Hey guys, One of the biggest problems with resin 3D
printing is temperature. Most resins have an ideal printing temperature
and this is typically between 24 and 30 degrees Celsius. If the temperature falls below this,
the resin can become viscous, resulting in reduced print quality and even print fails.
Even Angus from Makers Muse in sunny Australia fell foul of this issue, as he noted even
there, temperatures drop below ideal during the evenings, resulting in print failures.
So, in an nutshell, if the temperature of our resin is correct, we can expect better
printing results! But temperature varies daily and as Winter
is Coming, I’ve been looking for a way to resolve this issue. Buying a suitable enclosure
heater here in the UK has proved tricky, but luckily my buddy Richard over at Print Cast
Build steered me towards a perfect solution on Thingiverse. This is an enclosure heater
researched and put together by X3msnake from Photonsters.
So everything you see today is the brainchild of this creator and all due credit goes to
him. Even though this was shared freely on Thingiverse, a lot of effort went into this
and I urge you all to PLEASE Tip this creator. For what he’s done here, he really deserves
it. If you follow the link to the creators Facebook
page, you can see that there’s a small shopping list and I’ll repeat this list in the description
for none-Facebook-folk. But in essence, this is what you need to purchase:
Firstly there’s the W1209WK temperature controller and this is the brains of this
excellent device. The next thing is this 100 watts, 12 volt
Heater. Now there’s all manner of heaters out there but don’t go off script. Everything
has been designed around this specific shopping list as you’ll soon see.
Next the creator recommends these very small but very powerful magnets.
Finally we need a power supply and it’s very important you choose a 12 volts 120 watt
transformer, with a mains supply suited to your part of the world.
Now I tally all this up at roughly £46 pounds, which isn’t bad for something that’s going
to let me print perfectly even with speciality resins and even on the coldest winter day.
The creator has gone to the trouble of supporting the body of this enclosure heater for us to
print and ironically when I printed mine, it was a cold Autumn day in my workshop. So
I only just got away with it, and the print is a tiny bit warped in places due to support
failure. It quickly becomes obvious that the heater
doesn’t want to fit in the printed body and that’s because some disassembly is required.
These four screws need to be removed and set aside as the inner Heater is exposed.
Feed the wires through the opening and push the Heater gently into place.
Replace the spacer. Now feed the fan wires through in the same
manner. Use the four screws to attach the fan to the
printed body, securing everything firmly into place. The printed body is surprisingly strong,
but don’t overtighten anything or you’ll risk breaking it.
At this point I decided to glue the magnets in place using a strong 2-part epoxy adhesive.
By doing this now, I wanted to give the adhesive plenty of drying time.
The thing that might put folks off doing this is the electronics, but trust me, this is
very easy. It’s very fiddly as it’s a small space so I can’t show myself doing
it, but here’s what’s involved. The temperature controller has just 4 screw
terminals – plus, minus, S1 and S2. Starting with the power adapter, the chances
are yours will have one of these jack plugs on it but we, of course, need wires. Mine
came with this screw terminal adapter and if yours doesn’t, there’s loads of them
on Amazon, eBay or whatever. Just screw in a couple of wires, making careful note of
the positive and negative terminals. If you’re a dab hand with a soldering iron,
you might prefer to use a jack socket instead and that’s my personal preference, but the
choice is yours. All the positive wires go into the Plus terminal.
The negative from the Heater goes to the S2 terminal.
This should leave you with two black wires and these need to go into both the negative
and the S1 terminal. This sounds weird, but it’s fine. These two terminals are bridged.
To make life easier I used a fork connector. Now if my wires aren’t the same colour as
yours, don’t worry. I trimmed mine down and used a insulation tape in places.
Lastly there’s a temperature sensor, and this simply plugs in here.
With much fiddling and swearing, you’ll squeeze all the wires into the printed body
and the temperature controller simply pushes in. At this point you should be able to see
what I mean by my slightly warped printer. With the power supply connected, you should
be greeted with something like this. Now you just need to program the controller
and the instructions aren’t the clearest in the world, so let me run through the process
and critical options. Firstly temperature scale. To switch between
Celsius of Fahrenheit, just click the bottom Temperature button.
Now we need to calibrate the temperature and for this you’ll need an ordinary thermometer.
Here you can see my sensor is suggesting the temperature is 30 degrees Celsius or thereabouts,
and that doesn’t happen often in the UK. It’s actually more like 22 degrees, which
is a difference of minus 8 degrees. So to calibrate this we need to access the Program
Function P4. Hold the Set button for 5 seconds until it
beeps, and then release. P0 should display.
Click the Set button repeatedly until P4 is displayed. Now press both the Set and Temperature
buttons together briefly. The blue display should now flash. Press either the Set or
Temperature button to add or subtract from the current temperature. In my case, I want
minus 8. Once you’re there, do nothing for 5 seconds and this should exit the Program
Menu. The temperature display should now be more realistic.
Next we want to limit the Maximum Temperature which is program P2.
Again for convenience, Hold the Set button for 5 seconds until it beeps, and then release.
Click the Set button repeatedly until P2 is displayed. Press both the Set and Temperature
buttons together briefly and the blue display should now flash. Press either the Set or
Temperature button to add or subtract from the default setting.
110 degrees is a bit steep for a safety cut-off temperature. I think 40 is more realistic.
Again, do nothing for 5 seconds and this should exit the Program Menu.
My next suggestion is Return Difference which is P1. The factory default is 2 degrees, but
I reduced mine to just one degree. So when the ambient temperature falls below 1 degree
of my goal temperature, the Heater will be activated.
Finally and most importantly is P0, the Heating and Cooling mode. By default the controller
is set to Cooling, but we need it to heat. So enter the program menu in the usual way,
select P0 and alter the setting from C to H.
Our enclosure heater is now ready to use. You just need to enter the goal temperature.
Now personally I’m going with 26 degrees Celsius, which seems pretty middle of the
road for resins. To select this, there’s no need for the Program menu.
Instead just click Set once. Then press either the Set or Temperature buttons to add or subtract
until you reach your goal temperature. Then do nothing for 5 seconds.
This finished heating unit is surprisingly compact and should fit easily inside most
resin printers, but I’d recommend printing the body for a test fit, just in case.
Personally I aim for the upper left side, keeping clear of the Z rail. The temperature
senor can dangle freely as long as it doesn’t get trapped in the workings or in the resin
tray. This unit was designed for an original Anycubic
Photon and these have a metal carcass, so the magnets will stick perfectly. Unfortunately,
magnets don’t stick to plastic, so personally I took a small piece of steel, cut it down
and glued it with epoxy adhesive for strength. This allows me to mount and dismount the heater
with ease. The only thing to watch out for is the power
cable. Depending on your printer, you could choose to drill a hole or maybe file a small
notch. Don’t pinch the cable as that might damage it and don’t leave too big a gap
or you may let in stray UV light, etc. Quite what gluing on bits of steel or filing
small holes will do to your warranty, I really can’t say. So I guess that’s something
you need to think about. But the real question is, does this heater
work? Well in an enclosed space, yes, it works great.
Personally, I shake my resin well, pour it in the tray, close everything and let the
heater do its job for half an hour. By then, in such a small space, everything is of a
similar temperature and I’m ready to get printing. The heater should click on occasionally
if the ambient temperature drops, but effectively what you now have is resin printing at an
ideal temperature, improving print quality and reducing failures – a real win win.
Once again, if you download these files from Thingiverse, then PLEASE Tip the original
designer. This is an excellent tool, competently designed and constructed. Even a small Tip
is better than no Tip, and we really should help out those Creators that share their hard
work with us in this way. So I hope you enjoyed this one guys. Take
care and thanks for watching.