Advertisement
Since airflow is critical, all of our enclosures come with fans chosen for CFM ratings to
match the cubic size of the enclosures. This ensures enough airflow for cool-loving
filament types like PLA to keep the temperatures in the safe zone.
Room Temperature
Passively heated enclosures depend entirely on the room temperature as a starting
point. If you're trying to print ABS in an unheated garage in the winter, the temperature
inside the enclosure will never get hot enough. The bed heater has only enough energy
to increase temps from the baseline. If that baseline is 72F, you've got a good chance
of getting into the sweet spot. If the baseline is 50F, you'll be lucky to break 72F in the
enclosure itself.
ABS and Nylon
You want higher internal temperatures for filaments like ABS, which happens naturally
because the recommended bed temperatures are higher. With the fans turned on, we
shoot for internal temperatures between 35C and 40C for 3D printers that use E3D hot
ends because E3D recommends that temp range avoid clogging. Keeping the
temperatures in that range puts the least stress on the equipment and follows the
manufacturer's guidelines.
This works great for people either interested primarily in air quality or those who are
risk-averse and don't want to take a chance of clogging their hot ends or decreasing
the useful life of their printers.
More experienced 3D printer owners, though, for whom a clogged nozzle is a known
risk, might want to run the temperatures higher for less chance of warping ABS parts
or printing nylon. In those cases, you can turn off the fans or even print one of the vent
covers and not vent at all. We do the latter on our internal print farm on a couple of
machines where the temperature when printing ABS gets as high as 46C. They've
been running like that for years with no filament clogging. We've never had a power
supply fail with no venting of the power supplies. Your mileage may vary as it depends
on many variables, such as filament quality and the quality of the power supply in that
particular printer.
If you're looking for the highest temperature possible, try turning the bed heater on for
an hour before printing.
Perfect Enclosure Printing with PLA
Since PLA is happy at room temperature, the only reason to enclose it is for improved
indoor air quality. PLA typically prints with a bed temperature of 60C so that it will heat
Copyright 2022 3DUpfitters
21
Advertisement
