FlashForge Adventurer 5M Enclosure Recirculating Duct

This design allows you to add the recirculating duct found in the FlashForge Adventurer 5M Pro to the base model. This is probably only useful if you've already added the enclosure or are planning to as it just recirculates air inside of the enclosure to theoretically help create a more uniform temperature within the enclosure and if you have a filter installed could help remove some of the odor and/or VOCs that result from printing.  The AD5M pro has a servo that controls a movable  baffle that allows either recirculated or “outside” air to be blown back into to the enclosure, thus possibly allowing some control over the enclosure temperature.  Since the base 5M lacks the circuitry on its mainborad to drive a servo, this design just connects the upper filter intake to the top vent only allowing for recirculation. 

For the fan I converted the original design that used a 5020 blower to a 12V Noctua 40mm x 20mm fan (because I had one). I realize that an axial fan is not as well suited for dealing with the increased static pressure of a duct and may modify in the future to replace it with a blower. For its power, I used an LM2596 buck converter (pick your fav on Amazon but I used this one https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076H3XHXP) to drop the 24V of the mainboard blower for cooling the stepper motor drivers to 12V - this way the recirc fan only runs while printing and not all the time. I trimmed Design8Studio's buck driver mount and used double sided tape to mount to the chassis. See in the pics but there is a nice recessed area behind the blower to mount the converter and store the fan's long cable. 

As a side note, you will also notice in the pics that I have cables plugged into the LED and AUX fan ports as I have LED lights in the enclosure and cut the back panel out and put a 120mm fan in as an exhaust (See update below). Also note that I cut away the grill over the fan on the power supply - it really quieted the PSU fan (that runs all the time) and since the back panel of printer goes over it anyway its not like its exposed.  I bought a Noctua 60mm x 15mm 5V fan (might as well use that bag of buck converters I bought, lol) to replace PSU fan but it wasn't really any quieter, so went back to original fan and found that sheet metal grill of PSU case was really the culprit, however I ran out of steam and didn't go back to the Noctua fan - maybe another day.

This design requires you to reroute existing cables to keep them away from belts and the mainboard blower, in particular cables to the extruder, filament runout sensor and Y-axis stepper and the new one added to the buck convert for the new recirc fan.  I found the best way to do this was to cut a rib of the ABS case under the mainboard blower (see pics) and route the cables under the blower. Once the blower is screwed back down it holds all these cables in place out of harms way.

I used PETG to print the entire design as my ultimate goal is to try and print higher temp stuff like ABS, ASA and POM and didn't want to risk PLA warping in the heat. To assemble,  glue the pieces together for the left side (intake) and the lid that covers the exhaust above the fan with CA glue (or whatever works for you). Mount the fan with the screws that come with the fan and route its power cable through the little slot in the side. The intake then screws into the fan mount with four M3 x 20mm screws.  The pieces are tight and you will need to scrape away any excess support plastic to get it to fit. The design can definitely be tweaked to make the tolerances less tight and easier to assemble. I used ORCA 2.2.0 to slice the design and have uploaded the *.3MF project file.

Now to be perfectly honest, I have no idea if any of this makes any noticeable difference to my print quality but it was a fun exercise and helped me stretch my basic CAD skills with Autodesk Fusion! Thanks again to Design8Studios and myxxx323 for posting their designs for us to remix!

Happy Building

-Steve

Update 3/25/2025 (Exhaust Fan)

I decided to just run the exhaust fan from the ADM5's 24V PSU so it runs all the time the printer is powered on. This is because the ADM5 firmware only starts the AUX fan after the first layer (or however many layers you set for no cooling in Orca - see pic of cooling tab under material settings) and it stops the fan when the print is complete. For printing stuff like ABS, ASA, POM, etc. I wanted to make sure the exhaust fan ran the whole time and even for a few minutes after the print. I'm sure that this could be solved with custom FW (i.e. Klipper, etc.) or in the slicer by inserting custom gcode (i tried this a little with no success).

On the other hand, the nice thing about using the AUX fan connection is that the stock ADM5 FW supports controlling a PWM fan's speed with the AUX fan setting in Orca (same pic of Orca cooling tab under material settings). Be aware that this connector supplies 24VDC (not 5 or 12 like most PWM PC fans require so you'll need a converter to drop the voltage if using a PC fan) and that it has a non-standard pinout (see pic of back of connector plugged into ADM5 Aux fan port) compared to a standard PC 4-pin PWM fan. For the fan itself, I just cut out a 120mm hole in ADM5's back panel and created an adapter to go from the fan to the 5" duct that runs to my window.

I bought a 24V fan but it was very loud running it at full voltage so I use an LM2596 converter to drop the voltage and reduce the fan's speed to a more acceptable level.