was great. also, the propane torch randomly in the background next to the fire playing on the monitor was unnerving :D
The turbo fan should probable be mounted on a delta fan motor for best results.
I just sat down to eat after a garbage day, and this was the first thing in my recommended. Thank the algorithms for knowing I needed this today 🙌🙌 (also ty MH for uploading obvi lol luv u bb ❤️)
I'd love to have a fan that's as quiet as the Biomass
Yeah, we've seen quieter fans, but the way it spreads the load across the spectrum makes it so much harder to pinpoint. Sounds like the background noise of an old office building.
Regular turbo: shtuututu
Noctua turbo:
4:24 - the print isnt bad by any means... but if you call that crispy, seems like you never saw a print off a well tuned Voron xD
the first fan is super cool, kind of reminds me of Scorn
That Turbinator definitely deserves a revisit with a proper gasket on the back. It looks absolutely amazing. Just from the losses to the side I'd say it could go a lot further when properly sealed.
Voting for a retest of the turbinator with a gasket.
2:30 am perfect for some fans
I would love to see some kind of pressure testing with these fans as well as max air velocity testing. There's more to fans than pure flow rate!
Video quality, especially the editing are just on point. Well done. I'm thinking the Turbinator deserves a place on the wall, that much effort doesn't belong in the recycle bin.
There is something to be said for designs that produce a more laminar flow. The fan will have greater time exposure to the fins of the radiator vs a fan that kicks the air out in all directions (FS1 vs Biomass).
That biomass is awesome
I doubt the noctua motor can get enough energy into the flow stream to offset the turbinator's reduced cross section area of the flow channel.
As intense as the drama always is with these fan showdowns, I'm mainly here for the awesome 80s style muzak. It never freaking grows old
Hey James! Simplify3D has an amazing "Print Quality Troubleshooting Guide." You can use the thumbnails to visually identify a printing issue and then click on it to learn how you can fix it. :)
Gonna say the absolute lack of wobble on the Turbinator in the plexi mount part is amazing!
I can't believe you don't have a million subscribers yet 😳
Biomass is quite possibly the coolest simple fan design.But that turbinator my oh my that is a beauty. I bet once you get the seals it will drastically improve. It lost so much pressurized air.
What the smoke test needs is a laser to bisect the smoke past the exhaust.
Turbinator is great. Immediately wanted one upon seeing.
Also what i think you should do is divide designs by sub-categories. Like, based on a standard noctua fan size: "Base, double, triple the height". And sure thing get a "ultra-large". :D
That way Cheater is not so unbeatable for some really nice designs.
that biomass tho. thats the fan i would buy. it sounds great, and did well.
Personally I would try to smooth out those prints with acetone. Would be interesting to see if there is an improvement in airflow with the surface of the blades not being so rough.
I'm here for the Turbinator. Go Derek, that thing rocks even if it's objectively worse than a standard A12. :)
He had the fan spinning in reverse. That fan, when printed and done correctly, could inflate and pop and big balloon.
@@totosam8271 when it was powered it did spin in the correct direction.
nice I was rooting for the Biomass, that design speaks to my heart, and I like what it says.
Biomass fan was suprisingly pleasant sounding. The decibels don’t bother me as much when the fan makes a nice hum, and Biomass has been a favorite so far.
Did you forget to put in the audio for the Biomass? I couldn't hear anything at all at 7:06.
The Biomass is really cool! Glad it did so well.
Biomass had quite an impressive draw range! All 3 of the other fans had smoke that piled up and bounced against the plexi, but nothing escaped the biomass and it maintained a tight spiral out the other end.
You should get a delta motor for the turbo fan, it would be interesting to hear the sound
for the one from derrek i would have brimmed the print and done no support most printers can do those anglew without support. also a fiber gasket is cheap and would have fixed the side leak
Have you been using the same A12 all season. Have you checked it recently with the baseline fan to make sure its within spec cause that motor has had to spin some chonkers and may have taken some performance loss over time?
Hey Man No praise for the biomass the top fan out of the four. Thats a sick fan.
My first printer arrives tomorrow and I can’t wait to jump in on this! 👍🏼
Finally someone used a golf ball texture!!!! I have been thinking about that for a long time but I haven't had time to make it myself!
I didn't expect the Biomass to have such a nice flow.
I'm wondering if the next season will have a divide between:
- "designs that fit within the default working volume" (i.e. a "normal fan" like the Biomass)
- "designs that exceed default working volume" (i.e. anything that goes outside the standard bounds but is a single component, like the Body12)
-"Designs that exceed the default component count" (i.e. The Cheater Fan. This might also need to be split between those that stay within bounds, like clockwork/gears, and ones that work outside the normal volume, The Cheater)
Mostly because I'm a bit tired of "Can this topple The Cheater?" No, because it's following the original spirit of the first ruleset by being a fan you could actually fit into a normal case / onto a normal CPU cooler.
In terms of tuning your printer for quality, you could start with trying out the most recent Cura / prusaslicer alpha with the Arachne engine. That alone can make some wild improvements.
SENIOR Airman Hastings
2:28 this has been tested on a car by the Mythbusters to reduce turbulence in the air. The main issue is that it doesn't work well on modern cars because of the well thought through aerodynamics. But on older cars it showed to improve airflow. This could work on a fan, but probably not on one as streamlined and efficient as this one.
That was a beautiful showing of what engineering can do. Sure it didn't move as much air as I would hope. But that assembly, so SWEET!
I think that a good test for the channel, possibly revisiting the top 20, might be static pressure. Because, as we all know, you can have velocity unloaded, but without static pressure, you cannot move that velocity across a radiator. CFM and static pressure together in a vector diagram would then give you more precise cooling results, as compared to a simple heatsink test. Possibly even a heatsink with a heater attached, setting a threshold for failure, then measuring the heatsink fin temp, and base temp, which will provide a fairly accurate dt for the sink, as well as proving that velocity doesn't always equal cooling. That test could have a variable power supply, such that, as the current is increased (read power) the dt across the system is measured, up to a set point. This can be accomplished with a DCV power supply (bench/ lab unit) and 2 thermocouples.
I had a feeling the Biomass was going to turnout well it looked downright HUNGRY in the smoke test and the design, while not particularly planned, was actually pretty smart. I'm surprised the Turbonator didn't do better, maybe it needed a larger intake? (or maybe a smoother print? I've actually wondered if print quality effects the airflow.)
The turbinator should get retested. TONS of airflow was lost out the sides.
That Biomass fan looked like it had a great flow pattern and noise signature. Beating the cheater fan would be nice but it's not the be all end all.👌👍
For the printer tuning. First off. Use cura. It’s the best. Second. There are multiple tuning things to do. E-steps for x,y,z and e axis. Ensuring layer height it correct. And lastly. To get the best print quality. 0.2mm nozzle with a much slower speed. Something like 30mm/s.
Try the turbinator without the rear housing... we don't need pressure or air velocity, we need volume... all those little slots were killing performance.
Biomass has the potential to be a really impressive design! Look in the smoke test it forms a vortex column of air behind it, awesome.
Am I missing something on the soundtest of the Biomass fan? That thing sounds whisper quiet compared to the others. Throws me of that the db wasn't much lower. Not gonna say it's the best but that has to be on the top 3 list of the best sounding fans compared to performance or is there something that's not coming through properly?
@3:20 Hahahaha, the screws falling out of the turbo. Awesome.
Biomass by far has the best smoke in, it would work nice as a case extractor fan
there is this print design called a temperature tower that is essentially a tower printed at different temperatures with the temps marked on their relevant block. what this does is that when you print a certain material you can use this tower as a reference as to which temperature works best so that you don't need trial and error. just one temp tower print and you have all the info needed to get perfect prints everytime
FS1 has Vortex Generators or "Winglets"
That "Turbinator" thingie would be hilarious to place on my case, but it'd probably crowd out all the actual components.
The ingenuity of the turbo Fan is great.
The Turbinator had a boost leak, also the compressor wheel could be designed to be a little more snug so there isn't a visible gap and it'll compress the air a little better
an interesting additionnal measurement would be the actual power drain of the fan during the air flow test, with a voltage swipe, since it's a 12V motor that starts turning around 5-6V, we could have a plot power consumption vs volume displaced. That would be a very interesting metric
You should do 2 separate air flow measurements, 1 unrestricted, and 1 with a restriction, so you can also test for static pressure, and that is probably where the turbo design really shines.
Hearing numbers is nice, but an important part to this video is the visuals, especially for those of us who aren't particularly familiar with the field, let alone anyone who doesn't work with Imperial scales. The smoke is a good way to showcase how a fan pulls in air and especially whether there's leaks in the system and how the exhaust looks; but I feel like there might a way to improve it, in particular on the intake side of things. You see, different fans start to pull in the smoke from different distances, but without some frame of reference, there's no real way to just 'see' that.
Perhaps an idea would be to mark a grid on your black paper that corresponds to regular distance intervals from the fan, that way you can see "oh this one draws in the smoke from 2 squares further away than the other one, but is less good at pulling it in from the sides," that sort of stuff.
I love the fan showdown but I think the ending section could be done better. Put the fans on podium with how they did and put the numbers next to them or something like that. The ending has always felt off.
I set up a car radiator a few weeks ago with an 18" floor mounted fan in a bit of ducting. My hope was that I could use ambient air to heat my swimming pool or at least partially when the temperature delta was large.
It was a massive fail. Whilst the fan had enourmous flow it had almost no pressure and was unable to push air through the radiator.
I suspect the same is true of many 'case' fans being use to cool radiators. They just don't have the static pressure.