Welcome to the SeeMeCNC Community

I built one rostock, took me 40 hours as I had never touched a soldering iron or built anything in my life. I fell in love with it, and now I have 3! I built the 2nd and 3rd printer simultaneously in only 24 hours. (it helps a lot when you don't need to keep looking at gene's manual over and over). I can't wait for my electric bill this month.

So I need to print ABS (for acetone smoothing) and I need to print large parts (final part is 36" long, so I'm printing 3 twelve-inch tall parts and then glue them together with ABS-Acetone glue). To prevent delamination, big cracks, and warping my FIL built enclosures. These are made of cheap wood and single pane glass. There are 200W light bulbs and a computer fan in the enclosures to uniformly heat the build area to about 110 degrees F. The heated chamber has definitely reduced the delamination to where there may be only one crack in a 12" tall print that is 10" wide, but I am worried for the safety of the components of the printers if I heat it any more. Perhaps CF arms are in my future. Anyway, just thought I'd share!

Nice job on the enclosures. As for heat, I'd worry about glues and plastics first. The motors and wire insulation are good for a lot more.

Have you popped a breaker yet? Three printers heating up, the 600W of lights, and whatever else you have on that circuit must be getting close. I can just imagine you cranking up the stereo and losing 3 print jobs at once.

Thanks Eric, I haven't tripped a breaker yet. I did have my UPS yell at me though when I tried to plug more than one printer into it. I should move the printers around the house so they're not all on one breaker. A tripped breaker when I'm not in the room paying attention would really be unfortunate as most things I'm printing are 12-24 hour prints. Thanks for the heads up!

They look awesome.. I want to make some enclosures too, i was just thinking of the best design without making it too bulky

Do you think you could post dimensions of your enclosures for us out of curiosity ??

Thanks mate
Paul

geolupulus wrote:Thanks Eric, I haven't tripped a breaker yet. I did have my UPS yell at me though when I tried to plug more than one printer into it. I should move the printers around the house so they're not all on one breaker. A tripped breaker when I'm not in the room paying attention would really be unfortunate as most things I'm printing are 12-24 hour prints. Thanks for the heads up!

Heh. I'm sensitive to the problem as I currently live in a house built in the 50's that only has 30-amp service. I've only got 3 circuits in the entire house: 20 amp for kitchen outlets, 15 amp for lights&bathroom, and 15 amp for everything else. And the kitchen outlet near the sink is the only outlet that is grounded. No grounding via the box either; all the original fittings are made of bakelite. Still, it does what I need, so long as I don't try to run too many things at once.

That's crazy! They look awesome side-by-side like that. Way to go on the build time too.

I was worried about our power bill this last time, but it turns out that even with the printer running most of the time and computers etc we still use less than half the power for a household of our size

I wonder if that extension lead from the neighbors house is helping ....

Luckily for makers, 3d printers only use the power equivalent of two light bulbs (or maybe five if you use a heated bed). Unless of course you have some huge light bulbs inside your print enclosure to heat it up. Compare them to ovens or air conditioning and you're realize how insignificant they are as far as power use goes.

I'm about to begin to build an enclosure for the MAX I just ordered. Care to offer any quick hints, do's/don'ts? Wht would you do differently? ANything? Thanx! G