Ender 5 enclosure

[JohnG]

For some time, I have been looking at enclosing my Ender 5 for two reasons. First, I want to add an air filter since it sits in my office and cold weather is here, so opening the window becomes a problem. Second, I would like to try printing some other materials, such as ABS or polycarbonate. Enclosing the printer will help with the fumes and with maintaining a higher temperature.

I wanted to keep the electronics outside as much as possible, so putting the whole thing in a box made that harder. Also, my space is not infinite...

I tend to do these things in bits and pieces when I need a break from my job, so this is a slow project for me. That being said, here are some pics:






The sides are 5.5 mm plywood underlayment that I treated with borax for fire resistance, and the side shelves are 18 mm plywood attached to the left and right side. They extend 25 mm beyond the boundaries of the top moving rail.  I have still to make a bottom and top. The bottom will be a sheet of the same plywood. The top will be a polycarbonate box that rests on the the top of the printer and on the side shelves.

I'm passing this along in case it is useful to anyone else with an Ender 5.

John

[Lindley]

Hi,

You might want to look at adding a little Smoke Alarm unit in or around your enclosure to give early warning of any such problems.

We were able to hook our alarm up to an Arduino which would also switch all power off, plus it has a temp sensor which does the same if it gets too hot or too cold to use.
Also turns the unit off 5 mins ( for cool down) after the print has ended.

[JohnG]

Thanks, a smoke and fire detector for inside the enclosure is in the works for when I get around to making the top. I already have a household one directly above the printer, and I don't leave home when making prints. My firmware already shuts everything down except the hot-end fans, which run until the hot-end cools to 50C.

I may replace the sides with metal at some point, but then I will need to add insulation as well if I start printing ABS or polycarbonate (and a new hot end, etc). But this will do for now.

John

[Zucca]

How can you survive without a dualZ in the Ender5?

I designed a custom CNC plate , and finally everything won't wobble anymore....

[JohnG]

I almost went a similar route, but I haven't needed to.

I put in corner braces on the printer and printed support arms (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3479330), and it helped. The last thing I did was heavily brace the shelf used to hold the printer, and the rest of my problems went away. I'm guessing the shelf had a resonance close to that of the printer table, because I noticed I could damp the print platform vibration by putting some hand pressure on the shelf.

Before I did those things, the print platform vibration could get bad enough to ruin a print if it were more than 60-70 cm tall. It would start to ripple the top surface of the print, and the ripple would grow with each layer, along with the horrendous noise of the extruder banging along the ripple.

John

[Zucca]

Before I did those things, the print platform vibration could get bad enough to ruin a print if it were more than 60-70 cm tall. It would start to ripple the top surface of the print, and the ripple would grow with each layer, along with the horrendous noise of the extruder banging along the ripple.

John

60-70 mm I think. Yes you described exactly what was happening in mine.
How they decided to still go in production with something like this is beyond my conception of quality.

Anyway after the second Z the printer rocks.... I do not regret many hours of design to unfuuu that chinesium design.

[JohnG]

Yes, it seems to be a common enough problem, but not universal.

Your second z-axis drive is a really nice solution, though. I was starting to design one myself, but then got the problem under control. However, I rarely print taller items, so perhaps I may have to revisit this myself in the future.

John