Achieve 54 to 59C chamber temperatures with 2 pieces of foil-faced styrofoam

[bcgreenbox]

I replaced both side panels with foil-faced, 16mm thick styrofoam sheets from Home Depot.  I have a thermistor attached to the cable chain in the back and in the front of the bed. I also have 2x 50x30mm bed fans blowing down the middle of the bed.  The styrofoam panels are attached the with modified 16mm snap latches.

 

 

[SuperBoppy]

Yes, I have done the same thing, and can reach 50C-60C chamber temperatures in my basement, which runs around 60F in the winter. BTW, I mentioned this method on the official Voron site a few years ago, and it was poo-pooed as being a fire hazard. Well guess what? - those Styrofoam panels will be the least of your worries when the ABS parts or the acrylic or polycarbonate panels catch on fire first!

[Dirk]

Great idea.

My feelings on the subject are a bit ambiguous. 

1- The transparant acrylic is meant to be so we can see what is going on inside... This styrofoam sure does not look attractive (If I do not want to say 'ugly'.

2- We here in Europe do not have HomeDepoot, but Hornbach or Baumarkt. They are often more expensive than ordering from AliExpress.

3-  Besides the ugly, not see-through and cost, I am  more worried about the hot chamber temperature. I understand that we all want it high... as high as possible. But things change. Insights change. I do not believe the chamber needs to be 60-70 degrees. Another problem with the newer hardware in our toolheads, have a problem that they can not withstand the heat so well!
While you were showing off your chamber temperature, the only thing I saw was the temperature of your EBB36....73 degrees centigrade. The chip on it is only certified up to 80 degrees
While going further on this subject, I had the problem with my Voron 2.4 350 in the beginning, that I had to heat it up for at least an hour, to have adequate prints. I am 9 months further, several hundred euros of upgrades further, amongst others backers: 2x 450 stainless steel linear rails on the Y extruders and 1x Titanium backer on X. And heating the chamber up to 30 degrees (this happens when I heat up the bed to 110 degrees), in 5 minutes and printing gives me currently perfectly okay prints.

To be honest, my toolhead PCB and Cartographer coil also heat up to 70 degrees while printing. But the period of waiting for an hour is gone, which matters all the world to me

 

[bcgreenbox]

9 hours ago, SuperBoppy said:

...those Styrofoam panels will be the least of your worries when the ABS parts or the acrylic or polycarbonate panels catch on fire first!

This is certainly a "use at your own risk" discussion but thanks for your input.  Can you provide at data referencing the flammability of ABS, acrylic or PC at 60C?  

[bcgreenbox]

I was surprised at the temperatures since others demonstrating a Voron 2.4/Trident with a PTC heater only reaching 50C.  The styrofoam panels seem like a much easier way to raise the temperature of the chamber.

 

[VoronManiac]

@bcgreenbox at 13 seconds into the video, is there a gap visible between the foam panel and the frame in the lower part of the view?

My Voron-2.4-350 is very well sealed and get -0- external fumes.  Cold air leakage can have a big impact when trying to heat the chamber.  I'm running with TPU door seals with wipers and TPU panel strips that press fit into the 2020.  I should post on github at some point but here is a pic showing how the panel strips insert.  Similar seals supporting the lower deck panel.  My son's stock Voron is not well sealed to where he has to open a window and has trouble getting to temp.

 

 

For chamber temp sense, I have a DS18B20 mounted on the cover of the SB/CW2 so it is exposed to chamber air when closed.  With the cover closed it sits about 70mm above the nozzle tip. In this position, it is not influenced by the Extruder motor temp or the heat break cooling fan. While waiting for initial chamber soak, the extruder moves to park center 130mm above bed center, with the sensor ending up 200mm above the bed.  For small prints, I set the print start chamber temperature to 43C (~14 minutes) and larger prints to 48C (~26 minutes).  The chamber continues to heat and will be in the 57C range in about an hour with 20C ambient.   Also turn on the extruder fan during soak.  Bed is heated to 120C during soak and first layer for ABS. The bed plate really doesn't get that hot since most thermistors are mounted on the surface of the silicone heater mat. On the todo list to drill deeply into the side of the bed and add a thermistor to measure the real bed temp.  I did notice you are only running your bed at 100C...ABS/PC?...any reason for why so low?  There is a toggle in mainsail to display graph of extruder/bed PWM%.

 

I couldn't make out where the under bed fans were mounted in the video.  Are you using like a NeverMore Duo under the bed?  The Duo tends to block off under bed airflow since it doesn't move a lot of air.  I went with side mount carbon air filters with Robo vac pre-filters to scrub out nano particles with the idea of eventually adding LARGE under bed fans.

 

 

At the end of the day, have to do what you have to do, and opaque foam panels or a PTC  may be a last resort.  Another option to consider is increasing the thickness of the Acrylic panels.  Mine are only 2.5mm thick where 6mm are readily available.

 

 

[inc]

I think this sort of discussion always should include the size of the printer. My 250^3 2.4 can reach 55-60°C with transparent, 5mm thick panels.

[Matt82770565]

Most heat is lost through your head, so wear a hat!

In other words insulate the top. 
I have 50mm of foam on the top of my Voron 2.4 (300mm) and 15mm on the sides and it heats up to 50c in 30 minutes just using a couple of 5015 blowers under the bed. 

[VoronManiac]

 

For everybody that has shared their results, like @inc suggested, printer size is important to come up with comparisons.

Also important would be some sort of before and after upgrade metric.  Like @bcgreenbox , how much of a delta °C  or delta T improvement did you see?

We are interested in temperature rise over ambient, so @SuperBoppy has an ambient 4.5°C lower than my 20°C.  The figure of merit is delta T over ambient. Some folks have their poor printers sitting in an unheated garage.

@Matt82770565 how much do the under bed blowers help?

The other factor we should note is bed temperature during heat soak.  I'm running 120°C for ABS with extruder 180°C with full cooling fan.

@Dirk Yup, over temp can be an issue.  I did a print with 1 hour soak to stabilize Z expansion. First layer almost completely filled the bed of my 350 so it sat at 120C for a long time.  Chamber temp reached 73°C which would have been a problem if I had printed SB/CW2 parts in like eSun ABS+ (73°C plastic distortion temperature) instead of ABS.  BTW do you have a link to the stainless steel and titanium backers you used?

 

[mvdveer]

13 minutes ago, VoronManiac said:

BTW do you have a link to the stainless steel and titanium backers you used?

These are the ones I got from Aliexpress.  Have not fitted them yet but quality looks good.

[Dirk]

1 hour ago, VoronManiac said:

  BTW do you have a link to the stainless steel and titanium backers you used?

2x 450 linear rails from here: https://a.aliexpress.com/_EGYuxnB

and a Ti backers set. I just used the X one.. the other two are waiting in case I will ever decide to do differently :-): https://a.aliexpress.com/_EHmsLVj

 

These prices are 21% vat included

 

[chrisalbertson]

The pink insulation foam and also the foil-backed kind you buy for way-cheap at Home Depot is "Fire Resistant". It will not ignite.  IT is designed to be used in buildings.

If you are really worried you can buy ceramic insolation.  THis is designed to withstand over 1,000 degrees.   I have a bed sliger printer, un encloded and I wanted the bed to heat faster so I insleed a layer of ceramic glued directly to the underside of the bad heater.  They use this stuff to insulate kilns and furnaces.

All that said, I think the very best way to insolate a Voron-style printer is by double glazing.   Use two sheet of PC with an air-gap.    If you look this up on a table of R-values, you see the double glasing cuts the heat loss to about half.  It is very effective and looks good.

The best place forthat pink foam is if you would laminate ti behind the opaic panels.    That means the rear and Botton.    THese two account for a third of the surface area and pink insulation foam is a ner perfect kind of insulation.  It is stong and rigid and cames on different thicknesses from about 1/2 to 2 inches