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Electronics inside or outside of printer enclosure?

Posted by foul_owl 
Electronics inside or outside of printer enclosure?
June 05, 2015 05:03AM
Hi folks,

For those of you that use an enclosure, do you put the arduino and ramps board inside or outside the enclosure?

If it's outside, what sort of interface(s) do you use to bring wires from the inside to the outside? Do you run the wires under the box? If so, where does your ramps board live relative to the rest of the printer? I can't seem to find a spot that works. My original spot was on the Prusa i3 frame where the holes are normally drilled to mount the ramps board, but of course my board was overheating there. Do you just leave your ramps board sitting on the table outside the box? Obviously you can't attach it to the box, since the box needs to be removed when leveling the bed.

Do you cut a slit in the box to allow the wires to slide up and down? Thinking about the extruder wires mainly here, since those move quite a bit.

I've been trying to run my wires under the box, but the wires going to the extruder and the heated bed get caught along the bottom edge of the box and drag it all over the place, which doesn't seem that safe. I also can't just poke a hole in the box and run the wires through that, since the box is removed to relevel the bed, etc. A slit seems to make sense to me, but I would imagine it might let too much of the heat out. I'm just not sure what the best option is here.

I would really like to do a cable chain, but I can't see how that would work if the ramps board is outside the box. Do you have any photos of your "rigid" setup that allows for a removable box? I have yet to see something like that.

Any ideas?

Thanks!!
Re: Electronics inside or outside of printer enclosure?
June 05, 2015 05:14AM
My old printer has the elctronics on the inside and in the upper part. This is not a good idea since that is the area where most heat ends up. I have to use a pretty big fan to keep the electronics cool.
My new designes all feature the electronics at the botttom, but still within the enclosure. Since heat rises up they don't get as warm and even contribute to heating the chamber.


[www.bonkers.de]
[merlin-hotend.de]
[www.hackerspace-ffm.de]
Re: Electronics inside or outside of printer enclosure?
June 05, 2015 11:19AM
I recently rebuilt my printer and put the electronics in a drawer under the build chamber to ensure they wouldn't overheat during large ABS prints. The floor of the build chamber is a couple pieces of 1" foam insulation board. The machine is a 100% custom design/build, so I made all cables long enough so there would be no problems opening the drawer. I ultimately decided to mount all the controls inside the drawer so when it is closed, you wouldn't know there's a drawer there. You can see what I did here: [www.instructables.com]
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