I should have built this thing from the word go. I ran this printer for almost a year on my desk right next to my computer. But it was loud and smelly and the high traffic area played havoc on print quality and caused a lot of warping.
Now that it’s tucked away in a back room suspended in a corner by French cleats and sitting directly on top of dense foam and a big ass paver it is merely “audible” but certainly ignorable. There’s also no more headaches from the smell, and my print quality has never been better.
Do yourself and your printer a favor and get an enclosure sorted out asap.
To avoid confusing newcomers: For anyone getting into 3D printing it’s much more space efficient to just get an enclosed printer and not having to deal with a built enclosure. Like the new Prusa core one.
This is still one of the best looking and well integrated solutions I’ve seen for external enclosures though.
And please, don’t print right next to where you sit all day. Proper ventilation and/or filtering is important, even for safer materials like PLA.
You have to keep the fuckers locked up?!
Yeah they like to steal yoghurt from your fridge and smear it on the bathroom mirror.
Oddly specific.
Yours doesn’t?!
Don’t worry, that’s completely normal.
Props for putting the display outside the enclosure
Thanks! I knew it would drive me crazy if I didn’t.
Many people also put the mainboard mounted under the enclosure to decrease heat wear. Mainly ABS printers I think. You want a hot box for that.
I have read that that is recommended but I don’t even know where to begin with that tbh. I just got this thing on wifi a couple weeks ago and printing from Fluidd along with switching to Orca Slicer have been game changers.
A kind of related question, which bugged me for a while: what are the environmental temperature limits for a typical printer? Is it a viable option to keep it in the basement or garage? I’m wondering, because that would mitigate the noise, vibration and fumes issue.
I don’t live in the coldest place but it’ll hit -20s c at the coldest in the winter with -10 +/-5, summer is 30 +/-5. My garage isn’t climate controlled but not the largest, a space heater is enough to bring ambient up enough to be comfortable, certainly enough where the printer firmware doesn’t kick out on low temperatures.
I have enclosures so it helps some, mk3s doesn’t get super warm as it’s currently setup but I do regularly successfully print abs on it, petg and pla aren’t an issue at all, voron gets substantially warmer. Summer, enclosures need to be open to print pla depending how hot it is. Even with all that, I’d recommend it, I do it primarily for air quality reasons, I’ve printed abs indoors without an enclosure in the same room exactly once a long time ago, 0/10 don’t recommend.
I know a lot of people online talk about running them in garages and basements all the time. Hell one guy in Canada said he ran one out in a shed. So while I can’t share any hard numbers I think you would be fine.
Pretty neat looking. Looks like something on display at a store.
I keep mine in my basement with a cam on it so I’m never really around it while printing. Although, I do love the smell of printing wood-fiber PLA.
Camera is next on my list! Now the only times I really check my printer is to make sure the first few layers went down alright. Once I can do that from my computer I will be unstoppable!
“Do the Bender! Do the Bender!” *Sing :)
this looks awesome!
are you controlling the temperature?
Thanks!
Not at all! The highest it has gotten in there is about 119° F while marathon printing some PETG. PLA has never made it break 90 in there though.
This is giving cozy vibes and I’m here for it
Out of curiosity, what’s the advantage of the french cleats? Do they dampen the noise somehow?
- When you’re trying to make it level and hit the studs with your fasteners, it’s much easier with a stick than a whole cabinet carcass.
- Cleats make the cabinet easy to install and remove.
- French cleats have a substantial amount of bearing surface and are extremely stable as a result, even without additional fasteners.
- That said, for a cabinet I would probably still drive a screw from the inside through the back panel into the cleat to eliminate any chance of a strong bump from underneath knocking the cabinet off the cleat. You know, like when you drop that last m4 nut on the desk and it bounces into the corner and you have to reach over your project and soldering iron and cup of coffee to retrieve it and then stand up too quickly in triumph and bang your head off the underside of the cabinet…
Nailed it! I had every intention of screwing the carcass directly to the cleat but the enclosure made of one and a half sheets of 3/4 ply so it was very heavy and didn’t budge even before I added the paver and the printer so I just never ended up doing it. 🤷♂️
Probably just easy to mount and a solid interface to prevent the enclosure from moving while the printer does it’s thing.
As the others have pointed out, the biggest reason is ease of installation. I hung this by myself and I’m not sure how you would do it solo using another method.
Mind showing some build pics if you got them? I’m probably going to make one out of 1/4" plywood I have left over. Some build tricks would really help.
I don’t have any build pics for you unfortunately. I would really recommend using at least 1/2 inch plywood for this kind of build though. I went 3/4 because I was worried 1/2 inch would vibrate too much. The enclosure needs to have more mass than the printer to reduce the risk of vibrations effecting print quality. Plus I’m not even sure what kind of fasteners you’d be able to use to secure 1/4 inch plywood that would hold the weight of a paver and printer.
I made mine with pocket holes and glue. Disclaimer though, I am a carpenter. I’d say this a pretty good starter project if you want to get on YouTube and learn. This is basically a cabinet carcass mounted on the wall with French cleats to give you some terms to research. Good luck! Just holler at me if you have any questions.
I’m wanting to build one in my office, but I also want to print in some of the more nasty filaments (ABS/ASA). Do you have any recommendations or suggestions for ventilation?
Put a carbon filter and HEPA filter in the enclosure with a fan to recirculate the air through it.
Like other folks are saying, a good carbon filter should do you right. My enclosure is mounted on an exterior wall so Im currently thinking long term that I’m going to try to vent mine out through the soffit.
Mine will be on an exterior wall, so venting is an absolute possibility. With that though, I’m unsure how much air to move… my printer is enclosed, so drafts and warping aren’t as big a concern; just VOC dispersal and safety. I don’t need to catch a lung full of stage four because I wanted to print some junk to make gardening easier.
It’s more about pressure than airflow. You just need negative pressure inside the chamber, so gas escapes into your chamber through the cracks, and out the vent.
I totally get that, if you are worried about over or under ventilating I’d just figure out how what the total volume of your enclosure is and then compare that to the CFM of your exhaust fan and it will give you an idea of how many air changes you get in a minute.
Look into what illicit/grey market pot growers use. Big duct fans and filters.
just say homegrow. there are regions where it’s legal to grow your own “pot”
but those are way overkill.
Yeah. I’ve been so removed from that stuff for so long that I forget the terminology.
As for overkill, depends on how their acceptable risk profile, number of printers, and types (FDM, resin, pastry, etc).
I printed a Bento Box filter for my enders when I started printing ABS. These seem to work pretty well but make sure you get the right carbon and good enough fans. Another printed option is the nevermore but that’s mostly associated with voron printers.
@Marafon This is like perfect timing! I was just considering getting an enclosure for my printer. I considered already enclosed Core XY printers but they are freaking noisy. Are you printing PLA?
PLA and PETG. I would like to get into printing ABS but I want to rig it up to exhaust outside first.
