Heated Chamber Preparations.

I posted this on the reprap forums and figured I would share here as well.

"I am preparing my delta so it can have a heated chamber. At this point I have done the following.

1 - Printed an ABS end effector
2 - Aluminum plates are holding the effector sandwiched and stable even under high heat from the j-head.
3 - Aluminum rod arms (soon to be replaced with CF arms to reduce some weight, the end effector is getting very heavy)
4 - Added an automotive auxiliary ceramic heater and necessary wiring.
5 - Added a blower to evacuate fumes and heat rapidly.


The next steps will be.

1 - Print revised carriage holders in ABS
2 - Devise side walls with cork insulation.
3 - Devise a brush style air separator to keep the hot air in the chamber. (these will go into the belt runways)
4 - Devise a belt side service port or door.
5 - Front door, piano hinge, foam strip insulation & HDD magnets as a latch.


I have a question for those who have heated chamber experience. What kind of temps should I be shooting for? I was thinking of setting 40c and working my way up. Any suggestions on this? Yes I will be printing ABS.

Here is a link to my blog to show the progress so far. http://engineerd3d.ddns.net/tuki-15-...-preparations/"

Your heater fan should run all the time not just when the heater is on.

You want to aim for 65 - 70 degrees C at the head.

That temperature needs to be stable all the way inside the cabinet so make sure you have enough air movement to achieve constant temperature.

It is easiest to use the heated bed output for the control. The PID controller built into the software should be capable of maintaining the temperature within appropriate limits.

I used a portable hair dryer that has a 500 watt output but I rectified the mains feed to it to lower that by about half. The motor in that is a 12 volt DC motor run directly from the 24 volt power supply with a DC-DC adjustable converter so I was able to minimise the power the motor used yet adjust for enough air flow.

The blower fan turns on with the heater. Its not on a separate switch. The top blower is there once the print is done to remove heat from this thing quickly if so desired. The heater will ingest air at the top and push it down reheating it. If that wont give me proper temps the heater will be placed at the bottom.

You need the air moving all the time, that is why I mentioned it. If you can't do that then you are wasting your time heating the cabinet. The whole point of it is to have constant temperatures as much as hot temperatures.

You need to make the fan run all the time and turn the heat on and off. My Stratasyss have six 4 inch fans moving air about and they blow a gale, that is how it needs to be to make the temperature constant and hot all over inside the printer.

Looks like I will be shopping for some blowers then. I will check my stockpile of fans and see if I have an appropriate fan(s) for this.

You probably can't control the fan and the heat element of the aux heater right? If so, you could always connect the fan to the main power cord/switch so it remains on and circulating, and the thermistat could only control the heating element. Not sure if this is feasible with the current parts though. Just a thought