Ender 3 Pro EFS04D224L Brushless 24VDC 0.10A Fan - Where?

Filament 3D Printer Technical Help Creality Ender 3 / 3 Pro / V2
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I just spent an hour searching through 3 pages of Parts/Fans, and not one of them matched extruder fan PN EFS04D24L in my Ender 3 Pro. I lost two blades, and the fan vibrates like a B-24, so nothing it prints is gonna work out, if it even finishes without going pure string-ball.

How do I cross reference my fan PN with the “4010” “5015” and other references I see all over the Parts section? Should it be this hard to find a $5 part for one of the most successful and common printers out there? My printer is a paperweight until I can source a replacement, and I have a list of prints i wanted to get done this week. NOT a happy camper.

I appreciate a fan is a fan, but I’m not interested in a trial and error process. Its Brushless. 24VDC. 0.10A. If you know which fan I should be buying, or can translate my fan part number into something that’s in the parts section, please help.

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On the extruder there is a blower fan (snail fan, named because of its shape) and a standard fan. Creality will use what ever supplier is cheapes for units like this so a manufacturers PN may not help because they may have switched.

The Crealities will need parts mods and changes. There are other printers that have less re building the printer than the Creality series. You sound like I did. I am not very interested in the printer I just want to print. It might be that my decision to buy a printer that isn’t a project in itself may be a better fit for you too.

Personally i settled on a Prusa, They offer real tech support and have easy to find parts and everything is quite easy inside their eco system.

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the 4010 and 5015 are actually the size. 40mm square x 10mm thick ect. you just need the right voltage (24 or 12) and fan type like @kitedemon says, to get the right one. In 3d printers part numbers and documentation is really lacking to say the east, they rely on volunteers to support them.

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The fan with the broken blades is the front facing “standard” unit, not the one with snail-like blades.

So you’re saying any fan that fits my E3P hotend cowl, 24VDC 0.1A, will work just fine? What about airflow, I gotta imagine that has a major effect on print outcome?

Huh - I found my fan on Amazon, or at least a fan from a vendor with the imagination to include a description of what it is and put a label on it with the same part number as what I have. I would rather have spent my money (and probably more) here, but …

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Creality just took whatever was available at the time too. these fans are all so close there is virtually no difference between them. there are some fans with better quality but that’s not what the printer makers use. They use them like a consumable

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Great - then as a backup to the other order, I can just buy this fan and call it a day:

https://3dprintingcanada.com/products/official-creality-blower-fan-4010-24v?variant=13947995193387

It’ll fit, it’ll match my motherboard’s expectations for voltage and current draw, and it’ll provide appropriate airflow for filament flow rates for the E3P.

I see it comes with a white connector, which I assume sockets right into my E3P wiring harness. If not, what are the chances it comes with indications as to which wire - yellow or blue - connects to the existing fan wiring, black and red?

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that looks like a part cooling fan. the kind that the air draws in through the middle of the large face and discharges out an edge. is that the kind you need or is it one you can see through where the air goes in one of the large faces and exits out the opposite large face in a straight line?

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in this case it’ll probably work as is, but if not it’s only going to run backwards and you can just depin the connector and put it back the right way.

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What you were probably after is this:

As for the other fan (the part cooling fan) - it’s always good to have a spare for these various pieces.

As for you concerns about airflow - it’s true that different fan designs and motor efficiencies produce different airflow rates and noise levels but the spread from the worst to the best is fairly small. You only need to worry about it if you are planning on pushing your machine to it’s absolute thermal limits such that an extra 5% airflow means the difference between a successful print and failure due to heat creep. To be frank, I suspect that if you had your machine tuned to the point where that 5% makes a difference and had overcome all the other 3D printer inadequacies to be able to push your machine to that limit, then you would probably have gained enough experience by then not to need to ask these questions. There are so many other things that can go wrong before you get done-in by a 5% less-efficient fan. Don’t sweat the airflow; just about anything is good enough.

Also consider shipping costs. There are usually minimum purchases required to get free shipping, or the shipping is built into the price of the product. The strategy I’ve used is to generally throw in a few replacement parts, even if I don’t need them right now, when purchasing filament - which I do in quantities that qualify for free shipping.

In fact, in my 3DPC account, I have a Wishlist on the go into which I throw parts that will work on my printer. I then draw from that list to top-up any filament order to qualify for free shipping. Gradually you build up a stock of spares that will have you back up and running in minutes, no matter what. Hint: raid 3DPCs clearance center. I only pay full price for parts I absolutely need right now. The clearance items are my discounted stand-by spares.

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Glenn, your question about which fan I need exactly speaks to my frustration with the spec-less, description-less list of fans here. What fan do I need? How do I know?

I need the one that faces forward on my printer when you face it - not the motherboard fan(s), not the snail-blade fan. That should narrow it down to what fan I need, but do I know? The search-by-printer option on this website listed only one fan, and this is it. So based on the experience and knowledge of those who offered input in this thread, this is the fan I should buy because they’re all the same.

Maybe I DO need the one that LegoManiac pointed out, buty how can I figure that out based on what I can determine from the item description? That’s my point (to beat it to death): a page with a picture of a fan on it and a description that reads “Small Cooling Fan with Ball Bearing 4010 24V” tells me very little about whether this fan is for my printer, or that its the specific fan I need or not. It could be a fan for any gadget, or a fan with one specific use. I’m left to ponder it, or buy it and find out by trial and error.

Doesn’t matter to me now - I have a pair of fans coming from Amazon with the exact same part number, and another fan from here I bought as a pure gamble. We’ll see which fan works for my printer.

And yeah, I do my best to pad my orders for needed items with other un-needed items (filament, nozzles, misc nice-to-have-someday parts). But the free shipping bar here is pretty high, so unless you’re buying a printer or a truckload of filament anyway, its generally not worth adding $100 of misc items to save $15 in shipping.

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Or ask questions here. I do feel your frustration, however, but keep in mind that the bottom end of the learning curve is fairly short. You pick up the basics fairly quickly. In this thread, you’ve learned that a 50mm square fan that’s 15mm thick has a model number of 5015. You won’t need to learn that again no matter what fan you’re buying.

You have to compare that to the logistics of the manufacturer providing detailed parts diagrams, in every language necessary (which. let’s face it, they would already have in Chinese) or the colossal headache it would be for any retailer to provide a cross-reference between the parts they carry and every 3D printer ever made, especially given that the manufacturers are free to change the specs on a printer, and hence the parts used, at any time.

As for the the shipping fees, I agree that the bar is pretty high. Mind you, 3 rolls of filament will get you 90% there and believe me, as friends and family find out what you can do with it, you’ll be going through a LOT of filament. I bought my first print on Black Friday of last year and I have 29 empty rolls to show for it.

As a friendly suggestion, may I recommend that if or when you have another printing problem, post a photo of the problem behavior or problem part, even if you don’t know what it’s called. Someone here will direct you exactly where you need to go. That will save you purchasing parts you aren’t sure about and may not be able to use if you guessed wrong. We’ve all been through this learning curve and we’re all eager to help.

Always remember that a picture is worth 1000 words and is usually more valuable than a Chinese part number :slight_smile:

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Got my 3DPC order today. And …

3DPC sent me the wrong fan. The picture for this items doesn’t show the front of the fan (ie the side that clearly shows the fan type - blade or “snail shell”), the item is titled “Official Creality Part Cooling Fan 4010 24V”, and the description just says

“This blower fan is a replacement for the following 24V Creality printers:
Ender 3 / 5 CR-20 Pro 24V 6800r/min，L1400mm”

The fan this item is actually referring to is the snail shell type, which the package in my hand says is a “Hotend Blower Cooling Fan”.

I looked through all 9 pages of fans available here, and I see some called blower fans, cooling fans, radial fans, axial fans, and on an on without consistency. Without a proper picture there’s no way to tell what the fan is actually for.

So, in the end, Glenn was “probably” right (thx BTW, for suggesting specifically what I needed): the fan I actually wanted was the “Small Cooling Fan with Ball Bearing 4010 24V” (with the exact same description), which at least shows the fan type clearly as having blades in the picture. But since it wasn’t an “Official Creality Part Cooling Fan”, I passed and went with the trusted brand name to look after me.

For the record, I got the 2-Pack of fans from Amazon yesterday (one snail shell type which Glenn called a “part cooling fan”, one blade type), spliced the blade fan into the printer, reassembled, and everything just fit, the wire coolers matched, and it worked first try. Quiet, smooth, and 1st print came out fine. I think I’ll buy another pair as spares.

You’re right - I learned something today.

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Part Cooling Fan is almost always the “snail” type or blower type like in your house furnace. Cooling fans (are for the hot end heat sink) and are almost always the axial type you can see through. like the old fashioned box fans or window fans you used to get.

If it’s any consolation the fans are almost a consumable. they don’t last very long. if you have your printer for any length of time i’ll bet you use them all up

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Always check the manufacturers site. They usually will list the manufacturers part sku code and most sellers do not shoot their own photos, they use the ones the manufacturer does. FYI.

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