Month: January 2018

My 3D Printer Enclosure

My CaseIt’s been a long time in the works (and ever growing!), but I finally took the double snow days and did some finalizing and cleanup of the case for my Printrbot Simple Metal.It works on the principle of holding the entire case at negative pressure to remove the yucky smelling plastic fumes and push them up the chimney in my apartment. Because constantly pulling in outside air would get rid of the benefits of a heated enclosure, I also designed/printed a servo actuated butterfly valve for varying the fan flow rate. It may be creeping elegance… but hey, its cool, and it works!Raspberry Pi (octoprint) ElectronicsExhaust Servo Butterfly ValveStill yet to be printed (waiting on a few parts for my printer) are an inlet duct for the ATX power supply, and a “flapper” air inlet check valve to allow outside air to flow into the case effectively.Also, the entire thing is run from a custom Octoprint Plugin that can turn the case light on and off, adjust the set temperature of the case, and disable the noisy negative pressure vent fan. I also added in an ADC and a power sensor from an old quadcopter for monitoring power usage during prints.Octoprint PluginIf there’s any interest in people re-creating this setup, I’m more than happy to divulge plans and actually clean up/publish the octoprint plugin. http://ift.tt/2qy5vN8