Heated Chamber for MK4S
Hi Everyone,
I've recently started printing with ASA filament and plan to try PA-CF soon.
My MK4 was upgrated to an MK4S and moved it into a Prusa Enclosure.
The enclosure temperature during printing stays around 30°C, but reaching closer to 65°C would be ideal for better results.
I’ve seen some DIY solutions in videos that made me raise an eyebrow, especially with people bypassing safety features.
My electronics knowledge is somewhat limited, but soldering isn’t an issue if needed.
Does anyone have recommendations for how to heat the enclosure effectively while keeping safety in mind? Any suggested parts or potential issues I should watch out for when running the printer in a heated chamber?
Thanks in advance for the advice!
Best Answer by Fil4ment:
Loveboard is mostly just a passthrough, with no significant processing on the board.
The main xBuddy board has temperature warnings that will trip if the chip gets too hot, to protect the chip from failure. It's not that the air is too hot at 45°C, but that the mainboard can't shed heat fast enough, in that environment. A little cool air goes a long way to keeping the chip happy.
RE: Heated Chamber for MK4S
At 65 °C inside the enclosure you will almost certainly get problems with the printer's electronics overheating. When printing ASA or PCCF the temperature in my enclosure reached up to about 45 °C and this caused overheating errors with the printer crashing. I solved this by installing a fan on the electronics box but if you want to reach even higher temperatures you should consider moving the electronics box out of the enclosure altogether.
RE: Heated Chamber for MK4S
I am (off and on) working on an insulated enclosure design based on the Lack V1, with active ventilation, which will pull cool air through the electronics box, to keep the electronics cool, without cooling the enclosure below the set point. Still very much a work in progress, but the new GPIO G-code is making it much easier.
RE: Heated Chamber for MK4S
Thank you both.
The electronic was one of my concerns but I was not expecting issues already at 45°C. Do you know which components are causing the errors?
If it's Loveboard on the nextruder, moving it out of the enclosure already sounds like a nightmare.
I would be curious to see photos of your setups for inspiration .
RE: Heated Chamber for MK4S
Loveboard is mostly just a passthrough, with no significant processing on the board.
The main xBuddy board has temperature warnings that will trip if the chip gets too hot, to protect the chip from failure. It's not that the air is too hot at 45°C, but that the mainboard can't shed heat fast enough, in that environment. A little cool air goes a long way to keeping the chip happy.
RE: Heated Chamber for MK4S
The components on the xBuddy board that will get (too) hot are the stepper drivers and the mosfet for the heated bed. Those have thermal pads on the back side of the board touching the back wall of the case. I guess nobody at Prusa was expecting that those pads can work in both directions and will contribute to the stepper drivers getting too hot when the heated bed is at or over 100 °C for ASA and PCCF. 🙂
I glued some Raspberry Pi cooler fins on to the stepper drivers and the mosfet chip.
RE: Heated Chamber for MK4S
Hello,
I designed my Enclosure to be a simple enclosure to print PLA and PETG. If I would to convert my PRUSA Ikea Lack for MK4S (that now is basically only a fume extractor) to a heated chamber it would required some big changes in design:
- All the Plexiglas parts would be almost sealed to the box (now it has a 4 mm gap)
- All the part would be reprinter in hi-temp resistant material like PC instead of PETG.
- The power supply would be installed outside, under the lack.
- The Buddy box would be removed and relocated under the the lack base.
- All the cabling of the stepping motor to the Buddy Mainboard would be rebuild from scratch to allow a much longer distance.
- All the cabling of the Nextruder to the Buddy Mainboard would be rebuild from scratch to allow a much longer distance.
- Two special designed air channel would be put under and enclosing the Z and Y stepper motors to with forced ventilation that goes on the motor but not enter into the box.
- The X motor would required another special mini cube enclosing the motor with a flexible tube that push cold air and pull the hot away.
- And last but not least, verify if the Loveboard is still able to work at such high temp (over 60° C I presume) or require another customisation.
Of course such complex system would require a Chamber Heather to be installed and connected to the GPIO Hacker board so that the chamber temperature could be controlled through GCODE.
A huge work. For this reason I purchased also a CORE One Kit in case I need to print some materials like PC and ABS.
Regards
RE: Heated Chamber for MK4S
If you're talking PC or ABS temperatures, most of your points are just wrong. The only one that is fully accurate is moving the power supply outside the enclosure, and the standard cables are long enough for that. The gaps, in my Lack enclosure, I filled with weatherstrip foam. Significantly less than 4mm gaps, though. I know this, because I am currently making a production run of ASA printed parts, on a Mk4S, in a lack enclosure, and I'm holding the chamber temperature at 43C, and it's working fine.
RE: Heated Chamber for MK4S
I agree that regarding the chamber temperature I may be wrong, since I never printer special materials that requires high hot chamber temperature.
I was not thinking to ABS or PC, but rather to special (and sometime expansive) materials. I read lots of comment of people that use the new generation of printers that claims to print special materials with real hot chamber like Polypropilene that requires 65°-80° hot chamber, or Polycarbonate 60°-90°, so yes I was thinking to those ranges when I wrote the comment even if probably the MK4S can't reach even the nozzle and bed temperature required to print such materials. 😉
Regards
RE: Heated Chamber for MK4S
You were thinking about far more exotic materials than what is being discussed in this thread. Particularly ASA and PA-CF. Both of those are far easier to print than what you're talking about, so your assessment of the needs to print those materials is utterly unhelpful.
RE: Heated Chamber for MK4S
Polypropilene doesn't needs a high chamber temperature. The main problem with this filament is getting a good adherence to the bed. I print it with the enclosure doors open and a bed temp. of 40C. PC,PA and ASA will benefit from highish temperatures in the enclosure, but 45C seems good enough most of the time. Only really huge models maybe would need 50C or more to keep warping under control. If the filament has carbon fibers, then warping isn't usually a problem.