Heated Build Chamber - Temperature Control

My latest project has been to build an enclosure for my printer, which is essentially a modified Ordbot Hadron. I have made it out of polycarbonate sheet.

Although it is not quite finished, I have done some testing and found it really struggles to heat up sufficiently. I print mostly with ABS and was hoping to reach 50 deg C inside the build chamber, however it struggles.
I added a USB fan inside to circulate the air but it still only reaches 31 deg C after 30 mins. I am just using bed heating at 110 deg C.

For those people who have built DIY enclosures: do you have separate heaters inside and temperature control? If so, how have you done it?

Mostly I use high power incandescent bulbs (150~200 watts) with that alone I can keep temperatures in the order of 90 to 95 degrees, I do not have any temperature control since it have never gone beyond 95. I insulated all inside walls with a cheap and thin fiberglass insulation.

In my current project I'm using a couple of heater cartridges attached to a large aluminum heat sink with an external PID controller with a thermistor and a high power blower fan to blow the heated air inside the chamber. I'm still about 6 to 8 months into this project since it is a monster 1 cubic meter printer but it should in theory keep the chamber at 60 to 80 degrees hopefully.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/03/2017 12:28AM by ggherbaz.

Hi,

I have just built an enclosure for my CoreXY printer.

I used 16mm thick MDF (Fibre wood) sheets with two 10mm thick polycarbonate doors.

My power supply sucks in air from outside of the enclosure and the bulk of the air is expelled outside of the enclosure. A small amount of air goes from the power supply into the enclosure and there is a small fan which expells air from a box which houses the Ramps PCB.
Still need to make an air chute from the power supply directly to the ramps box.
I don’t think this will increase temperature by anything much.

I have found that when printing with ABS with my heat bed at 90C, I get a temperature at the top inside of my enclosure of approx 35C and at the bottom approx 31C. I do have a end of print cooling fan which would properly even out the temperatures if I turned it on, this would reduce the temperature at the print area .

I’m thinking that the only way to increase the enclosure temperatures is to use an additional heater as there’s not enough room to add insulation to the inside of my enclosure.

Cheers REPROT

Overall I am happy with the reduced noise, less smell, more constant temperature around the printer, also keeps filament drier and keeps dust out of the printer.

Hi,

I build a closed chamber for my home build 3D printer about 3 years ago and still very happy with it. I had some wood cut out of a plate at the Home Depot (in Holland) and used some angular profiles and screws to put everything together. Then i glued on this soundproofing material which i found cheaply somewhere on the internet from a local seller. Finally i got some led-strips used for "tuning" of cars which are already suited for 12V (eBay) and put them on the inside for lighting.

In the end i was worried about the fire hazard since i repeatably leaf my printer running for over 24 hours so i also bought a automatic fire extinguisher. The whole project cost me about 100 euro's and was totally worth it. when is set the bed up to 100 degrees Celsius (is use Celsius from now on) within 2 hours the temperature is stabilized at about 55 degrees. This is when i leaf the door like 2cm open (~1 inch). I like to fully close it the first hour to crank up the temperature but if i leaf it closed this rises up to and higher than 60 degrees which might become to critical for the electronics. Also the automatic fire extinguisher goes of at about 75 degrees so.

I added two pictures to make things a bit clearer. Hope u have some inspiration from it.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/14/2017 10:22AM by Evan.

I used rigid insulation on two sides of my delta. I'm still working on the design for the third side as I want the extruder outside the enclosure. Currently I'm just using a piece of plastic bag to cover the front. The temperature several inches above the print bed stays around 40C. I expect eliminating drafts is more beneficial than the temperature.

Tube heater as used in green houses and a proportional heater control for lizards
Foam mat interlocking squares as build box sides doubled and carpet spray glued together

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/17/2017 07:02AM by Dan365.

Been doing a bit of work with my CoreXY with an heated enclosure.

I tried adding a 100w heater, got temperature up another 10C but was very slow to get temperature there, now looking at using a 300w.
One guy is using a 500w and gets temperature up in about 4 minutes which is faster than it takes the heat bed to get up to temperature.


refer to [forums.reprap.org]

Quote
etfrench
I used rigid insulation on two sides of my delta. I'm still working on the design for the third side as I want the extruder outside the enclosure. Currently I'm just using a piece of plastic bag to cover the front. The temperature several inches above the print bed stays around 40C. I expect eliminating drafts is more beneficial than the temperature.

I would not want that in my house:

from Wikipedia: "looking at toxicity, time-release profiles, and lethality of doses released, in a range of flaming, non-flaming, and poorly ventilated fires, and concluded that PIR generally released a considerably higher level of toxic products than the other insulating materials studied (PIR > PUR > EPS > PHF; glass and stone wools also studied).[5]

Despite this PIR insulation is generally regarded as being more fire resistant than PUR insulation"

Fortunately, it isn't inside my house In any case the amount used is .4kg in a 400m³ shop. It's nice to know the toxicity, but given the volume of PIR and the volume of the shop, I don't think I'll worry about it too much.

p.s. The nylon and ABS filaments will probably give off more toxic fumes than the insulation and are much more likely to actually start burning in a 3d printer fire.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/18/2017 01:35PM by etfrench.