I’m getting into 3D printing, and due to the nature of my living constraints, I find myself with a large 12 ft x 20 ft non-climate controlled but clean shed from which to print. I bought one of these small microenvironment enclosures for my ender 3 pro, but temperatures here in the winter can reach the teens, and summers over 100 Fahrenheit. I guess my question is how much temperature can those micro enclosures account for when it’s extremely cold on the outside?
I print mainly in abs and petg, my enclosed mk3s+ is more sensitive than my voron in the cold as it has a lower wattage heated bed and the panels are thinish plexi vs the aluminum composite on the voron (still would be better if I insulated). I’m in southern Ontario so it’s not crazy cold but it’s usually sub -10c for a good chunk of the winter, a small space heater is enough to bring my garage to 10-15c if I’m going to be working out there, but it’s often enough to just use the space heater to boost the enclosure to that temp, both of them can keep the enclosures above 30-40c in the winter, I’ve never had issue with warping due to enclosure temps, usually adhesion due to residual oils on the build plate.
With a proper environment control, probably have even less issues, temp stability in my experience matters the most, longer soaks are my normal practice in the winter just to ensure I hit a good equilibrium and try to get around and thermal expansion issues.
What’s a soak in this context?
Heat soak, abs especially I like to give at least 45 minutes to an hour
So you heat your ABS filament spool before printing to reduce warping later on?
I set the heated bed to what I’ll print at and leave it on for that time, it gets the chamber temp up and stable, there’s some thermal expansion to worry about but I’ve seen mention that it can take longer than an hour to stabilise Ellis has a section on thermal drift