Jump to content

Printer cabinet


Recommended Posts

Posted · Printer cabinet
Just now, Julian2801 said:

Looking really nice! I'm planning to build something similar (only for one printer though). Are you using some noise-canceling materials or is the wood cabinet doing the job alone? 

 

No noise cancelling materials - foam or similar. Just the wood cabinet is enough, works perfectly well, no foam needed.

It's built from 19mm MDF material, so it's quite heavy and I think that is essential so that the printer vibrations do not make the cabinet a speaker ?.
The doors are 16mm and have 6mm glas inserts. Needs good hinges to carry the weight. And 160+ degrees hinges are helpful.
 

  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

Posted · Printer cabinet
Just now, conny_g said:

 

No noise cancelling materials - foam or similar. Just the wood cabinet is enough, works perfectly well, no foam needed.

It's built from 19mm MDF material, so it's quite heavy and I think that is essential so that the printer vibrations do not make the cabinet a speaker ?.
The doors are 16mm and have 6mm glas inserts. Needs good hinges to carry the weight. And 160+ degrees hinges are helpful.
 

Ok! Thank you really much for the information! This is really helpful for my planning!

  • Link to post
    Share on other sites

    Posted · Printer cabinet
    On 9/13/2018 at 1:02 PM, geert_2 said:

    For comparison, my printers are sitting in the fume extraction cabinet in my laboratory. This extraction cabinet has an exhaust pipe diameter of 200mm. And the rectangular front opening is ca. 1100mm x 50mm. All this to get a smooth equal air flow.

     

    Although this is designed for extraction of chemical fumes, it is just standard lab equipment, I guess the concept can be ported to extraction of heat too, since both are about getting enough air flow, and good equal distritbution.

     

    I have no idea what fan is in there, since it is a huge central fan on the roof for all cabinets. But you can really hear and feel the airflow.

     

    Yes, you could disassemble a mini-fridge (like those in hotel rooms), put the cooling radiator inside and the heat radiator outside. But then you are going to have that constant compressor rattle. Or you could disassemble a cooling box based on peltier-elements and use these. But I doubt if this has enough capacity? It has to remove 100 up to 200 Watt of heat. And you may get condensation and corrosion. Probably a big fan is still easier...

     

     

    It seems your ventilation is a whole dimension stronger. But likely also much louder?

    Good idea to place a carton at the front and test with variations of ventilation holes.
    Before I buy the expensive duct vents I should do that.

    And regarding active cooling... that's all too much hassle and I think it's not that much heat to be removed, a reasonable airflow should really do it. In the end I think it's not too much more heat a good desktop processor would produce. And the case fans can handle that as well, just that there is better ventilation holes in the case.

  • Link to post
    Share on other sites

    Posted · Printer cabinet
    2 hours ago, conny_g said:

     

    It seems your ventilation is a whole dimension stronger. But likely also much louder?

    ...

    Yes, somewhat comparable with a desktop fan in summer. Although with less electric motor buzz, and more neutral air noise. Not exactly silent, but a laboratory can have that.

     

  • Link to post
    Share on other sites

    Posted · Printer cabinet

    Now we're getting there!!

     

    In the diagram you see the test with the fan "off" as dashed lines and the newest one with the carton door with ventilation slit as solid lines.

    Now the "exhaust" cabinet where the heat is pulled to goes 2 degrees above the printer cabinet, the printer cabinet stabilizes at 28 C and the 2nd extruder (which reflects the top of the inside of the cabinet) is at a max of 32 C - which is almost 6 C lower than before.

    The exhaust line is now above the cabinet line which means there is more heat pulled outside than stays inside - that's perfect.

    So clearly the air inlet is the most important bottleneck for now and is way too small, I need to drill additional holes into the bottom and then it works as it does here and absolutely hits the goal that I was planning for - to stay around 30 C.

     

    The area of the carton slit is some 20x530mm = 10.600mm^2.
    If I use 500mm of the width to drill a grid of 10mm holes with 10mm space in between I get 16 holes in each row.
    And I need 4 rows to meet a total of 11.300 mm^2 - that's what I am going to do tomorrow.

     

    Printer_Cabinet_Temp_120mm_Fans_Carton_Door.png

  • Link to post
    Share on other sites

    Posted (edited) · Printer cabinet

    Started another 10 hours print right after this one to see if the temperature stays stable in the long term.

    And it does, even after 7 more hours the temp stays at these values.

    Interesting that you can see that I lowered the extruder temperature to 190 C instead of 200 C - the temperature in the cabinet decreases by 0,5 C.

     

    Summary for all who want to build something like this:

    • 120mm fan with high static pressure (3mm H20 = 30Pa) on top of the cabinet.
      I used this: https://www.bequiet.com/de/casefans/270
      2,5-3mm H2O of pressure are the ones with the highest available in the regular PC fans area.
      There is just industrial ones like this with >7 mm H2O:
      https://noctua.at/de/nf-f12-industrialppc-3000-pwm
      But they have 40dB.
    • Inlet and outlet holes of at least 4.000mm^2. One of them larger, more in the area of the fan >10.000mm^2. 
      Ideally inlet/outlet would be the same area the fan has = 10.000-11.000mm^2, but my experiment shows that either inlet of half or outlet of half are already working. But both half or less does not work, that were my earlier experiments.
    • Inlet/outlet ideally positioned diagonally across the box, i.e. in at the front, out at the back, to ensure flow across the hole cabinet

     

    I thought a moment about retrying the 2 50mm fans. But if you compare their technical data to the 120mm, they are too weak to achieve the same result and temperature will be higher:
     

    • Air flow:
      120mm: 120m^3/h
      2x50mm: 23m^3/h
    • Static pressure:
      120mm: 2,7mm H20
      2x50mm: 1,2mm H20

     

    120mm: https://www.bequiet.com/de/casefans/270

    50mm: https://www.blacknoise.com/datas/downloads/datasheets/TData_BSF50_122012_de_en.pdf

     

    Both are silent fans, the 120mm produces 29dB and the 50mm only 16dB of noise. I think I will try another one of Bequiet with 16 dB next that has half the RPM and some 30% less static pressue and airflow, but still much more than the 50mm.
    https://www.bequiet.com/de/casefans/718
     

     

    Printer_Cabinet_Temp_120mm_Fans_Carton_Door_14hours.png

    Edited by conny_g
    • Thanks 1
    Link to post
    Share on other sites

    Posted (edited) · Printer cabinet

    Laser cut a drilling template and did some drilling for a few hours - 57 holes through 19mm MDF is quite time consuming.

    Also added a 3rd hole on the top side (not on the photo, did that later).

     

    As a first version of the bottom holes I did shape the area of a 120mm fan, which results in 57 holes and 4.500 mm^2 of opening, which is half of what a 120mm fan has.
    The idea is: if the airflow is enough with that, without a fan, I am happy and it's done.

    If the airflow is not enough I can choose to either drill more holes (2-3 times as many) or add a fan on the bottom side of the cabinet to push air in. While the 2nd fan on top pulls the air out. Resulting in twice the pressure and probably enough airflow.

    Another print test to check "level 1" of the above is running just now.
     

    fullsizeoutput_212b.jpeg

    fullsizeoutput_212e.jpeg

    fullsizeoutput_212f.jpeg

    fullsizeoutput_2129.jpeg

    Edited by conny_g
  • Link to post
    Share on other sites

    Posted · Printer cabinet

    Test successful, the temperatures behave exactly as before. See diagram.

     

    In terms of openings I have now:

    - bottom / inlet: 57 holes of 10mm which results in a opening area of 4.500 mm^2

    - top / outlet: 3 holes of 45mm = ~4.800mm^2

    - as a reference: a 120mm fan has an area of 11.300mm^2, so inlet/outlet are about half of that area

     

    Next test: use quieter fan, the BeQuiet Silent Wings 3 one with 30% less pressure/airflow but only 16 dB of noise.

     

    Printer_Cabinet_Temp_120mm_Fans_Floor_Holes.png

  • Link to post
    Share on other sites

    Posted · Printer cabinet

    Success - the 16dB low noise fan with 1,7 mm H2O pressure and 80 m^3/h airflow is enough!

    Temperature the same and stable for long term prints.

    Dotted lines are last test with the more powerful fan.

    Problem resolved, project "cabinet" done, printers "in production" again.
     

    Printer_Cabinet_Temp_120mm-Low-Noise_Floor_Holes.png

  • Link to post
    Share on other sites

    Posted · Printer cabinet

    Have you installed a fan for the inlet as well? Or are you just sucking the air out of the cabinet with a fan?

  • Link to post
    Share on other sites

    Posted · Printer cabinet
    4 hours ago, Julian2801 said:

    Have you installed a fan for the inlet as well? Or are you just sucking the air out of the cabinet with a fan?


    Currently the inlet is without fan. But I designed the inlet holes so that I could put a fan there. The last results showed: no need to do so.
    But who knows - maybe next summer if the office has 28 C I want to put a fan there to push the temperature even lower.

    I had to decide between a large slit of 10-11.000mm^2, like i had it in the carton door.
    But I voted for the holes and for just the amount that are needed for a 120mm fan because the larger any kind of opening there, the more noise can escape the cabinet.
    So I thought about rather having a few holes and put a push-in fan there than to create a large opening - in the end the key purpose of the cabinets is to keep the noise inside.
     

  • Link to post
    Share on other sites

    Posted · Printer cabinet

    Fantastic!! The cabinet solved my issues with ABS.
     

    Here's a picture of yesterday's test with ABS, it's a mount for a 50W LED with heatsink (for that ABS to survive some heat) with 11cm in diameter that about a year ago I tried print in ABS like 5 times with different settings and never go it to work without severe delamination issues.
    Never had that quality of print with ABS!!

     

    Back then I had the printer in a repurposed bar cabinet in the living room (also for the noise) and the only variant that worked slightly better with ABS was to add a heater blower to the cabinet that generated some 40 C of temperature.
    Then the delamination was much better, but not gone, the object still unusable, mechanically not solid.
    I think the reason being that this cabinet was not air tight and the heater blower created some air movement causing some unwanted cooling on the print.


    For these reasons I never used my ~10 spools of ABS, any larger object failed.

     

    Now it worked on the first try.
    I switched off the ventilation fan and put some cardboard on top of the fan box to also suppress any thermic escape of heat.
    The temperature moved up to ~40 degrees in the cabinet (36 bottom, 44 on top) and stayed there.
     

    CvwjG9S+RgqZ075GQ6e+TQ.jpg

  • Link to post
    Share on other sites

    Posted · Printer cabinet
    On 9/2/2018 at 5:47 PM, conny_g said:

    Here’s my new printer cabinets to keep noise in my office down and to store them in a neat & tidy way.

    Made by my favorite furniture maker.

    PSU, cables, Raspberry Pi with OctoPrint are stowed in the drawers underneath the printers.

    The printers can slide out for filament change or other maintenance.

    The doors have gaskets so the noise can’t escape.

     

    0C9AB6A9-350C-4E4A-835C-5B97EE003DBF.jpeg

    A918F2E4-1312-4CA7-82F0-5A13295BAD84.jpeg

    90D3E166-BE61-407C-8067-0F3BF3284882.jpeg

    D8BE032C-4367-4E31-B6F8-02592F439896.jpeg

    themselves...professionals installed it for me wholesale kitchen cabinets. Their cabinets are absolutely beautiful, no words are needed, you can see everything in the photo.

    Looks pretty cool as an idea!

  • Link to post
    Share on other sites

    Create an account or sign in to comment

    You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

    Create an account

    Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

    Register a new account

    Sign in

    Already have an account? Sign in here.

    Sign In Now
    • Our picks

      • Introducing Universal Cura Projects in the UltiMaker Cura 5.7 beta
        Strap in for the first Cura release of 2024! This 5.7 beta release brings new material profiles as well as cloud printing for Method series printers, and introduces a powerful new way of sharing print settings using printer-agnostic project files! Also, if you want to download the cute dinosaur card holder featured below, it was specially designed for this release and can be found on Thingiverse! 
          • Like
        • 10 replies
      • S-Line Firmware 8.3.0 was released Nov. 20th on the "Latest" firmware branch.
        (Sorry, was out of office when this released)

        This update is for...
        All UltiMaker S series  
        New features
         
        Temperature status. During print preparation, the temperatures of the print cores and build plate will be shown on the display. This gives a better indication of the progress and remaining wait time. Save log files in paused state. It is now possible to save the printer's log files to USB if the currently active print job is paused. Previously, the Dump logs to USB option was only enabled if the printer was in idle state. Confirm print removal via Digital Factory. If the printer is connected to the Digital Factory, it is now possible to confirm the removal of a previous print job via the Digital Factory interface. This is useful in situations where the build plate is clear, but the operator forgot to select Confirm removal on the printer’s display. Visit this page for more information about this feature.
          • Like
        • 0 replies
    ×
    ×
    • Create New...