MakerGear Forum

nice! plenty of light in there. is that the ikea enclosure? have you had a chance to do any testing yet to see how abs does in there or taken any temp readings while in use?

I'm using the same IKEA cabinet with two doors. All I use is ABS and this works great. During a four hour print the internal temp got to 39c. That's with the bed at 90c and printing at 245c.

I'll take the liberty of forwarding along Rob's BOM:

BESTÅ VARA
Glass door, clear glass, white
Width: 23 5/8 " / 60 cm
Height: 25 1/4 " / 64 cm
Article Number: 401.785.86
$15.00
 
2
$30.00

STUVA
Frame, white
Width: 23 5/8 " / 60 cm
Depth: 19 5/8 " / 50 cm
Height: 25 1/4 " / 64 cm
Article Number: 301.281.77
$29.00
 
1
$29.00

 
Subtotal
$59.00
Delivery charge
$12.98
Total excl. tax
$71.98
Tax
$3.69

Total cost
$75.67

Also, Dusty's original list from the Google Groups: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/makerge ... NN30rI0-IJ

After my bed warms up to 110 and I start the print, I am at about 40C. At the end of a print, I was as hot as 50C on the side of the printer (meaning, IR pointed at the black powdercoat). If I point the IR at the white enclosure, it is somewhat less.

This is with a room temp of around 70F.

I using a powerful 24v fan on my hot end. I still need to measure the stepper temps and decide if I need fans on them.

I bought a temp controller and my plan was to vent the enclosure with a 120mm fan at 45C and maybe heat it with an IR lamp.

as you use it more let us know if the 40-45c temps is enough to notice a difference in your abs prints warping.

jimc wrote:as you use it more let us know if the 40-45c temps is enough to notice a difference in your abs prints warping.

The glass transition temp for ABS is around 70C so its unlikely you will completely eliminate warping below that. I'm still trying to get my heating system reliable so I only have a few prints with heat. At 80C I was able to print ABS on glass with hairspray without warping or pulling up.

The VIKI housing in the attached pic was also at 80C but the first layer wasn't set close enough so it did curl a little bit but not too bad.

The cylindrical part in the attached pic was printed at 80C and didn't have any warping or delamination and when I squeeze it to deform the shape none of the layers separate.

No supports were used for either print.

I'm not sure how much either of these would have warped even without the heat but I'm pretty sure the housing would have pealed up at the corners and the tube would have not been strong enough to squeeze it without layers cracking apart.

More to come after I get my heater system worked out. I've been hacking hair blow dryers but have found that the blower motors get hotter than I'm comfortable with and if the heating elements don't get a strong and even flow of air they get localized hot spots which would reduce their life considerably.

just a suggestion for posting pictures- cut them down in size. at least on my computer the pics are coming up way to big.

what i've been doing before posting that works is bring the pic up on my screen in windows photo viewer. then do a screen capture of it using the windows snip thingy. save that, and if i want it to display even smaller, i bring it into paint and cut it in half.

or is there some setting that I can use to control the size of displayed pictures in the forum?

Googling around, I find claims that Stratasys machines run their enclosures at 50C. I don't think you want to actually reach the glass transition temperature, and 50C should be suitable to reduce warping in large prints.

jsc wrote:Googling around, I find claims that Stratasys machines run their enclosures at 50C. I don't think you want to actually reach the glass transition temperature, and 50C should be suitable to reduce warping in large prints.

I think Jim was the one who found that they run at 70-90C. Would you mind posting the links you found Jin?

I didn't have any issues printing ABS at 80C. One of the prints looked good. The other would have looked good if I would have used supports.