Just ordered a P1S so have a week or so to get things ready. Have read a couple dozen articles about ventilation but hope I can ask something specific.
First, in terms of models to print and use, it appears the X1C and P1S have the same shape/mounting for a duct? So X1C models will work?
More to the point… I am putting this in a room where I want as close to zero emissions as possible, even for safe media. It houses a lot of photo and telescope gear, and am very worried about deposition on optics.
I have a window to the outside, and was going to put duct (like a window mount dryer duct) to the outside. So far easy and matches lots of examples.
But I’m told for some filiment (PLA?) you need to leave the door open on the P1S. Can I assume the alternative is to have more airflow? So if I put a duct fan in the duct to the window, that I can turn up or down, can I maintain slight negative pressure all the time, and get enough airflow to cool the cabinet with the door still closed?
What I haven’t seen is any control systems for this sort of thing? E.g. temp sensor inside, fan speed controls based on it? Or am I over-complicating this, and just set it (e.g. rheostat) by some trial and error and use the same setting based on filament?
I’ve got IoT stuff all over the house, use home assistant; I don’t really mind setting up something electronic. OTOH I’ll have enough to worry about with a new printer if this is overkill.
But I want to make 100% sure to protect my camera/telescope optics. And no, I don’t really have another good room. BTW the room is under A/C, I can keep it fairly stable year round, at least +/- 5C.
Well was going to put it in the middle of 4" flex. I found a PWM ESP32 setup to control speed remotely.
Is there a reliable internal cabinet temperature that’s accessible from an API somewhere? I can just use that for speed feedback. I’ve guessing a little 120mm PWM fan should be more than enough. Emphasis on “guess”.
Also ordered a Apollo Air-1 air quality detector so I can get some advance feel whether “stuff” is getting into the room or not (yes, paranoia about optics runs deep).
Meanwhile reading and trying bambu studio. Printer did ship already, that was nice and fast! Due Monday.
Well, ESP based temp sensors or cheap. And I think I saw a cheap addon to get USB power inside so less wires. Though before I head to the make-something there seem to be about a thousand youtubes on available add-ons (god I hate Videos, but I guess they can’t monetize a few paragraphs in a blog as easily).
It’s unlike you will be able to measure either increased VOC or PM.
The problem with the fan is chamber temp with ABS/ASA. If you are going to use those materials, a Bento Box and an exhaust fan for the room might be a better configuration.
A issue with a fan for cooling is that its circulating air from the poop opening to the fan exhaust. Ideally air is pulled across the bed. But in reality PLA is pretty tolerant.
A zigbee or zwave temp sensor in the box can work.
I’m definitely coming to the conclusion it’s pointless for me to try to solve this before I get the printer. I’ve got a PWM Duct fan done that I can control remotely (e.g. based on chamber temperature), that was work building as I needed that control (ESP32 based) for a network closet anyway. I’ve ordered a window exhaust fan I can use “just in case” until I figure other things out, and it’s spring and mild weather now so that will work for a while.
I was thinking of plugging the poop opening up. Or at least printing something that can enclose it but allow at least some amount of excrement to flow out, maybe with a “full” indicator that would alert me. But I’m not planning to do artsy things so hopefully will be able to minimize media changes and just close it off if I need less air flow.
In the meantime I need to get it and see how all this really works.
I’ve got a few zwave DHT devices but anything with a battery is likely going to be short lived inside the panel. I’ll rig either a powered version with an extended temp probe, or maybe just one inside. I’m on a mission to get rid of batteries (I now have 33 battery powered IoT devices), not add more.
Well, that was quicker than expected. Despite Fedex literally tossing it on my porch (on its side ignoring the this-side-up sticker), it worked perfectly out of the box. A scraper first, then a desiccant box that looks absolutely perfect.
Anyway…
In a 30 minute print the temperature probe I added only reached 34C doors closed, set for basic PLA. I have to run out this evening so did not want to start anything long.
I need to look up what the desirable chamber temperatures are for different media (unless someone has it handy), but the bigger question – is the probe location a good place to check temperature for the chamber? If not, suggestions?
And yes I need to clean up the wire, but that’s for later.
Your concern is well founded.
A few months ago I went and bought some Metro’s along with some of the appropriate sensors from Adafruit because I was curious about both particulate and VOC’s.
Turns out that during printing, both were getting detected. I feel good about the data but in regards to particulate, I am not sure if I was truly generating NEW particulate or the various fans were just churning a fixed amount of particulate inside a closed vessel.
I have never heard anyone say they had to vacuum out their P1S or X1C because it was full of dust.
Two most interesting articles, need to review more completely. I still have parts and pieces arriving to experiment with but am aiming for something like the second article has.
If you want to print engineering materials, especially ABS and ASA, then the P1S should be in an enclosure if it’s in a home. The forced venting approach defeats the heat retention purpose of the enclosure.
Grow tents are a common enclosure.
Most people conclude that printing PLA/PETG doesn’t need venting. But being conservative with air quality means running an air cleaner to capture micro particles.
The H2D has an effective enclosure to help control air quality. Whether that air cleaning system in the H2D is good enough to print ABS in the house without additional ventilation is debatable.
You can pretty much make a cabinet almost air tight a lot easier than doing so on the printer.
You can add air-duct from cabinet to outside window, then have an exhaust fan spinning at minimum speed. This would introduce just a little bit of lower pressure inside the cabinet vs outside cabinet, and thus no air is coming out through leaky holes on the cabinet into your living area.
After print finish, you can open vent on the cabinet and turn on full speed to suck air with fine particles, or leave it a few hours to half a day for the particles to settle down before open the cabinet.
These fine particles are spreading out thanks to the wind or differences in air pressure. If no wind, or the whole thing is contained, nothing would spread out, yeah?
Assuming I (mostly) close off the poop shoot, how is that different from maintaining a minimal but slightly negative air flow from the unit?
I won’t know I guess until I test it. I have a window exhaust fan (i.e. tons of airflow) for safety while I test, and within a day or two should have an electronically controllable exhaust duct set up (based on chamber temperature), and an air quality meter arriving today. Tests I’ve seen so far people put them in the chamber, which seems a bit misplaced. I plan to test a couple feet in front of it, where I and “stuff” live.
Only thing I really feel I’m missing is I would love to have a (safe) smoke generator to set off inside the printer while testing, see where it leaks (if it leaks) outward. Anyone know of a good tool for that? Burning incense just seems a bad idea (and besides I hate the smell)?
You know anyone that is a beekeeper?
The little smokers they use work great for what you are trying to do.
I worked in a powerplant and wee had a bee smoker we used to find gas leaking out of, or into a 12 story tall boiler.
Your comment about putting the sensor inside or outside chamber is the genesis of my comment about the printer fans just stirring up a fixed amount of particulate but not representative of what particulate is in the room.
I don’t, but Amazon does. That looks possible, though I need to read about it a bit since it will be inside my house. But thanks, that may work.
I’ve been doing a 2 hour PLA print with the air quality monitor set up before, and there’s no significant change in anything it measures (particulates, various gases, VOC). It’s sitting about 2’ in front and to one side of the printer.
Interestingly I’ve had the case closed up (poop chute open) and printing basic PLA for 2 hours the temp near the top of the chamber levels off about 35C, which seems OK for PLA?
I don’t have any ASA, think I’ll order as I may want some ASA for outdoors on my telescope, and can experiment with it. But pretty surprised I can’t measure at least increase in dust or something, but maybe 2 hours is not enough.
What type of air quality sensors are you using?
Some are better than others.
VOC can be a challenge because a lot of VOC sensors are generic while others are chemical specific.
Apollo Automation AIR-1. Nice convenient implementation, but I have no idea how accurate it actually is. They list the sensor device types if you happen to know.
I’m trying to figure out how to get pretty graphs that roll it all up together, right now it’s a long list of things. I’m also curious why I have 1.75ppm of ethanol. The bar is three rooms away.
VOC’s by the hundreds. Something else may be triggering sensor.
That’s about as “All in one” as a sensor as I’ve seen.
I bought 3 MetroExpress controllers and took readings inside printer, area around printer, Sunlu S4 Filament dryer chamber.
To make pretty bar graphs you probably have to download some sort of software.
Reason I went with the Metro’s and sensors from Adafruit is because they have a system called IO and IO Plus ($) that you can build graphs present data in multiple ways.
When I looked at my sensors, there is a certain amount of common componentry and while two differenct companies may use the same base particulate sensor, they may massage the data differently so accuracy/validity of data can be questionable.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. The sensors got sucked into home assistant with wacky names. I need to take some time and fix them to something I like before I put in all the yaml to draw the graphs, so I don’t have to redo it. I’m busy trying to learn fusion right now well enough to make project boxes.
THe measured VOC’s since I put it in place have actually gone down. I think it’s because I put a fan in the window, which is not running, but is leaking fresh air, so it’s probably blowing any VOC’s back into my main house and screwing up my measurements. I had intended to turn the fan on when i saw them going up. I should have removed the fan and shut the window I guess, but it’s only got 30 minutes to go (and about 15 minutes of filament – I guess I’m going to learn if I can change rolls).
The particulates are in ug/m3, I haven’t tried to figure out why it has that weird gap, it may be related to me changing names at one point, but all the numbers are actually going down and are really small.
What I took away from my sensor adventures was that the amount of new particulate created is probably very minimal. If one has dry filament and a well tuned profile, particulate is of low concern. I don’t print enough to worry about it. I answered my own question.
When one hears stories of children spending hours in their bedroom with the door shut and the printer running, that could be a problem.
Probably when particulate becomes a concern is reflected in forum questions about poor surface smoothness that periodically show up on the forum. That lack of smoothness likely due to popping and flashing of water and maybe other entrained molecules in the filament. The tip of the nozzle, where molten plastic is released to atmospheric pressure is probably a pretty dynamic micro-environment, and if things aren’t just right is probably where particulate gets created.
The VOC’s are hard to quantify because it is hard to know what mix of materials is in a given manufacturers product line. There are a ton of different sensors out there so depending on what is in that HASS device is going to dictate the results.
This is pretty typical of MQ style gas sensors. Winsen MQ Sensor
