More to it later…
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What is the purpose of the temperature sensor?
With the fans running you are probably getting a fair amount of motion in addition to temperature rising to top of chamber.
Since the bed is the source of heat and it travels lower as time progresses, temperature may exhibit a drift as the radiant heat source moves away from sensor
TLDR;
I already had a temp sensor (at the back of toolhead on the picture) with bluetooth using Tuya, a China based app, hard to monitoring as it only work on the phone and quite nuance. Currently I do monitoring the print via built-in camera so that LCD with backlight would be a huge improvement and can be read clearly with my current lighting setup. I fully understand the chamber temp is not uniform, even with thermal camera would not show full story of air temp inside of chamber. But at least, having a temp reading is better than none, and two temp readings at different spots is twice the benefit.
I already played around with different location for the new sensor, but I run into trouble of running the wire to the USB port on AP board as it might obstruct the homing process. For now it is at the spot of the picture in post #1.
The sensor consumes almost nothing, it should last for months with coin cell battery and probably can work with small solar cell with the current lighting setup, same small solar cell the like of casio calculator. The only thing consumes considering amount is the backlight, but is limited to about 1.5mA with 1k resistor.
I was on the hunt for temp sensor with backlight for a while now. And this is the only thing I found
And mod it with LDO 3v3 to use 5V USB port of AP board.
This is temporary setup. Permanently would be tapping on the 24v rail from PSU.
I also have a plan to run camera webserver of ESP32CAM so that I don’t have to use Orca just to monitor it.
So back to the question
I am moving on from PETG to PC (polycarbonate), uncharted territory for me, and I want as much as data I can record. So that I can do statistic scientifically, not just hear say. As for now, TPU, ABS, ASA, PETG, PC, PA profiles from BBL do not work fully for me, the only exception is PLA. I pretty much tweak those profiles, sometime quite much. So yeah, I don’t trust anyone, especially the nozzle temp, bed temp that printed on the filament box.
The data of good prints and fail prints would help me a lot. For now, I can do small print with PC successfully, but not really sure about big print.
Initially, I wanted PA6, but recently gave up on PA6 (including PA CF) as it’s mechanical properties do not really work for me, like creeping under compression and potentially undo the screw. I do motorcycle engine parts, so yeah, quite strict on mechanical properties.
The next thing to improve and collect more data is chamber heater, but for now not sure if I can get away without chamber heater.
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A chamber that is too cold or too hot can cause print failures. My printer is in a shop that can vary seasonally from 10° to 38° C, so I discovered this the hard way.
In winter, I use the heat bed to preheat the chamber to at least 26°C before printing anything. At colder temperatures, the filament can cool too quickly and does not adhere to itself. Typically, I set the bed to 100° while circulating the air with the auxiliary fan to achieve a fairly even temperature.
A chamber that is too warm can also be a problem. I find I get best results using PLA, PETG, and TPU with the top and/or door open to keep the chamber temp below 40°.
Before starting prints with “high-temp” filaments like ASA, PA, and PC, I preheat the chamber to 45° and then heat soak for at least 15 minutes more to promote adhesion and reduce warping.
I once monitored chamber temp manually, but recently discovered that modified machine start G-code in OrcaSlicer can use the built-in temperature sensor of the X1C to automate the preheat process.
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