New Enclosure Testing
Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2014 6:06 pm
So I've been having some thoughts lately about some of the heated enclosure designs I've been seeing on here, and it occurs to me that most people are neglecting an easily addressed aspect.
Here's the outside of the enclosure I'm using. Looks like I just hung a shower curtain, right?
Wrong! Here's the inside.
Most designs neglect radiative heat transfer. This enclosure attempts to address that issue. It is 3 layers. There are 2 outer layers of PVC coated canvas drop cloth I picked up from home depot, and the inner layer is a reflective emergency blanket (aluminized polyester). It's not ideal by any means, there is no insulation to speak of, but it should do the trick for some of my larger prints while I work the rest of the design out.
Initially, I just had the emergency blanket hanging from it to see how well it worked, and it managed to raise the interior temp by about 15 degrees, enough to significantly help with layer bonding and warping on larger prints, as you can see in this picture.
The object on left had some areas of weak layer bonding that broke when I was messing around with it after it was done printing, but only next to the mounting point, whereas the object on the right had layers unbond during cooling that go nearly all the way around the objects circumference.
The next iteration I plan to add some actual insulation, perhaps flexible foam sheeting or thick felt, between 2 layers of the dropcloth, assuming I keep it. I'm also going to see if I can find a way to get my hands on some actual aluminized mylar. And I'm definitely going to work out a much better system to hold it onto my printer besides blue painters tape.
Here's the outside of the enclosure I'm using. Looks like I just hung a shower curtain, right?
Initially, I just had the emergency blanket hanging from it to see how well it worked, and it managed to raise the interior temp by about 15 degrees, enough to significantly help with layer bonding and warping on larger prints, as you can see in this picture.
The next iteration I plan to add some actual insulation, perhaps flexible foam sheeting or thick felt, between 2 layers of the dropcloth, assuming I keep it. I'm also going to see if I can find a way to get my hands on some actual aluminized mylar. And I'm definitely going to work out a much better system to hold it onto my printer besides blue painters tape.