I’ve been playing around with heating the chamber on a spare X1C for a while and here’s what I’ve found:
I’ve been running an X1C at 60°C for a few hundred hours now without issue.
I would not recommend higher without swapping to high temp steppers as they’re running at ~87°C at 60°C chamber temp. Assuming they’re class A then the insulation is good to 105°C but that’s the windings, the 87°C I measured on the case is probably already pushing it.
When the chamber temp exceeds 70°C, the heated bed is automatically shut off. I have only tested for this behaviour when NOT printing, just while at idle. I cannot say what will happen if the chamber temp exceeds 70°C while printing.
If your room temp is above 10°C then getting the chamber to 60°C can easily be achieved by just insulating the printer and setting the print bed at 100°C+ (which is generally what you’ll be doing anyway if you’re printing a filament that benefits from a heated chamber). Even wrapping it in a blanket/bubble wrap works fine. Cover the top, sides, front, and top 1/4 of the rear for best performance (If you still want to be able to see in the front then grab a replacement glass door and bodge a double glazed window but you still need to seal the gaps around the door (edit: and you need to change the hinge for clearance)). Although frankly even covering just the top and sides makes a huge difference.
Speed up the preheat by raising the heated bed and turning on the Aux fan.
To actively heat the chamber you can just place any old heat bed you have lying around in the bottom of the chamber (on feet to keep it away from the plastic base). Works just well enough with minor insulation. This doesn’t circulate air but depending on the filament and print size that can be beneficial. Take care not to crash the bed into it - it’s not a perfect solution.
If at any point you start getting layer shifts, it’s because the stepper motor drivers on the motherboard are going into thermal protection and losing steps. This happened to me when I was pushing anything above 60°C. To solve it I simply stuck a 40mm fan on the outside of the case blowing into the vent holes over the motherboard. The motherboard already has a fan but it draws air from within the chamber. Ideally the electronics need to be sealed off from the chamber, I’ll get to it eventually but for now the bodge fan is working fine.
Thanks for sharing, I’ve been planning to add a chamber heater of some form, but maybe it’s not really necessary from what you describe. The main problem I have is that my printer is almost always busy so I don’t have time to mess with it…
for now the X1E is released and can heat to 60°C. Its the same printer with some more Features. I dont think, they changed materials in the X1E between X1C.
Do anyone tested with a third party heater? On the right Side beside the Bed is enough space to place a good heater. Maybe we need to avoid to blow in the plastic parts. that can be a challenge, cause the bed has plastic parts with unknown temperaturelimits.
I have added a custom chamber heater with 0.1C temperature control yesterday to my X1C and have spent the night testing ASA in particular, as that has been my hardest fimalemt so far when it comes to warping both on PEI as well as G10 plates.
Increasing the Chamber temp to 60C degress helped tremendously, I will monitor if I see any negative side effects in the long run and update here.
This mod has, however, made the Noctua fan heastink mod for the motherboard somewhat of a neccessity as that appears to be the element that most negatively reacts to higher chamber temps.
Not really, adjust your slicing and keep your temperatures higher than usual than you will have great results even for open printers for low height parts. It is important that your part is close to the bed to absorb reflected heat.
I have a heater from Amazon used to warm seeds for sprouting. It gets up to 125F. I slid it under the printer (there is a gap) and turned it on. The interior of the chamber made it to 48C with a little patience and bed heating on as well. I’m going to look for a shorter heater of the same type that I can put inside on the floor of the printer for less heat loss, but this one works darn well for what it is. I like my printer chamber to be toasty warm inside for nylon and PC. 50C is about as far as I’ll push this though. on my homegrown Prusa i3, I had to be careful about not melting parts, bearings seizing, and electrical wire degradation when I ran it hotter than that.
Sorry for slightly off-topic as I’m hoping to avoid adding an active heater.
I printed ASA last summer with the stock printer and had some warping issues. I have now insulated my X1C on the inside using 1.5 mm adhesive neoprene (white, for helping the chamber light). A 1,5 m roll 300 mm wide was just enough for both side plates and the back plate. 1.5 mm is thin enough to clear belts and other things that come near so it was more or less 45 cm (or so) per plate with no cutouts except for the fans and excess chute (and holes for a few studs but that was just push-through with a finger). I did this partly for some noise insulation (or rather vibration supression) and partly for chamber heat.
I just also installed this door seal for the left edge of the glass door. It does a nice job. Apparently the three other edges are good enough without modification.
So only thing remaining now is to actually test ABS and ASA with these mods but that will have to wait until summer, after I move the printer to the garage again.
I have been looking into Chamber heating too for the X1C. I did come across the X1E parts list from the Wiki and would assume that these parts can be purchased and swapped into the X1C. Now if the X1C firmware will allow you to use is another story. Has anyone tried the X1C->X1E Chamber Heater upgrade?
Yeah I saw that too and wondered if it will fit physically (for a starter).
Another thing I realized when casually researching a DYI heater is that the X1E is only rated for 60°C chamber - just like the X1C. The only improvement with X1E would be faster preheating then, and the most expensive Ethernet port in the known universe. $1,000 for wired LAN.
My current take is I will do perfectly fine without a heater but some insulation. I already insulated the chamber inside walls with 1.5 mm neoprene, now contemplating what material to use for in place of the top glass lid when needed. Perhaps just keep it but apply some sort of IR-insulating film? If that is even a thing lol.
I’m just intending to buy another glass top plate and bond the two together with VHB tape to give an air gap. Easy insulation and looks almost standard.
