Printer with wooden enclosure in the balcony?
Hello,
In order to save space in my apartment and be sure that fumes wont affect me (I print like almost the whole day, every weekday), I was thinking in placing my MK3S+ in an outside space in my apartment.
This outside space looks like a balcony. It has concrete walls in all sides (including over it) and a large opening to the street in one of its sides (from about 1m from the floor, almost all the way to the ceiling at 2.4m from the floor), with no window or whatsoever. There is a wall plug available there, but no heating. It might get a bit wet when it rains/snows a lot and temperatures might get to 5°C (I dont think it gets to 0°C) in winter, while in summer it keeps pretty cool even in very hot days.
I would place the printer in a few mm thick wooden box. I would lift that box from the floor in order to avoid problems, if the floor gets too wet. If needed, I would install a heater inside the box. The printer should work only when I am at home.
What is the opinion of people on this? Would this "work" (print with quality and etc)? Would this be dangerous?
Thank you,
RE: Printer with wooden enclosure in the balcony?
The main thing about an enclosure is providing the printer with as near stable an environment as possible so if you built a good thermally regulated enclosure for the place as you can then yes it'll be fine however the environment you describe is very variable so building a good enough enclosure to cope with that will be hard to do but not impossible. Temperature is fairly easy to control but it's the humidity of an outdoor environment that will cause issues, especially on more exotic material printing.
Yes it's possible, but it'll be hard work to design and more importantly to keep maintained.
RE: Printer with wooden enclosure in the balcony?
Thank you for the reply. And if I use a dry box for the filament? Or a dehumidifier in the enclosure box? Do you think any and/or both of these solutions could help against the humidity problem?
RE: Printer with wooden enclosure in the balcony?
For printer to work normally, some ambient conditions must preserved: temperature (20-25°C, no fluctuations), humidity (the less, the better) and no draft.
So, you should answer the following question: can you make an enclosure that will maintain these conditions?
Draft is not a problem, if enclosure is fully closed. Same goes for humidity, if enclosure isn't exposed to rain and wood is protected with proper coating. So, there's only temperature left...
Ta=22°C -desired temperature inside enclosure
Te=5°C -minimal exterior temperature
Td=Ta-Te=17°C -temperature difference to maintain
A=1,5m^2 -total wood area (for enclosure of 0.5m x 0.5m x 0.5m)
h=0,025m -wood thickness
λ=0,2 -thermal conductivity for typical wood
Ra=0,13 -typical thermal resistance between ambient temperature (inside enclosure) and wood
Re=0,04 -typical thermal resistance between wood and external temperature (outside)
Let's calculate a bit...
R=h/λ=0,125 -temperature resistance for wood 2,5cm thick
Rt=R+Ra+Re=0,295 -total temperature resistance
U=1/Rt=3,3898 -total thermal conductivity
P=Td x A x U -total thermal loss
P=17 x 1,5 x 3,3898
P=86,44W
In short: to keep temperature inside enclosure at 22°C, we need a heater of 86,44W -if less than that, then temperature inside enclosure will decrease toward 5°C. Because we already have heat source of 40W (bed heater), inside enclosure will never reach 5°C bottom. Looking from opposite side, inside enclosure will never reach 22°C, because starting temperature is 5°C (when we start printing).
You can increase thermal resistance by adding some good insulator (Ri) on wooden walls (Rt=R+Ra+Re+Ri).
Anyway, additional heater would be recommended, simply because you start at 5°C and it takes time to heat up the enclosure. And that's the biggest problem: as soon you open the enclosure, temperature will drop to 5°C -not easy to start printing at that temperature.
Ok, that's it. Was a nice exercise... 😏
[Mini+] [MK3S+BEAR]
RE: Printer with wooden enclosure in the balcony?
Wow, amazing!!! Pretty solid info and nice calculations!!!
So, now I know to which kind of heater I have to look at... And, also, that I have to set up a octoprint, otherwise it is a direct road for a failed print as soon as I open the door of the enclosure.
Thanks again for the comments so far.