I was posting with a suggestion to Mecizeldec who asked about fitting the spool inside to protect from dust.
Actually, I’m already set up with a 5 gallon bucket with screw off lid for filament storage. Had I seen the zip-loc container first, I would have gone that way. Until I read another post here, I was not aware that they made that type of container with a seal around the lid.
Hey and thanks for sharing this design
I have some sort of similar questions in regards to this for my TAZ 5.
Would making the hot box wider to mount the filament spool inside be a bad idea? I mean in terms of filaments like PLA warping and distorting due to the high temperatures inside. Would thiat happen?
Also, is it nessecary to mount the electronics outside? I don’t want to overheat them so I’ll do it if nessecary, but I’d prefer to keep it all inside if possible.
Thanks
I imagine that putting certain filaments inside the enclosure would be fine, but filaments like PLA can become brittle when heated and cooled repeatedly. There’s no really good reason to put it inside.
There is an opening on the side of this enclosure that allows air flow to and from the electronics to help keep them cooled. I mounted the LCD screen on the outside of the enclosure so I could control the printer without opening the door.
I see, thanks. I’ll mount it outside, then.
Do you think this has an effect on noise, though? A part of the reason for building an enclosure is noise reduction in my case. Both cooling the electronics and the hole for the filament I mean.
For the slot on the top, I ended up getting an old bike tire and cut out a section and put it between the printed part and the wood on the top, and I cut a slit so that the tube could move but it was sealed better than nothing at all. It’s hard to say how much noise would be removed by not having any holes since I haven’t tested that, but I can tell you the printer noise dropped considerably. Maybe not enough to put in your room with you while you sleep, but I have mine close to the entertainment center, and it’s not distracting in the slightest.
I see, that makes sense, thanks.
If it wouldn’t be too much to ask, could I persuade you to make a quick dB measurement with the printer running inside your enclosure? That would be very much appreciated 
Truthfully I probably won’t be able to get to it for a couple of days, but I’ll give it a shot when I can
That’s awesome, thanks man
So I used a free app from my phone to test how loud the printer is, so take this with a grain of salt. With the fans on, I was getting roughly 45db. Turning the fans off dropped that 1 or 2 db but not much. The sound is very much unnoticeable when printing. Hope this helps.
Thank you very much. I appreciate it
Hi all. I made a modification to my box. I wanted to access the controller housing without taking the top of the box off so I enlarged the vent hole and designed a new vent (inspired by Jonathan) for the opening. Check it out at Thingiverse. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1484077
We built a heated enclosure that is a bit simpler than the one you folks are talking about:
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1431089
It is constructed of “8020”, CoroPlast sheets, and an Acrylic sheet for the front door.
I designed and printed the corner pieces that actually work a bit better than the ones you can buy for ~$20 from 8020. I also included the simple hinge design.
If you use polycaronate greenhouse panels, you can run the inside temperature to ~50 Celsius or more, but the CoroPlast and Acrylic limit the temperature to perhaps 40 Celsius.
Works for us.
Plan to add a small exhaust duct and fan to the outside soon. Any suggestions?
Bill D.
I like the use of CoroPlast… My temporary enclosure is formed from 3 sheets of 24x36 CoroPlast and an 18x24 acrylic sectional door (all available from the local hardware store). Self supporting so no frame. I printed some clips that hold the corner and sides to the top along with hinges for the door. Its serving as a nice mock-up until the acrylic enclosure can be made.
You should start a new thread if you want CCC on your design. I’m sure it would spark some interest. This thread seems pretty dedicated to the particular enclosure…
Paul, Love it! I appreciate you including my name also in your file shares.
keep the mods coming guys! so awesome…
For whatever reason I just realized now that the electronics fan sucks the ambient air and pushes into the electronics box and consequently affects the ambient temp inside the box. It’s spring up here in Canada and I had cracked a window for ventilation, about 8celcius out, thought my print would be fine because it was sealed inside the box but I noticed everytime I did that, I’d get cracking and warping. Couldn’t figure out what was going on until I realized it dipped the ambient room temperature just enough make a difference. So just a note to anyone using the box, ambient temps need to be reasonable, above chilly. A window opened on a winter or spring day could affect things. I keep the room heated and warm now, come summer I shouldn’t have to.
Could someone repost the STL package? The zip file hosted on GrabCad has three files that are unusable as they have no dimensions. (1mmX1mm) I’ve tried to reach out to Johnathan but he seems to have gone dark… In particular, I need:
Thanks for the help!
The files ARE usable, but not in metric setting. Set your slicer for inches instead of mm and they print just fine.
Hey thanks for the reply!
Never worked in inches on cura before. Do you have a recommended profile or does it convert it for you? Thanks!
I don’t believe Cura can be set to work in inches. I use Simplify3D and all of Jonathan’s parts converted just fine.
Parts are saved in mm into raw stl format from Solidworks. You need to bring them into netfab and upconvert them to inches for them to import at normal size into Slic3r. It’s a weird quark, I’ve always had to do this for my 3DP stuff 
. Now I forget, some of the parts I might have already up converted them, dunno but just play around with that, you’ll figure it out, the parts are OK, others they were able to print them out.
Does anyone have a place that would be able to laser cut the front panels as a service? I am having a hard time finding someone locally that will do it with the given file below.
FlatPlexi_DXF.DWG (23.9 KB)
