I have made myself this custom variant of Bento box, where instead of two 40mm fans I am using 92mm fan. Other than that it has all the other parts (actvated carbon, HEPA).
Now, how do I validate that this is working as it should? I don’t have a smoke machine to visualize the flow. Even if I did, what I want to measure is actual air quality while it’s working and how measurements change after print is done and this keeps on filtering. No idea what is the best way to do this.
Note that printer is inside a Chitu enclosure and it’s fairly nicely contained.
Also — what is the appropriate amount of carbon to use? I feel if I fill it as much as possible it will severely restrict air flow.
You can buy fairly inexpensive air quality monitors that measure volatile organic carbon vapors and just watch the spike when the printer is running, then turn on the Bento and see what happens over time.
To monitor for particulates the filter traps, all you need to do is inspect the filter. If it is capturing things it’s working but probably hard to quantify. In the real world, calibrated air pumps pull air through little filters and those filters have bits counted using microscopes. The calibrated pumps and filter counts get turned into particles / unit volume of air for industrial hygiene and other applications.
For hobbyist use, though, filters are generally either catching things or not. Maybe print with dark filament to test the particulate filtering (unless the filter material is dark). It will take an air quality meter with VOC sensor to know if the activated charcoal is doing its thing.
Thanks, will do something like that. So far I am only printing PLA and PETG but plan to try ABS (with PLA first layer) so that would likely be a proper test.
