I’m trying to find out what purpose this type of design serves and how they are designed but have hit a wall with knowing what to even look for.
This piece of the voron stealthburner is the only example I can think of off the top of my head but I have seen them before in some sort of fan duct or funnel thing.
just to clarify, you’re talking about the bits whose ends are marked in red circles?
They’re called stators. In a ducted fan (or similar) they’re used to control the air flow coming off the fan. Usually, it’s fairly turbulent airflow, with a bit of spinning going on. the stators are used to make that turblent flow more smooth and laminar.
I’m not sure why they have it on the Voron- I assume that’s the fan that cools the hot end heat sink, in which case turbulent flow is not a problem at all. It could be to reduce noise and act as a fan guard, though. Or it could just be cosmetic. probably bit of the last two.
They discuss it in some detail in one of the Voron Live talks - I think this one, which was the announcement video for Stealthburner. Lots of CFD combined with manufacturability testing and aesthetics mixed in too.
Edited to add: oh, that’s the hot end fan. I don’t remember if they discussed that or just the part cooling fan, but the video is an interesting watch either way.
Oh yeah. They put a lot of thought into it. I’d say it’s probably one of the more over engineered bits… but they’re all kinds over engineered… heh.
Sorry I wasn’t as clear as I thought. I mainly meant the cone part but that also is of interest.