For example, I know that on an X1C ambient can’t be much colder than around 50F before it starts to bind up. You can hear the difference in the way it sounds. As temperature drops further, print quality drops and the belts suffer–seemingly grinding themselves up more and more the colder it gets. Maybe other problems too, but I stopped my X1C the first time when I noticed the problem developing. That was a couple years ago, and ever since I avoid running my X1C when it gets colder than around 55F.
In contrast, an H2D does have a heated chamber, so there’s that in its favor. At least inside the chamber, it could self-heat to avoid the cold. However, the H2D belts do run outside the chamber in the area below the floor of the chamber. Then again, maybe that area picks up some ambient heat from the heated chamber… As for the frame itself maybe racking, I just don’t know.
My H2D is in the garage. It has worked fine in hot weather, but now heading into colder weather, with outdoor temps dropping to 39F tonight.
As for mitigation methods, I suppose I could maybe run it inside some kind of heated tent or other enclosure, but I haven’t yet looked into that.
Anyhow, anyone here know from actual experience what the answer is? How cold is too cold when it comes to ambient air and running the H2D in it?
Will it suffer damage from the cold even if it’s not running? Bowing, twisting, stretching, racking,…that won’t reverse after it warms back up?
An interesting point I hadn’t really considered. It can certainly be both hot and humid during the summer. Like most places, it gets drier in the winter. No imminent threat:
Also, the garage is generally warmer and drier than the outside air.
I have a number of other 3D printers in my garage for a couple of years now, and I’ve never noticed any condensate on them or in them. No signs of rusting either.
Does Peyton even make a kit for the H2D? From what I found the Peyton seems geared toward conserving heat inside an X1C. Even then, it’s not clear it would help with the belts when they’re in the bottom outside the chamber.
Maybe if I were to plug up the opening around the bottom of the H2D, it would keep warm enough there just from whatever heat emanates from heated chamber. On the other hand, maybe doing that would cook the electronics.
I guess I’d need to run some temperature probes to know what’s what. Probably better to just find some kind of temperature controlled enclosure or something and create an artificial environment with normal temperatures inside. Yeah, easier said than done. I suppose the AMS would have to go into it as well, so that I’m not trying to feed chilled filament into the printer (yet another reason why it would have been better for the AMS to heat while printing!), as maybe the cold would make the filament potentially too brittle.
He’s been busy with H2 since its release. So yeah, he has a kit for H2D.
Also, I don’t think you need to worry to much about Z-axis belt, as the heater dumps the hot air at the bottom of H2, and that thin and objectively loosey-goosey plastic shell radiates a lot of heat out there.
Well, looking into it further, there’s already not a lot of airflow along the bottom of the H2D. What look like giant holes for the handholds seem to be largely sealed off, probably to keep everyone’s fingers out of the belts whenever they move the printer.
Normally I have my AMS 2 Pro sitting on a 1" thick piece of foam insulation when I have it sitting on top of the H2D to keep it from getting too hot inside it from the convection heat that rises off the H2D. So, tonight I removed that foam insulation pad and put the AMS 2 Pro back directly on top of the H2D, as it seems nearly everyone else does, and that way it can use the wasted heat coming off the H2D to good advantage.
I’m pretty sure that’s good enough for tonight’s printing. As we get further into colder winter temps, though, I’ll need to find something better.
Reporting back: having tried it now, I can say it would maybe be better not to print PLA on a colder night:
The vent on top opens when printing PLA to avoid overheating. But on a colder night cold air enters through that vent, and I noticed the build plate pringling. Part of the reason is that I was printing a 7x7 gridfinity case, which consumed nearly all the print area on the build plate, making it more sensitive to warping/curling in the presence of drafts. Interestingly, the chamber temperature was reporting 27C, but from running my hand up and down on the front door glass, I could tell there was a considerable temperature gradient within the chamber: noticeably hotter to the touch near the top and considerably cooler toward the bottom. So, the mixing of air was obviously nowhere near uniform inside the chamber. There was a very noticeable stack effect.
AMS 2 Pro functioned fine during printing, but at the end, when it retracted the filament back ontot he spool, the filament wasn’t pliable enough, and it shot off the spool, creating the potential for a filament tangle on the next print. I’ve never noticed this ever happening before. Coincidence?
From what I’ve read, you shouldn’t operate the printer in environments below 10 °C. Even though the chamber can be heated, several components remain exposed to ambient conditions. Therefore, I’d say keeping the temperature above 10 °C is the safe limit.
It turns out that setting the chamber temperature to anything less than 40C has the same effect as setting it to zero, which explains why the chamber temperature dropped to 27C instead of the 35C I had set it to for printing PLA (to avoid warping of the large 7x7 gridfinity print). So, I’m setting it to 40C, which may be a borderline dicey proposition for printing PLA, and we’ll see how that goes or whether it jams. Not sure why it has a 40C cut-off, or any cut-off temperature for that matter. Maybe because it can’t guarantee adequate cooling at lower temperatures if the temperature creeps above the setpoint? I’m guessing so, since it’s making some kind of assumption about the ambient air temperature (10C to 30C), which is all it can draw upon for reducing chamber temperature.
It turns out insulated ice fishing tents are cheap, so this year I’ll setup my printers inside of that, inside of the garage. Should arrive early next week.
Admittedly, more of a stopgap than a long-term solution…
Hey presto. Claims pop-up in just 60 seconds. For outdoors it could use guy-wires to butress against the wind, but I’m hoping in a garage it will be self-supporting without the need for that.
There also exist inflatable ones, but I ruled that out because I didn’t want to risk a possible deflation onto hot 3D printers when unmonitored.
Not sure why it has a 40C cut-off, or any cut-off temperature for that matter. Maybe because it can’t guarantee adequate cooling at lower temperatures if the temperature creeps above the setpoint? I’m guessing so, since it’s making some kind of assumption about the ambient air temperature (10C to 30C), which is all it can draw upon for reducing chamber temperature.