Undesirable air flow?
I consider adding a fume collector that would aspirate the odor created during the printing process.
I would use a 100 mm computer fan then reduce the outlet to a 50 mm tube going outside of my house.
I wonder if this could cause problem by creating some undesirable air flow that could make more difficult to print ABS or other capricious material.
What do you think?
RE: Undesirable air flow?
#1 tip: Don't print ABS inside your house. You can't make an enclosure air tight - and ABS fumes are bad for you.
Set up a print booth in your garage or something.
RE: Undesirable air flow?
@robert-rmm200
Thanks, good to know 🙂
RE: Undesirable air flow?
@robert-rmm200
What other material should I not print inside my house?
RE: Undesirable air flow?
I would say PLA and PETG are fine. I have not heard any bad reports on them. I use them in my kitchen.
The high temperature filaments - Nylon, PC, ABS, ASA and brethren I would be careful with.
Hopefully someone with experience with these can chime in.
RE: Undesirable air flow?
#1 tip: Don't print ABS inside your house. You can't make an enclosure air tight - and ABS fumes are bad for you.
Set up a print booth in your garage or something.
If you work in your garage all the time, it would be also not healthy for you 😉
Just make sure there is a good ventilation in the area. It doesn't matter which filament you print.
There are no safe type of plastic to print as we don't have enough data about the mid/long term health issues.
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RE: Undesirable air flow?
@nikolai-r
During winter, the temperature in my garage goes down to 10°C. Would it be a problem for proper melting of the filaments?
RE: Undesirable air flow?
If your exhausting to outside, as long as the air pressure is lower in the enclosure, nothing can escape into the house.
Normal people believe that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet.
RE: Undesirable air flow?
PLA emits small particulate matter, PETG hardly anything negative about it really, hence why it is my material of choice.
Normal people believe that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet.
RE: Undesirable air flow?
@nikolai-r
During winter, the temperature in my garage goes down to 10°C. Would it be a problem for proper melting of the filaments?
10C would most likely cause issues, yes. At least I’ve seen people reporting that in the past.
You can solve it by putting the printer in the enclosure.
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RE: Undesirable air flow?
PLA has been studied, and so far no adverse health risks in mammals. ABS has also been studied and residuals from heating found to be nasty stuff for living things in general. I've not seen any similar health studies for PETG.
But here's some interesting data: sadly no PLA data, but even PETG is up there. Note the 1.2 * 10^5 nano-meter scale particles per cubic meter of air ... that is a bunch of stuff to inhale. My PM2.5 counts don't really go up when I am printing PETG - so my meter is missing the really small stuff.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412018323663
ps: notice the extremely high levels of BPA released when printing ASA ... that's enough data for me to avoid the product .
RE: Undesirable air flow?
There was an interesting comment to one of CNC Kitchen's recent videos on filament characteristics. There was apparently a NASA study done to determine the amount of particulates generated with different filaments (air quality is a big issue in space) and they found that the level of moisture absorption in any filament made a significant different in the amount of ultra-fine particles generated during FFF printing. Drier filament of all types put out significantly lower levels when dried thoroughly. This doesn't change the toxicity of ABS fumes (styrene) and other factors, but is another consideration along with room/enclosure ventilation.
RE: Undesirable air flow?
PLA has been studied, and so far no adverse health risks in mammals...
Not the whole truth. Printing with PLA is also known to emit UFPs. There are just no known regulations to the lactide particles.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1021/acs.est.5b04983
Measurements of UFP and individual VOC emissionrates presented here have important implications for humanexposure and health effects. For example, styrene, which isclassified as a possible human carcinogen by the InternationalAgency for Research on Cancer (IARC classification group2B),23was emitted in large amounts by all ABSfilaments andthe one HIPS filament. Caprolactam was also emitted in largeamounts by four of thefilaments: nylon, PCTPE, laybrick, andlaywood. Although caprolactam is classified as probably notcarcinogenic to humans,24the California Office of Environ-mental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) maintains acute,8-h, and chronic reference exposure levels (RELs) of only 50, 7,and 2.2μg/m3, respectively.25We are not aware of any relevant information regarding the inhalation toxicity of lactide, theprimary individual VOC emitted from PLA filaments.
Often linked posts:
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RE: Undesirable air flow?
Unfortunately, I can't recall the article, but inhalation of PLA residuals, primarily lactides, have been studied in mammals, and found to be inconsequential. They were not human exposure studies, so the post above is accurate, but incomplete.