Minimal heated chamber

Hi All,

A lot of people are building a heated chamber around the whole 3d printer, this has some drawbacks:
- A lot of 'unwanted' surface to heat which means extra 'Watts' needed to heat it.
- Unwanted heating of motors (or additional work to place the motors outside the heated chamber

Has anyone tried building a chamber only covering the build area (attached)? this would enable to heat only using the (existing) heated bed. I was thinking about using cable brushes to accomodate the axis and filament access to the chamber, something like this:

[nwAAOSwuAVWt78O" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">www.ebay.com]

But I have no idea weather it can handle the heat and constant movement (as it is meant for pretty stationary use case.

Has anyone tried something like this?

Thanks!

Your idea would require slots to be cut in the chamber walls to accommodate the belt driving the x axis.

It isn't completely necessary to keep the motors outside the print chamber but you definitely want to keep the electronics out. My first enclosure was just built around the whole printer with power supplies outside the box. The bed heater alone was sufficient to warn the chamber to 45C. You can see it here [www.thingiverse.com]

That first experience made it clear that a printer that will be enclosed should be designed for enclosure from the beginning, so when I redesigned and rebuilt the machine I did just that. I moved electronics to a drawer under the machine and designed the frame to make enclosure as simple as possible, just a few flat panels attached to the frame. I attached the side panels to the side of the frame using magnetic tape which makes access to the machine very easy and seals the printer up almost air tight. The top, back, and bottom are made of
1 inch thick PIR foam insulation board. You can how it was done by clicking the link in my sig, below.

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

The brushes are an intriguing thought for the slot for the X axis but they'd probably interfere with the belt unless you built guards. Deltas and H-bot/Core** configurations are a lot easier when it comes to schemes to enclose the build volume without the electronics and motors.

I thought about doing this with an i3 and decided against it as there would have to be a lot of cut-outs for the various things that have to go in and out of the chamber. You have a really huge compromise to decide on, the print head can be within the enclosure completely, but because of the amount of space in an i3, in the x dimension, you will lose quite a bit of build volume. Or you can have a print head size cut-out at each end of the x carriage, which might make it hard to maintain the temperature. Have a look at the amount of space your print head occupies in the x direction at each side. You're good in the y dimension. In z the issue is getting the filament into the head, so a long slot would be needed on top.

In the end I built an enclosure around the whole printer, with an air duct to bring cold air in and blow it over the ramps board.

It works okay. But as someone pointed out on this thread [forums.reprap.org] you might be as well to buy a mylar tent, its light, apparently quite a good insulator, has duct openings for ventilation built in (to bring in cold air for your electronics, and possibly incorporate a filtration system - the other really good reason to have an enclosure), and its portable.

I am planning to enclosure a corexy next and considered enclosing just the build volume, the problem with my corexy is the really massive cable loops on top (I have a flex3drive extruder so that has a huge flexible driveshaft), so I am going to go with the mylar tent and perhaps the electronics outside of the tent.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/25/2016 05:43PM by DjDemonD.

For less tearing than Mylar there is reflectix (bubble wrap with aluminized outer skin). Sold at Home Depot in the US as home insulation. Cuts with scissors and has a decent r rating.

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DjDemonD
I thought about doing this with an i3 and decided against it as there would have to be a lot of cut-outs for the various things that have to go in and out of the chamber.

I have done it and only two holes are needed, one for alle the electronics and another for the filament. The electronics are outside the chamber. The chamber is build manly from plexi and heats up from the headbed alone.

I used 2 plastic bags placed over the whole printer except the electronics, and it worked well enough for the ABS prints I was doing at the time.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

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Frans@France
I have done it and only two holes are needed, one for alle the electronics and another for the filament. The electronics are outside the chamber. The chamber is build manly from plexi and heats up from the headbed alone.

Could you share a photo of your setup?

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dc42
I used 2 plastic bags placed over the whole printer except the electronics, and it worked well enough for the ABS prints I was doing at the time.

It would scare me to leave it unattended.... Did you make a frame for the bags?

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wouterheer

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dc42
I used 2 plastic bags placed over the whole printer except the electronics, and it worked well enough for the ABS prints I was doing at the time.

It would scare me to leave it unattended.... Did you make a frame for the bags?

The printer in question is a delta, so it already had a frame around everything except the extruder and spool holder. I use a few pieces of cardboard to space the bags out from the towers, to keep them clear of the carriages, and I weighed them down at the bottom.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].