I just recently got a Zero as my first personal printer a couple months back, and I’m pretty happy with the speed and quality so far. However, it’s pretty noisy. I was able to make the motors a quieter in Klipper (I’m pretty new to Klipper as well), but the fans are still super loud, particularly in the toolhead.
Right now, I’m working in a design studio environment, so it would be best to get it fairly quiet. Are there any ways I can approach this, such as aftermarket parts or modifications, or settings in Klipper?
Fan power in klipper is set as a number between 0 and 1, if you set the max (in printer config) to 0.6 it’ll be decently quiet and still like 2/3rds the airflow. If you need even more than that, Noctua fans will halve the noise again, but they are expensive and fairly limited in what sizes come in 24v, so sometimes you’ll need to print adapters to suit.
However I will also recommend not sitting in the same room as the printer anyway, these are plastic extrusion machines and so even if you only print PLA its still not good for your health. Relocating it somewhere like a garage, laundry (I can hear the complaints about humidity alread, but it doesn’t have any negative impact if your working filament spool is in a $10 dry box, much less any sort of active dryer) or store room, and add another screen to your computer so you can just watch it via the webcam full-time.
The enclosure filter is NOT a substitute here, its still a great feature that removes the larger dust that would otherwise build up on other surfaces/machines in the same place degrading them or risking fire-hazard, but has limited impact on micro-particles and volatiles. Gas mask style active carbon filters are simlar external sizes, densities that offer 10-20x the flow resistance, and last a max of ~12hrs continuous use at airflow levels lower than your enclosure fan…after a week using the printer your not getting any meaningful impact on exposure from the “active” part and we see this in people who test with external meters.
Another room with a window open is good enough for home use, it doesn’t have to be a fancy solution, but if thats not possible for your usage look at running a spiral trunking from the chamber exhaust to a window or vent (good news, you can print the adapter for both ends). Failing that maximize your room airflow and distance from the printer.. but in pretty much all these cases much of the printer fan noise is mitigated by the same reason… if your trying to hard to make it silent, your likely placing it in a way thats not ideal for your health.
Thanks for the insight. I’m still curious with what the capabilities this machine can do. I’ve seen video online from N13D, and his printers sound incredible when running. Maybe in the future the Zero can perform similarly to his.