I reading the advertisements… about the new cooling fan. Previously with the J1, you needed to remove the top when printing PLA. Now the top can stay on… with the addition of the cooling fan. Any one have any experiences to share with the new fan in place? Not sure how long the J1s has been out, so maybe i will be the guinea pig. LOL.
To tell the truth, I would doubt it works that easy as advertised! But - nothing brings better experience than trial. I am not an advocate for those additional fan systems in SJ1 body as forced air flow can introduce also unwanted cooling of print surface unless you can control air flow with some kind of speed adjustment. Slow and natural convective air flow through open doors and open top can help to address PLA printing with SJ1 hotends better. To my mind…
I purchased the J1 originally and then added the print cooling fan upgrade kit just recently, so in essence have the J1s now. I’ve had zero issues printing PLA with the print cooling fan and top on albeit I haven’t printed anything that is longer than a couple of hours on any one print. To be honest, I never had any issues printing PLA with the top on, without the added print cooling fan upgrade. I did print a top cover extension a while back but it was just to give the filament tubes a little more room to operate in and was not done for PLA prints per say.
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I’m in the same boat as our fine, fine USMC friend here. Added the print cooling fan and have ripped off several prints now with the top on, no extension. Print quality is amazing with PLA, PETG, and TPU so far - been very happy with the results.
Took a while to get here, and in the process I ended up modifying the filament path (new bowden tubes and whatnot, it all loads from the front now) thinking that might have helped with some of the extruder clicking issues I was having earlier - but that was eventually solved with higher hot end temps, lower retraction values, and slowing down the print speed once I got to a speed where the extruder couldn’t keep up. I’m not sure the filament path has improved anything in regards to that, but it looks a lot cooler, and there’s nothing hanging off the outside of my printer anymore.
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@naPS , where do you get Bowden tubes? I’m going to run a Sovol 3D dryer unit whenever I run filament to the printer, so that I don’t have wet filament issues. Funny, the dryer says not to close it while its being used in junction with a printer. Only close it when storing filament. Anyway, I want to run Bowden tubes from the dryer to the machines Bowden’s, if possible. But I don’t know where to go to get these tubes.
@CommMan2000 I get mine from Amazon here in the US. I got the Capricorn brand, and after using them for a while, I might switch to PTFE tubing - it seems ‘slicker’ on the tests I’ve done.
OK… thats good to know… I will see about getting about ten feet of PTFE… i def want the slickness…for the disatace. Currently, if i get my printer… i plan to run both filaments out of a Sovol 3d dryer box, and then up to the two bowden tubes at the top, without modifying my machine. If everything goes well, then I will print a riser that allows opening and closing the riser slots. Im very nervous… with all the bad things i have been reading this last two weeks, while i awaited my shipment…
I added stick on thermometers to get baseline on temperatures inside while printing. I keep top on and only print PLA and PLA+. I also spray the underside of the top with WD-40 Silicone dry lub to keep feed mechanisim friction down. No real problems with over 100 prints. I have 3 Snapmaker 2 that I use a lot more however J1 seem very stable.
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Did the upgrade to my J1 and, like others have said, I’ve had no problems printing with PLA and top cover on. Actually, I’ve been cranking things out for about three days solid (cover on).
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Here’s an okay picture of what I ended up doing. I moved the spools inside on roller bases. I grabbed them off of printables - if you search J1 there, they’ll come up. Someone modified them, and they work great - sorry to whoever did that, I don’t have the name / link handy to reference.
I then drilled holes under the front corner magnets for the top cover on the body of the J1. I inserted a bulkhead connection to maintain tube integrity, and ran the tube down the front column so I could load filament into it easily, and then routed it along the edge of the printer, and looped it into the extruder. You can see the blue tubes at the top. I’ve been very happy with this arrangement, I don’t have a lot of the clicking and other noises that I used to have from the tubes rubbing all over each other and other components along the top of the printer. Plus, I can push it back a lot further now, and it’s super easy to change out filament.
I did remove the filament tube guides / drag chains, installed the aux print cooling fan, and added a camera (you can see it in the top middle, along with the ribbon cable) for use with OctoPrint on a RasPi that I’ve mounted to the back. It’s not super high quality, but it’s good enough that I can monitor what’s happening on the print bed remotely.
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Where do you have the top cover design from? Can’t find any else that is looking similar good!
Thanks 
If you’ll go to Thingiverse and search “Snapmaker J1”, about halfway down the first page you’ll see the “Snapmaker J1 higher mounting lid “ by benny911 dated Jan 28, 2023. That is the model I used and printed everything exactly as he has the file pieces, using Cura slicer. The only thing I did was print two of the back center piece and used one of those inverted in the front center. I thought it looked better having the ‘drop down’ look of an inverted back center piece in the front of the J1. You can print a straight front center piece as well and decide for yourself which looks better for your J1. I printed all my pieces with Overture PLA Pro black and Overture PLA Pro orange on my Anycubic Kobra Max and all pieces turned out perfect. I did not glue the individual pieces together, they fit plenty tight enough by themselves. Using magnets in the corners is your option…I chose to do so and superglued 15mm x 2mm magnets that I bought from Amazon, centered in the recessed circular bottom of all four corner pieces. It does provide a bit of magnetic pull to keep the corners and the rest in place if you need to remove the top lid.
And if benny911 is a member here on the Snapmaker forum, thank you for the files as the individual pieces to the lid extension turned out perfect.
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