Dell Laptop Air-Intake Spacer

It’s handy to use my Dell Latitude laptop sitting on its neoprene sleeve (e.g. on my lap) – but the soft sleeve blocks the fan intake.  This spacer keeps a gap to let air in.

The lugs keep it attached to the E/Port connector (so works for Dell Precision E-Series, too), if you pop something like this on the top of each lug.  When you remove the spacer the dots will stay in the holes ready for next time.

Print settings

Layer height: 0.2 mm

Line width: 0.6 mm (my nozzle is 0.4 mm)

For the base, I used 19.9% Triangles infill with X/Y offset to line up nicely, with a single top layer of Lines running front-back (with part fan reduced to 50% to prevent pillowing) and no bottom layers.  This gives a pleasing triangular-patterned base covered in a skin of separate (because line width > nozzle diameter) lines that’s flexible (even in PLA), so doesn’t crack if bent a bit.

I used a cutting mesh in Cura for everything above the base, so that the base’s skin extended under the lugs, and to change the number of top layers for the lugs to a more solid 3 (and to set the unneeded infill there to 0%).

How I designed this

In Tinkercad.  Edit it online.