My room is so small that i do not want to print ABS or ASA before making an extraction system. Due to winter I can not take the printer out to balcony. I ordered two 140 mm USB PC case fans with three level intensity (one will suffice, the second one will be reserve). Also 5 mt of 100 mm diameter extendable aspirator hose aluminum inside PVC cover outside. As we have kind of importation restrictions in our country i might not get them before mid JAN 2025.
My plan is to design and print two funnel adapters for hose, one to attach P1s exhaust and the second to be attached to the box i will put the fan in. It will be very basic. Strangely there is not much information for DIY solutions for P1s or X series. The ones are commercial pro systems which not available here and impossible to import either.
In a youtube short, a young Chinese girl recommended power regulated fans and lower the fan speed to reduce warping of ABS and ASA. In another short one guy said he did not put fan as he heard fans negatively effect ABS.
My questions are:
As my primary goal is to reduce ABS/ASA fume what will be more suitable. It is approximately 3 meters from printer to window. I suspect P1S fan will be sufficient to push all the fumes out and a bit of external fan might support it better. As the quality of the fans I ordered is a mystery, even the lowest setting might be too strong or vice versa. What do you do when printing with ABS/ASA?
I am sure PLA, PETG and TPU will rejoice with external fan and cooler chamber but do you think i should lower the internal fan speeds?
The window is just behind my Monitor. So the exhaust will be 1 mt away from me. Will it be safe with fan or should i try to extend the hose further but i will not be able fix it to anywhere?
Do I need to make adjustments for nozzle and bed temps?
A couple of things Iām seeing in your post. First, over-reliance on what you āheardā or read on the web. YouTube and this forum are great resources but as an avid consumer of these resources myself, Iāve learned that way to much of it is bullshit. Take what you readāincluding this postšāand verify it yourself.
Thereās a saying I like to use in my day job:
āYou canāt manage what you canāt see and you canāt see what you donāt measure.ā
By that I mean, invest in some cheap reptile cage hygrometer/thermometer. Get the kind with remote probes as this allows for placement almost anywhere which will allow you to measure the temp variations in various parts of your print environment. This is this is the only way you can absolutely verify true temps. My print chamber has two of these and my filament drier has one. I have an extended temp range one that I use for those areas that can get above 50C.
These are just two examples but they can be found for cheap on Ali Express.
If I am interpreting your concept correctly, it sounds like you intend to mount the exhaust fan on the P1S side of the tube. I donāt think that will work well. No matter how well you seal your conduit, it will leak. By placing the fan at the printer, youāll create back pressure inside the tube, which will cause fumes to leak into the room. Instead, mount the fan at the exit point, right at the window. This will create negative pressure, which is what you need. The conduit will still leakāalmost all doābut a fan mounted at the exhaust point will create negative pressure inside the conduit which will draw all fumes out into the atmosphere.
VOC Meters can break that bank as some of them can cost more than the printer. And the cheap ones donāt work effectively. But if you are really concerned, this will be a way of determining true health quality or as close as one can get independent of your nose.
And finallyā¦ your question regarding temperature.
As I stated at the beginning, donāt get too hung up on what you read. Itās what you see and experience for yourself that truly matters. Above all, before you start worrying about temperatures, humidity, and outgassing, take measurements of the before environment and write them down. There are too many fools out there who make statements about conditions like filament moisture, temperatures, and such, but when challenged on whether they actually measured these items before and after, they give blank stares. The point is, as Iāve stated multiple times: measure before and after, and only then will you know exactly what is happening in your environment.
As I mentioned in my post there is no way we can order / import anything from abroad anymore. I can not even order the cheap gauges you mentioned in your post. Voc meters naturally out of reach for us atm. That is why I asked the experiences of others.
I am a retired science man thus I too believe measure, calculate, calculate, remeasure, calculate and then test rout. Even the locally manufactured filaments are 5x more that you pay for Bambu labs filaments. So failures are not only very costly but things are very hard to be replaced or refilled. I am trying to minimize failure risks before I start building anything.
Another good rule for science is to make a thorough literature search and evaluate past findings before proposing any hypothesis . So I am yet at this stage. For measurements, I have to settle with oven thermometers and laser thermometer guns.
The fan should be at the other side of the hose, near or outside of window. Not at P1s side. So no worries there. The fans and the hose I mentioned are the only ones I can order. I feel like they are a bit on the big side. They may suck more air than I intended and cool the chamber. Everyone I watched or read so far say " yeah it sucks the smoke out effectively" but none mentions how it alters the prints or settings.
I bought some environmental sensors from Adafruit but you can get cheaper versions from Amazon or Aliexpress.
I used a Metro Express ESP32-S2 to read the data from an SGP40 and a Particulate sensor because we are melting plastics of various types.
I can tell you categorically, you are on the right track. I was having power supply issues but even filaments like PLA are generating lots of VOC gases, particulate that you donāt really want to breathe.
As far as how much fan to use, if you have a variable speed fan you can put an atmospheric pressure sensor between the fan and the printer and just have the fan rolling enough put the chamber under a slight negative pressure. You donāt need a hard vacuum, just enough to move the toxics out the window.
Fan just needs to be between the case and the end of the pipe. Where along the pipe is a matter of convenience. If it is hard to reach at window outlet, being a foot back towards the case but still downstream of the case is fine.
For some reason I though that the fan and its box should be at the very and of the hose to be able to mount it to the window. While reading your post i realized that i do not have to. I can design an other adapter to mount to the exhaust side of the fan box and then attach an other hose swinging below the window. This will allow me to mount the fan box securely to the window while the fume will be exhausted even further than me. Thanks for the reply and inspiration.
At the end is probably best but it isnāt critical. What is critical is from the fan to out is straight so you arenāt having to pass through a bunch of bendās which increase the resistance to flow of the gas out the window or whatever is the exit pointā¦ You want it to also be as short a run as possible from printer to exhaust point.
I assume your duct will have to take a 90Ā° bend to left or right because it is against an interior wall but if you can position to a location in front of a window so it is a straight, short run is ideal. But if you canāt, just make it as straight as is possible.
The window has a side sliding frame and printerās back is also facing the same wall with the windows. I can indeed run the hose almost straight. Though I need to design and print a manifold to attach the hose to P1S. But rigid manifold will be much less restrictive than folding the hose.
If it were me, the first thing Iād take a look at is the coil type flexible duct that is used to connect a clothes dryer to itās outside exhaust. If you go that route, make sure the foil is reasonable heavy grade. some of the cheap ones are like paper thin.
Do a Google seach on clothes dryer duct. I just did and they show lots of option. for coming through a window also.
One of many Ventworks
Iām not bashful about rolling into a Lowes, or Loweās equivalent with my fan in hand to see how close the fan diameter is to the flexible duct diameter.
Actually, when I researched a solution for my office, I was amazed at how many type of custom-ready window conduit solutions there are on Amazon. For under $20, one can get an entire kit that has all the pieces one might want in sizes ranging from 3-6" and in some cases, oval shape. Thanks to the price falling for portable air conditioners, they now have horizontal, vertical, and even solutions that will fit inside a inward opening window with zipper seals.
One is only limited now by oneās imagination. And of courseā¦ I supposeā¦ if one really wanted toā¦ one might even 3D Print somethingā¦
Youāve got that right.
My biggest problem tends to be that too often people seem to stay in their own lane and in a way have no imagination.
I chased all over Columbia, SC hunting the fittings that the PTFE tubing pushes into that you can lock with tiny clips. I was striking out everywhere, primarily because sometimes stuff like that is hard to describe.
Lightbulb went off in my head, remembered those things are used in pneumatics and low pressure hydraulics. A BIG company in that space is Parker Hannifin and they have a fab shop and parts warehouse just up from me. Guy said they sold them in boxes of 50 so he just gave me 5 - 6 however many I needed.
When I was taking metal shop in high school, every inch of a residential HVAC ductwork system was hand bent on sheet metal brakes. Now itās all a long giant insulated version of dryer duct held in place by fiber strapping.
Fume extraction for an enclosed printer printing filament that needs a constant chamber temps is not going to work out well.
Far better approach, although a quite big job, is to have an enclosure around the printer from with all possible fumes are sucked out and pushed through an activated carbon filterā¦
This way the inside of the printer wonāt be affected as badlyā¦
That print was PLA and took about an hour to print. Thats the very start of the print.
Here is the complete print. Maxxed out at 201.
I am just getting these sensors back up and running. Where it startes dropping off at a constant rate is where I turned off the MCUās.
I am pretty I have some ABS in my dryer so Iāll print a benchy and we can see what the numbers do. I turned it all back on about 45 minutes ago.
You donāt need to pull a hard vacuum on the chamber. Use a variable speed controller and dial it down a bit so the pressure in the chamber is a slightly less than barometric pressure.
Weatherperson says pressure is 1007", chamber pressure would be like 1006.5
Following your advice, I made a trip to local manufacturers sites. I managed to find one that that manufactures inline duct vents. Bought the cheapest and smallest one they have with 100mm diameter. I also bought an external controller for variable speed. Once the hose will arrive I will start printing the adapters and manifold to try.
Unfortunately the only VOC meters on sale here are professional grade and even the cheapest one is 3x my monthly retirement pension. I found a few cheap ones on Aliexpress but i am not allowed to anything else from abroad until FEB 2025 as i have already exceeded the allowed quantity and price limit. Even a few of my packages are withheld at customs until JAN 2025.
@Tbenker If I may ask, and I hope this isnāt too personal, youāve mentioned a few times that access to items we often take for granted in the West is limited in your area. Iām genuinely curiousāwhere are you located, if you donāt mind sharing? Itās interesting to learn about the challenges and differences in accessibility around the world.
