The Cabinet Part 2

Design Ideas

I have been working on cabinet modifications in spare time – easy to do onscreen, a lot more work in real.

To print well in stronger materials you need to be able to get the build area warm but you also need to keep the electronics cool - and there is also a need to be able to vent the build area to outside or a filter, so this means ideally you need four areas:

1. build area with a vent valve
2. circuitry area with cooling airflow
3. intake area
4. exhaust area with extractor fan
   
   So here is the idea modelled: 
   
   
   
   

There is also a change I made here where I put the filament roll directly under the build area – it just seemed natural to do it that way. This means the bottom of the cabinet is empty for now but then the whole thing may be too shaky for normal operation  -  3D printing is dependant on having a very stable surface to operate well – any shake in the table or bench the printer rests on will result in vibrations of the print head and this produces “ghosting” - rippled print surfaces.

I will only find out how good the printing is when it is actually running.

I have identified the air intakes and exhausts on the CR10S Pro case and thus located inflow cooling ducts at these two points. This means a lot of small pieces glued together and I am still unsure how well they would seal onto the CR10S case – ( how airtight do they need to be? ) and also the various parts need to be accessible and I am not certain how practical this would all be. 

I put the second intake where the power cord goes into the case so that covers one matter but there is still the question of just how to remove or replace the surrounding parts around the printer when things need to be looked at – for example, at the moment there is no way to access the USB port on the printer when it is in the cabinet and the power switch will have to be left on and turned on/off at either the power board or a wall socket. I might add a door just where the power board is located which would also have a cutout for the power cord. The power board will also provide for adding lights and any other powered extras I might add later. 

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At some point it becomes tempting to pull the whole printer apart and get rid of the metal case and fix the frame inside the cabinet, thus all electronics can be in their own area with isolated cooling. The trouble with this kind of thing is that I can easily progress to tossing the whole thing out and building a completely new whizz-bang machine with better, more expensive parts and I am in danger of starting a big project I may never finish . . . . 

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Stage 1, or what will definitely be done for starting the machine and getting it running, is completing the upper enclosed cabinet with door and fume extractor. This means cutting a hole in the floor of the chamber and that lead me to buy some new bars of 2020 to support the printer more directly: there is some question about how well the panel sheets will take weight when they get warm and I don't want to cut a hole in the back wall only to need to patch it up later. 

Stage 2 – Getting the printer fully upgrade with all of the extras I have already bought

Stage 3 - adding the Octopi remote controller, lights and camera

Stage 4 - improving the cabinet, including relocating the spool holder and addingthe air ductwork.