Making Elegoo Saturn 2 Silent

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In my review of Elegoo Saturn 2 I mentioned that Elegoo Saturn 2 is very loud and the noise is unpleasant. The good news is that the silencer kits I make for Saturn 1 work with Saturn 2. In this blog post, I will show you how to install them.

Saturn 2 uses two 50mm fans powered by 24 V. The combination of size and 24V rating is extremely rare. You cannot find any quiet fans in this form (at least in Europe). There is only the SilentiumPC Zephyr 50. These fans are of high quality in my experience and are nearly unhearable (the manufacturer claims 18 dBA). However, Silentium fans require a 12V power supply. If you connect such fans to a 24 V supply, in the better case, they won’t be silent (as they will spin much faster), but also you will significantly shorten their life or immediately burn them. Therefore, you need to step down the voltage to 12V. If you are not afraid of soldering, you can do it quite easily. However, if you cannot solder or you want to support my work, you can use my silencer kits.

What do you need

Step-by-step guide

Start by opening the back cover. Unscrew the marked screws and remove the cover:

Then, disconnect the LCD cable, motor cable, limit switch cable, and purifier power cable:

Unscrew 10 screws of the top plate. Note that 2 screws are under the stickers and 2 screws are behind the Z-axis:

Carefully lift and remove the top plate:

Now unscrew and remove the backlight shutter:

Disconnect the fans from the motherboard, unscrew them and remove them:

Replace the fans on the metal bracket with silent ones. Attach the silencer modules to the fans.

Install the fans back, and connect the fans connectors. Place the silencer kits behind the motherboard:

Install back the shutter, and top plate, connect LCD, motor, limit switch, and purifier power. Put back the back cover, and you are ready for operation.

Results

After the change, the printer is much quieter. I don’t have a calibrated decibel meter; therefore, I can provide only a relative comparison using a phone app. So please, don’t take these values as absolute, but only as a comparison before and after.

The other question is, how does the change affect the cooling of the LED array. First of all, it is worth noting that the cooling solution cools very well. After 15 minutes of constant exposure, the fan heatsink remains at 5°C over ambient, while the LED heatsink remains at about 12°C over ambient. After changing the fans, the temperature of the heatsink remains at 7°C, and the LED heatsink remains at 13 °C over ambient. So nothing to be worried about. These numbers were measured by a K-type thermocouple read out by the UNI-T 100 multimeter.

Final remarks

Although Elegoo is known for being user supportive (they ship tools to disassemble the printers with the printer) and instruct you to replace the component by yourself, it is possible that installing this modification might void your warranty as this module was not designed by Elegoo. Also, the module is not a self-contained device and requires installation. Improper installation might damage your printer. I am responsible nor liable for any loss, damage, or injury of any kind arising from any use of this module.


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