Printer Enclosure Questions

[pjfossee]

I just graduated high school and am moving on to college in a few months. I have a 12" i3v and I'd like to bring it with me. My roommate likes 3d printing as well so he's ok with this. However, for his sake and my sake, I'd like to build an enclosure for the printer. Its dimensions would be about 24" wide x 24' tall x 30 " deep. My hope is that it will minimize the sound level from the printer, allow a higher ambient temperature in the enclosure for better ABS prints, and possibly filter the ABS smell or vent it out somewhere. I'm also planning on adding an octopi setup. Anyways, I had a few questions.

The first is should I add additional heating to the enclosure or will the 12" bed be enough?

Second, how hot should the enclosure get with the stepper motors inside it? I will be able to move the electronics outside the enclosure but I don't believe that will be possible with the stepper motors.

Third, I was considering using peltier thermo coolers to cool the stepper motors and as a byproduct add additional heat to the enclosure. They are about 5 amps each but would run off of a separate power supply from the printer's. Is this feasible?

Lastly, for filtering the ABS fumes, I'd like to at least eliminate the smell if not the nanoparticles too. What, if any, kind of filter material would you recommend? Activated carbon, HEPA, anything else? I envisioned a fan blowing the fumes through the filter.

Thanks!

[Roxy]

ind of filter material would you recommend? Activated carbon, HEPA, anything else? I envisioned a fan blowing the fumes through the filter.

I wouldn't filter. I would vent. Even a small 1" tube would be able to pull enough air out of the chamber to keep the vapor out of the room.

[pjfossee]

Thanks for the reply. That sounds easier. One concern I have with this and with filtering is it creating a draft. Would this be significant enough to affect the print? I thought of a few other question. Could I use a ceramic heater plugged into a temperature controller to control the temperature of the heated enclosure. I'm pretty sure it would work, but would the airflow created by the heater screw up the prints in your opinion? Besides the stepper motors, is there anything I should be concerned about if I maintained an internal ambient temperature around 50C. Would 70C raise other concerns? Just curious for planning purposes.

[Mjolinor]

I use a travel hair dryer connected to a relay powered off the heated bed wires, heated bed removed. I also use the heated bed temperature input for measuring the temperature of the chamber via a thermistor hanging inside.

For ABS I run it at around 70 C.

[pjfossee]

Are your stepper motors in the enclosure when it's heated Mjoliner? Is there any concern there. What about the wooden parts of the printer. Should I be concerned about them? And the cooling of the hotend heatsink. I'm assuming there's no problems there since people make heated enclosures but I'd rather be safe than sorry. Sorry for all the questions. Thanks again.

[Mjolinor]

Yes the steppers are in there. There is no problem with steppers running that heat for ever, they can stand very high temperatures generally.

There are some pictures somewhere on the forum of mine. I think in that show your mods thread, not suer though it was a long time ago.

[curious aardvark]

Or you could simply just not use abs :-)

[Ama-fessional Molder]

Or you could simply just not use abs :-)

Some of us like ABS.

[uncle_bob]

If you are going to heat the print area to 50 or 70C, you want to get as much outside that area as you possibly can. That includes steppers. It certainly includes all the electronics. Unless you also want to heat up the room when you fire the beast up, count on having about 2 to 4" of insulation on all sides of the heated area.

A hepa filter is useless for plastic fumes. An activated carbon bed can do a pretty good job. It might be the size of a 20 gallon bucket and need to be steam purged on a regular basis. I have run some that were the size of a small house .... You could see us do the steam purge from 20 miles away ....

Bob

[curious aardvark]

Some of us like ABS.

lol there's no accounting for taste ;-)