Month: May 2017

Alright, lets talk 3D Printer fire prevention systems

I’ve been trying to find any good fire prevention systems for 3D Printers, and depending on the Region (USA/Europe), there seem to be few or none available.This topic addresses all of us, since we can’t sit in front of the Printer for 20 hours until the prints finish. Everyone risks life, house and home. Even expensive printers have a risk of burning down, with Thermal Runaway protection enabled or not.An error in the software or a faulty thermal sensor can cause the heating cartridge to melt right through the aluminum heaterblock. Same goes for the heated bed.So i think there are at least two things that need to be addressed here:Power Cutoff to prevent adding any more energy to an out of control heating elementStopping the Fire quickly before more damages can be done..A case/enclosure for the 3D Printer is a must have for both scenarios, since both fire/power cutoff systems work much better if they are in a confined space. These won’t do you any good if your Printer is sitting on your desk and you have an automatic firestopper mounted 2 meters above it. Smoke detection only kicks in if it’s too late with that much headroom.*On the enclosure side: it’s a bit ironic with the rise of the IKEA Lack enclosures for printers, these things are mostly cardboard and a bit of pressed wood dust (coupled with plexiglass side panels), if you have a printer fire in an IKEA enclose it will be much worse than without one.**also OctoPrint: OctoPrint does nothing for the nobody at home & fire scenario. Even if you check every 5 minutes for a failure, a fire hazard can break out in 2-3 minutes. And then you still got to drive home from work..(sorry, i’m going to list some Amazon Germany for the examples here.)Now these two things could be addressed with something like this:- A smoke detection sensor that powers down the power socket where the printer is plugged in.Some people dabbled with this in the past with custom boards, but none of those are still made today or ship to more than one country in the world.A good commercially and available (but expensive) solution would be a Z-Wave home control System.Z-Wave Smoke detector + Z-Wave Power socket + Z-Wave control hubCost: about 250 – 300 euros for a good fire detection systemAlternative solution would be hacking a run of the mill smoke sensor, or using one that can control an external circuit with a high/low signal. Smoke detectors with the capability to switch something else are hard to find.Hacking a run of the mill smoke detector is on my to do list, i will get one for this purpose and try to pair it with a circuit that switches off a power socket. Will post in the coming weeks..- An automatic fire stopping device that puts out fires.In America, there is a nifty little ‘put above hot things fire extinguisher in a can’ device called a [FireStop], or Auto-Out (http://ift.tt/2rFbtba). It’s not as small as it seems, and you’ll need to have a big case to put this in.In Europe, there are only these giant fire stopping balls, these usually work well and quick, but next to impossible to fit into a case. Usually ships from china.Also both of these devices (ball/can) need direct contact with the flame, since they have an igniter cord/fuse cord, like fireworks have..So what can we do about preventing fires ourselves?This wonderful hobby excludes one little tidbit, a potential to burn your house down and ruin your life.Since most of our 3D Printers come from Open Source, lets put our heads together to create a fire suppressant/prevention system that perhaps everybody can can build at home, just like our printers. http://ift.tt/2r68prx

House fire…. thanks to cheap printer from China…

So, this isn’t a joke and yes I really did have a house fire. Luckily, there wasn’t anyone at the house and no one got hurt. A 3D printer caused it but no, I wasn’t from a reputable source like Ultimaker or some other company. It was a Prusa i3 clone, and Anet A8 from China, bought on gearbest for $200. I’ve had it since September and it’s worked fine but I guess the board just decided “Fuck it, imma start a fire >:)” and started a fire.RemainsNote: Yes, I know I shouldn’t have left something from China running while i wasn’t home, but how should I have known this would have happened. Also, the fire department did confirm it was the printer. http://ift.tt/2q8E0UD