Water-cooling stepper motor with aluminum block On a budget, I'm water-cooling a 3D printer. I'm using a 5&nbsp;V aquarium pump (\$3). Originally I tried to only use about as much water in a can of chickpeas but then found out i needed a lot more. I have a deliberate need to water cool stepper motors in the first printer, so that I can print with a high temperature filament like PEI (the operating temp of a stepper is maxed at about 53 degrees celsius; PEI requires an enclosure temperature of 80&nbsp;&deg;C), but on another printer I'm having some other issues with the motors that I think could be solved by better heat dissipation.

What I am getting to is a device like this: 



It is the perfect size for a stepper motor. My plan is to zip-tie one of these to each stepper motor and water cool it in a single path across my printer, including the hot end.

Can anyone think of a reason why this wouldn't work? i just haven't heard of anyone doing anything like this, but it makes sense to me as a chemistry minor. The specific heat of water is way higher than almost anything else. And it is way less noisy than fans. And it works inside an enclosure, while fans might not

Should I ziptie the aluminum block to the back part of the stepper where the metal is, or to one of the darker black sides?

Would I be able to 3D print a cooling block like this instead of paying for it? See also this relevant question on thermal conductivity of various 3D printing filaments. It should probably be metal to transfer heat better?
Cooling any single face of the motor is fine. The motor case conducts heat very well. Many 3d printers effectively cool the motors merely by having the output drive face of the motor bolted to a metal bracket which is bolted to the aluminum extrusion frame. That's it. That contact alone cools the motor, which is shown by how the motors overheat when people install vibration dampers, which puts rubber between the motor and the extrusion.

The only thing I would worry about is the surface area inside this particular style of block, and ensuring that you use an all-aluminum radiator since the block is aluminum.

There is another type of cheap 40x40 aluminum block with the nipples on the face instead of on the edge. That style has fins and a lot of surface area inside. This style with the nipples on the edge has a big S channel inside and not much surface area. It may still be more than enough. I'm just saying it's a significant difference and it might make a difference. If you find you're not cooling enough, all you may need to do is switch to that other style of block, not try to install 3 blocks per motor or any other exotic nonsense.

But no way do you have to worry about coooling more than one face of the motor, nor does it matter rwhich face it is, especially not with active water cooling like this, as long as the block is actually making good thermal contact with the motor (thermal tape, or thermal epoxy, or thermal pad &amp; zip ties)