MakerGear Forum

While waiting for my new M2 Kit to arrive I built this heated enclosure. I'm new to 3D printing and was planning to mostly use ABS, although PLA is stronger than I thought it would be. Anyway, I read where ABS can warp or suffer layer separation if the ambient air is too cool, so I'm using an STS-1000 temp controller rigged to a hair dryer to keep the chamber from getting below a certain temp (yet to be determined). The cabinet tends to run at around 100 F inside with the front door open due to the heat the machine generates, and I wasn't planning to run it hotter than 120F anyway to keep the steppers from overheating. All electronics have been moved outside the chamber. I also put a portable de-humidifier in the filament storage cabinet, which is also rigged to a humidity controller on the front panel. This might be tech overkill too, but it is easy to do and not that expensive so might as well geek out just for the fun of it. I plan to eventually move the filament spool down inside the cabinet and feed the filament up through the floor of the chamber so that all filament is always in the de-humidified box. I live in Florida so the humidity here does get pretty high outside. Although I keep this setup in my office where I work, the environmental control it has would allow you to run it in a cold basement or humid garage too. Anyway, detailed build pics are below. So far the prints are looking great!

The access door actually slides down, not pulls out like most boxes I've seen. A magnet holds the door from the top when closed. The windows are all 3/16" plexiglass. The machine height is designed for operation while sitting in a chair rather than standing. The dimensions were chosen to make optimum use of 4 x 8 sheets of plywood or melamine, which takes one and a half sheets to build. It is just under 24" square, with just enough room to handle the full range of the Y axis without the platform hitting either side, and is still small enough to just barely fit through a typical doorway. It disassembles into three pieces in order to make moving it easier. There is a vent in the back which can be used to vent ABS fumes through a shop-vac hose piped through a window in order to keep from stinking up your house if you print in your home. I'm going to look at trying to use some kind of air filter instead though, that way the machine doesn't have to be located near a window. I did have to reverse the orientation of the SD card holder on the controller box, since the front of the box butts up against the cabinet wall in order to allow plugging the USB cable in through the side of the cabinet.

That is cool as shit, thanks for sharing!

PLA is pretty strong, but don't leave it in the car. It softens with the slightest application of heat... (also don't print PLA in that cabinet)

I've been printing PLA in the cabinet without any problem, but I do keep the door open. With the door closed it will get up over 100 F in there so I'm going to add a cooling fan since the machine is too noisy to have to sit next to while working. Closing the door pretty much silences the noise, so I just need to vent the box for printing with the door closed. Since the hair dryer can also blow cool air I'm going to add a fitting that can plug onto the tip and direct the air at the build platform for cooling it off faster after a print. I can't pull the parts off until the glass is cooled all the way down to room temp, which adds a lot of waiting to a process that already caused enough waiting as it is. I could cool the box with the hair dryer too but I think it would be more effective to pull the hot air out the top using a muffin fan, with cool replacement air coming in through the vent at the bottom.

Someone needs to make a machine that chops up scrap parts, melts it down and extrudes it back into filament.

Not sure if you're familiar with it or not but there is the Filastruder & Filawinder setup... they go from raw resins (which are already really cheap) to filament.

I hadn't actually researched it, it was just the first thought I had as scrap prototyping parts started piling up. It's good to know there are ways of getting the filament cost down, I'll probably get one of those machines. They look simple enough to build yourself too. It looks like there are a few people trying to make the recycling type machines I mentioned, OmNom Project and Filabot’s Reclaimer. I'll be sure to never throw away any scrap so I'm ready when those hit the market

Here's an article I found that gives some details on how to build a filament extruder: http://makezine.com/projects/guide-to-3 ... -extruder/

nice job on the cabinet. as for the extruder, i thought about that about a year ago but now the price of good filament is so low its not even worth your time. put the failures in the recycle and forget it. another thing about extruding your own is that you would not want to regrind the parts and just extrude them. old plastic should only be mixed into new resin at at rate of 10% or so.

jimc wrote:nice job on the cabinet. as for the extruder, i thought about that about a year ago but now the price of good filament is so low its not even worth your time. put the failures in the recycle and forget it. another thing about extruding your own is that you would not want to regrind the parts and just extrude them. old plastic should only be mixed into new resin at at rate of 10% or so.

I was reading about that too, where the plastic gets weakened each time it is reheated so you can't use 100% recycled filament.

What's the cheapest ABS filament you've seen? I think $20/Kg is as cheap as I've seen. If the pellets are $5/Kg that's still 1/4 the cost, then it's a matter of how much time you have to spend per Kg.

yes about $20 sounds right. the other thing you need to consider is that the extrusion quality isnt all that fantastic from the home based extruders. most people over the past year i have talked to that have one it ends up sitting in the closet and doesnt get used. the extrusion is just all over the place or atleast nowhere near as accurate as what comes out of an industrial extruder. i guess as long as its on the small side that would be much better than too big. big = airprint.

Given that one of the common complaints with cheap commercial filament is inconsistent diameter it would make sense that home brew filament would suffer from this defect to an even greater degree. If a company that mass produces it with more accurate machines can't hold good tolerance than someone working with a plywood rig in their garage is likely going to have even more problems.

Guys the Filastruder does a great job on consistency, it just sucks for extrusion speed. I get 1.71mm all day long... ovality is 0.02.