Speed up 3D prints & save money. Insulation is important!
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- Опубліковано 25 лип 2024
- Very few 3D printers come with any form of insulation under the heated bed. This is not an exciting topic but an important one. My tests show that prints will complete faster and the machine will use more than 10% less electricity with this simple addition. In this video I take you through how to add insulation step by step and share my results.
Thanks to Paul from Where Nerdy is Cool! For this request. Check out his channel here: / @wherenerdyiscool
Important safety warning: Remember that not all foams are the same to test yours to make sure it won’t be a safety hazard!
0:00 Introduction
Previous video on adding a mains powered bed to your printer: • AC mains powered bed g...
1:07 Recycled foam from your 3D printer packaging
2:06 Testing methodology
Power meter on Amazon: amzn.to/3kcqIFY
Power meter on eBay (Aus): ebay.us/2Jkohi
3:21 Baseline testing
XYZ 20mm calibration cube by iDig3Dprinting: www.thingiverse.com/thing:127...
5:45 Foam bed insulation installation
50mm / 2” Kapton tape on Amazon: amzn.to/3liYVCY
50mm Kapton tape on eBay (Aus): ebay.us/CjE33v
PID auto tuning: teachingtechyt.github.io/cali...
9:07 Testing with insulated bed
11:20 Increased efficiency from a pop up enclosure?
Video testing pop up enclosures: • Pop up 3D printer encl...
Purchase the Wham Bam pop-up enclosure: bit.ly/2Ttxdqv
12:09 Adding foam insulation to the inside of an enclosed Ender 5
Video on enclosing the Ender 5: • Ender 5 enclosed lid a...
Follow up video with improved chamber heating: • 3D printing engineerin...
Aluminium insulation tape: koolwrap.com.au/product/kool-...
32:23 Conclusion
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I'm really glad you touched on enclosures, but I really wanted to see what improvement you got with both the bed insulation AND the enclosure combined.
he did, look at the graph near the end of the video.
@@elvinhaak Neither of the graphs at 11:43 nor 12:00 nor 13:42 depict the combined insulation of both bed and printer.
@@ExtantFrodo2 Ah ok. I thought I saw that passing (for just a second) in the graph. Must have mis-interpreted that then. I thought that the one at 11:58 showed the insulated enclosure.
Insulating the bed when you enclose the printer are counter productive. You want that chamber to heat up.
@@Exstaz You're only insulating the lower half of the bed so that the heat it produces gets directed only upwards. You'd still get prints started faster AND have the added benefit of your chamber retaining heat for the benefit of parts above the bed not cooling down as much.
Some people have been asking about fumes from this being heated up. Based on the piece that was labelled, this is LDPE foam. I looked through MSDS for this material and it only seems to be hazardous when heated to the point of melting. Of course there will be variations in foam used, so if you are concerned, please use cork or another material. The main message from me in this video is that insulation is worthwhile and that anything will likely be better than nothing, so insulate away.
www.redwoodplastics.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/LDPE-2012.pdf
www.simco.net.au/wp-content/uploads/MSDS-PE-Foam.pdf
www.interpak.ltd.uk/Downloads/Novostrat%20Fire%20Safety.pdf
8:43 Surely that is less than 10mm? Looks more like 2mm?
Check what insulation has the lowest heat loss by using the thermal cam on the insulated side, radiator reflection foil lined with kapton tape was best for me
I've been doing this for a few years. This also works great for older printers with 12v beds. Mine struggled to heat and hold the bed @ 100C for ABS until I insulated it, now it has no issue at all.
So far I've been using this type of foam to help organize/hold my tools in the shop, saves plenty of $ compared to buying the branded stuff and works just as well. Stack the sheets with spray adhesive, then contour cut around your tools and peel away as many layer as you need :)
Really interesting tests and results. I dod enjoy this video a lot. Thank you.
Another great informative video, did this to both of my printers when i first got them. an easy mod to achieve.
Thank you for considering fire hazards and showing how to test it!
Yes, I have been using this way quite a lot of times. Almost all of my printers that didn't come with insulation below the bed from factory have these pieces of packing-foam added.
And yes, also first testing for fire-hazard
Also Using the foams for insulation and just building a complete enclosure from the foams as well. Just uses some pins and/or tape to connect the big pieces of the foams and then around the printer or better half-inside so that the electronics are outside this kind of fast-made enclosure.
Printing some hinges is easy to make a door but already covering most sides in this self-made foam-box helps a lot too. holes can be covered with packaging-tape. i like to use the white foams that come with some printers to the inside or cover some foam with some white paper.
i actually never used capton-tape under the bed, but just put the foam under the plate.
Also under the printer itself if it does not have a fan there. It makes less difference then the other sides but it is fast and easy to do and you can attach the sides to it with just some metal pins/parts you have or printed pins from left-over filaments or printing-tests.
Cutting: I generally use a warm soldering-iron or a melting-wire for this. This gives very straight and closed edges that are a bit more firm then when cut with a knife.
About VOC's and such: I tested it and it was not measurable in changes, of course inside the case the normal fumes get higher as expected but easier to capture and ventilate outside the room or with a small airfilter then when it is in an open space. most of the foam does not get really hot during printing since the underside of the bed is way less hot then the upper-side especially at normal print-temperatures of 48-75 degrees that I use most often (PLA, flex, PETG and sometimes ABS, all on top of flex or fixed plates).
Also about energy-saving: do not print on glass since that is also a good insulator (less then foam) as we know from using it for windows for example. It needs more time to heat up and after the print to cool down so especially with big printers this is a noticable amount of energy that is first stored and then lost.
I did this to my Ender 3 v2 shortly after I got it, over a year ago. I used a piece of foam core, held in place by Kapton tape and the corner bed mounts. Power consumption dropped, PID tuning changed. ONE BIG DOWNSIDE: it takes the bed longer to cool off! I have some purpose-made insulation for appliances to try, but the foam core works well enough that I'm not going to try the new stuff until I do something to the printer where I need to remove the bed. Thanks for the video!
A small USB fan above to cool your print actually makes the time negligible.
You may even hear cracking when the plastic shrinks and it is simple to pull off.
Also I position my part cooling fan above the print and turn it on high. It cools the print and bed down early when positioned right. Just remember ur nozzle is still hot sometimes so not too close.
I see the Dani Ric t-shirt after his win at Monza last weekend
For my old JGA5, used a sheet of 3mm or so 'cork' and a thin layer of self-curing silicone adhesive.
I have moved the racking in my shed to create a false
room for my 3d printers and use all the packaging to build a sound reduced area. I'll give this a go.
Cheers
FANTASTIC video, Thanks for sharing! I wish I had thought to experiment with this when I had the space to use my 3D printer.
Nice video. I sometimes wondered if this would help but never realized that it was something that some printers already had
Since last year electricity got quite pricey here in Germany😮💨 So I will definitely try that bed isolation hack with the packaging foam soon.
Thank you👍
It keeps going up here too :(
Very interesting topic. I've added an acoustic sponge as sound insulation for my custom-made wooden enclosure for Snapmaker 2.0 A350.
Interestingly, it preserves the temperatures very well and allows the heated bed to reach and maintain higher temperatures for printing ABS even with such a large heated bed. That sponge for acoustic isolation is also safe from fire.
The best part is that its screen/controller is on USB-C, so by adding a simple extension cable it can be used outside of the enclosure without worry that it will overheat and damage after excessive use.
The PID parameters for the bed before and after would also be an indicator of thermal efficiency.
I'm glad that people are considering these matters when it comes to these videos. They are almost always IGNORED. Another good indicator of power consumption efficiency is the power factor, which is not even mentioned in this video.
@@MacEvoyING Since the heating element consumes the lion's share of energy, and has a PF of 1.0, looking at it with regards to PF is a indication of power supply efficiency more than anything else. Modern switching mode power supply efficiency is often in the range of 80 to 90%
@@kiowablue2862 This is only true if the power supply of the printer has a really good power factor correction circuitry, which is not always true. On my Anycubic i3 mega I have a PF of about 0.4-0.5 on idle with nozzle and heated bed to 60º and 200ºC.
The efficiency measures how much power gets lost due to, for example, heat dissipation, but the power factor measures how much real and reactive power the device is consuming, because at the end of the month you get charged for the real power, NOT for the reactive power. So, if you want to more or less accurately calculate the effective price of a print you need to know the power factor.
Btw, those meters like the one shown in this video are capable of measuring the power factor.
Just wanna stress here, some materials are not only flammable, but also emit super toxic, thick, and lots of smoke when ignited. Don't use this stuff without testing it first. Also consider the stuff they might emit when warm... No idea how they behave then.
Be safe.
I used corkboard to insulate my bed, attached with high-temperature aluminum flue tape. The kapton tape that I had been using for the wiring didn't seem to have enough adhesive strength for me to be confident in it as a means to attach the insulation long-term.
How effective is the corkboard?
I have ordered a Rat Rig and that one come without insulation, so I'm out looking for some kind of insulation
How did you attach the cork board to the heated bed
Great information! Thank you!
Awesome video and testing! I only missed the enclosure plus isolated bed together. I would like to see more videos about the enclosure and isolation. Also you could add a aluminum foil under on the foam to see if make any difference
Great experiment. Thank you
So happy to contribute a fun research project! Thanks for doing this!😎
My room gets noticeably warming when printing with an open-frame Ender 3, so anything to help cut down on that waste heat is a plus. This video definitely gave me something to think about.
Nice tests! I can recommend self adhesive automotive insulation. It can handle high temperatures and is pretty cheap.
This video gave me the idea of making an enclosure out of foam. You can get rigid foam insulation panels for pretty cheap. Something like foilboard would work.
I do that with dollar tree foamboard, looks ghetto but it helps.
Great video
your videos are very interresting !
I use a cork tile for my insulation. With the bed at 80 degrees the tile is barely warm so I think it is doing a good job.
I just orderd some sound isolating foam to cover my printers enclosure from the inside, let's see if it also helps isolating heat as well
I've always been using that insulation foam with glue on one side and aluminium foil on the other that they have pretty cheap on Aliexpress, never even bothered testing a comparison (what's the point of seeing how much worse it gets when saving .... 2 dollars?), would be interesting to see a comparison between insulation materials in the future.
I can imagine there won't be extreme differences, but just like the enclosure test showed, it might actually have a considerable impact when you insulate the bottom from all 3 forms of heat transfer.
I looked at using PE foam for this but the degradation temperature (80-120C) was rather low for my taste
Hi Mikel, you can test cork sheets as a better insulation. Cork is cheap, easy to cut and also not inflamable. Cork has been usted as thermal protection both on Soyuth, Geminis and Apollo Space programs.
Was VOC's considered with this? Heating up foam can release some pretty nasty chemicals depending on the type of foam.
I would also be weary if the foam can do the up to 120°C without deforming, shrinking or as you said release nasty stuff.
He did test flammability but things can already move or whatnot before that.
Getting proper material would be the wiser choice for this task.
LOL. And we all know the foam that comes with these printers smells like you were in the inside of a Chinese factory. there’s probably more than VOCs in that stuff.
Just added a pinned post addressing this, thanks for asking the question.
Adding a layer of Kapton tape to the whole foam underside should decrease potential out gassing issues. It could also improve it's heat tolerance. An enclosure with a filter would also be a good idea.
@@hotbrakepads YEs but that smell is there already, also if not using for insulation. It gets there the moment you open the box inside your house and even more when you set the printer up. It is by the way not as bad as many times with computers from for example Dell. Some fumes are actually from added gasses to make sure that for example rodents don't get transported.
Great video thank you :)
I used granulated rubber mats for the inside of my enclosed printer. They insulate but also damp vibrations and noise.
DR3. Great t-shirt Michael.
Nice video 🖖 👍
Unless you have enclosed chamber with the intention to print abs, then the radiation off the bottom serve as chamber heating source.
Nice going with the DR3 t-shirt
I use foil backed foam that is generally sold for car sound and heat insulation. Come in rolls with self adhesive back. It appears to be similar to what comes on the biqu b1
My heated bed insulation is radiator reflection foil lined with kapton tape, it is cool to the touch indicating the heat isn't being lost much
Would be interesting to also see this before and after PID tuning on the bed
I use car engine bay heat shield adhesive foam. You can get them in many different thicknesses and the have a silver/gold IR reflective layer that helps reflect heat/light.
My enclosure for my Ender 5 gets to 60+ degrees without an additional heater. I will be testing efficiency soon too, I assume it will be a good bit more efficient thanks to the surrounding air temp being so much higher. I thought about adding a heater but unless I need higher air temps for printing there is no point, I can print ABS now with zero warping. I used reflective foil insulation for loft insulating
I use a silicone sheet as insulation, followed by a final layer of acrylic sheet to exert good clamping force from the bottom.
looks like i have something to do this weekend
I saved about 5 whole minutes every print. Really adds up.
Awesome use of that packaging foam.
Great how you showed it’s thermal property.
Got me thinking can I use this on my car..😂😂😂
“All roads lead back to a car”..
Or should it be, “what came first, the road or the car”.😂😂
Going by this video, I must say the Artillery X1 heat shielding ain’t too bad.... Heat shielding being the key word. 🤓
The aluminised-foam stuff you can get for use with cars should be good. It’s what Creality use on the inside section of their large beds.
I bought some pre-made Ender-3 sized pieces from AliExpress and they seem to work well. I haven’t yet got around to making a full underside for my Ender 5 Plus from a larger piece of this material.
Good tip - but DON'T use a polyolefine foam (PE/PP as used as packaging material for most 3D printers) as it is usually very flammable and NOT self-extinguishing (test a small piece first). If I had to, I'd probably use spray-on PUR foam in a flame-retardant formula or better even a mineral fiber product wrapped in aluminium foil to prevent particles getting into the air.
on the ender 3, it may help to keep the electronics under the bed cooler as well.
Yeah I had some LDPE from printer packaging. I taped it under the bed and tried it. It set off the fire alarm and partially evaporated.
I am now successfully using cork.
I want to know how different bed materials affects heat efficiency. Will for example adding a glass sheet add a lot to heating time and power consumption? A flex plate? Buildtak vs Pei etc.
Or even the colour of the bed surface, if I recall, black colours not only absorb heat faser, the also radiate heat away faster than white colours?
I had been using some insulation that I bought off aliexpress, and that was OK but after about 6 months it had become dry and brittle. I was looking for an alternative right about the time ths video came out, and so I used the foam that came in one of the printer boxes. I tested that it was fire-proof before fitting and it was good, so I attached to the bottom of the bed. That's been working well for a few months now, but a few days ago I removed the bed and found that the foam had completely melted where it came into contact with the heater-pad. I print a lot of ABS (bed temp: 100C, enclosure: 60C) so it has been subjected to a lot of abuse. I realise that there is probably a large variation in the pieces of foam that come in printer boxes, and some may well be able to withstand the high temps that my printer is subjected to, but I just wanted to share my experience so that others who are contemplating this can check for themselves. So now I'm off to find a sheet of cork and see if that works.
Alright, you convinced me :D
I used cork board on my Ender 3 pro a couple of years ago. Absolutely no problems and I assume (no measurment equipment) I have saved enough electricity to pay for a spool of filament by now!
I grabbed me some cermaic insulation for my Prusabear. You only gotta grind a metal pipe to hammer trough the holes for the screws under the bed. Helps A LOT with heat up time. Also i'd be scared to use some packaging material since it is usually not fire retardant. Good for you to test it beforehand but the fumes it gives out are probably not exactly healty :|
I have high temp adhesive foam with an aluminum backing, but I haven't benched it, though it prevents thermal runaway prevention from being a problem at under 15c ambient.
Those large aluminum heat sinks, um support bars, made a heat insulation barrier, trapping the heat in the center. As you can tell from the FLIR camera.
I had used my foam from my Ender 3 packaging and put it under the bed, but it was rubbing on my Y-stepper motor and nudging the front of the bed downward when running a mesh with my BLTouch.
I tried unwinding the bed level screws as far as I felt safe to see if I could get enough clearance, but that endeavor was unfruitful.
WOW Thanks
It would be interesting to see if putting an insulation pad on top of the bed during initial heating made any significant difference to the time to temperature.
I used the blanket from a cars first aid bag to insulate my enclosure. Got +13°C.
Hello. Nice video. I have a question. What if you used dow insulation foam for better thermals ?
You should test the application of thermal compound between the Heater PCB and the print surface, that way the heat transfer can potentially be a lot more even.
Also, you should slap some Low-E window films on the acrylic panels of the printer enclosure.
I'm no expert, but I think thermal compound would throw in the aspect of the bed being particularly hard to level. Unless you ran a glass bed. Or something with no flex at all.so that's an idea
Thanks to artillery for already doing this for me👍🏾
You could try adding a fan inside the Ender 5 enclosure to generate some airflow that helps evenly spread out the heat generated from the heater units. It should help even more than reflective tape, based on what i found out when building a drybox with active heating. Naturally make sure it doesn't make print pop off the bed while printing by blowing air directly on top
Maybe engineer one of those passive heater contraptions that have a fan and sit on top of a wood heater, using convection to rotate a fan. Sit it on top of the heater unit.
A added a piece of cardboard covered in aluminium tape covered in kapton tape (to prevent short circuits) attached with kapton tape to the bottom of the bed.
Unfortunately the kapton tape got unglued and cardboard dropped onto the carriage. Anecdotally, the setup seems to be even worse than before. Your video gave me some ideas about using foam wedges to prop-up cardboard agains the bed.
Now with the wedges, I was able to heat up the bed to 110C outside of the heated chamber. Previously I was only able to heat up the bed to 107C inside of the chamber.
Based on this, I suspect that the bed cools down mostly due to airflow, and blocking it in any way brings efficiency and the reflectors might not matter as much.
I coated the underside of the bed with RTV silicone. Its less than 10 dollars for a caulking gun sized tube. I used the high temp because why not. There is a lot of acetic acid off gassing until it cures a day later. It is safe to touch now and is completely fire safe and also non conductive. Also it cant fall off or debond.
As far as enclosures go, I have gotten great results using half inch pink insulation foam board. It gets the air temp inside my Ender 3v2's enclosure to over 60 °C. This is actually too hot for the printer to function correctly for extended periods of time.
At what temp does the foam burn? What is the additional risk of putting flamable material next to heating elements?
In this case a mention of the tricked out voron called the DoomCube is warranted. The doomcube is essentially a voron with a double pane insulated enclosure (and a bunch more rigidity mods)
I use aerogel for my Mk3s, seems to work well.
do you agree the whambam enclousure is the same as a regulat plant tent ?
Nice t-shirt!
Please can you do a video on filament sensors, I'm interested in how the prusa ir sensor works, I wanted to use it on my ender 3 but I don't know how to use it and how it is wired.
It's a really good idea to insulated the bed. I think this can be improved if you added som reflective material, like aluminium foil tape, so you can be sure that the most of the heat goes to the bed, or just using a pease of aluminium foil from the kitchen (with the sheiniest side to the bed) ;)
I changed the bed heater om my Flsun SR over to a mains powered silicone heater pad and insulated it with cork board underneath, with the aim of having a shorter heat-up time and higher max temp. But I made the mistake of using a 1/4" thick plate of aluminum to replace the thinner circuit board heater as a base. More thermal mass, heat-up time just as long, with a delay in the surface reaching the same temp as reported by the thermistor, takes longer for the bed to cool. Oh well, I'm not about to peel the heater off of the plate and ruin the adhesive. I guess that at least I'm putting less strain of the 24 volt PSU.
I'll probably go for a acoustic mat. In addition to the fact that they are self-adhesive, they have certificates for non-flammability and non-dusting. The only downside is that they usually come in thicknesses from 1 cm.
So thanks bhai jan
I thought about using a survival blanket, but since you got some aluminium tape, how about adding some of that on the back of the foam to imitate the standard product ?
Thanks for the tests o/
Would like to see compared test on Aerogel Insulation , the foam and others. What is the flash point of each type of material which type is high and which out gases on each material is safer.
We use a red fire rated foam from a spray can to block fire hazard during frame construction in a home. Wondering if a layer of that would work.
Would adding a reflective surface to the top during warming aid in speed? Thinking it might help keep heat in the plate and would just involve placing a piece of reflectex on the bed during warming and removing to print. Can you test this also?
After the enclosure test I was wondering this myself.
yes it does, especially if you have an insulator on top of it. It does not get a more even heating though. I tested this (made a small video about it at the time too, probably still at my channel, EL 3d print). i don't use it often anymore since most of my printers are in an enclosure and adding the insulation makes the temperature of the rest of the printer (including the gantry) change more after removing the pad so introducing less quality especially in low surrounding-temperatures.
Yes, preheating the bed also changes the structure of the printer and of course the printhead and the sensor if you have one on your printer, so better get those parts on the same temperature before starting the print as they will get when you are actually printing.
I bought some ceramic fiber insulation paper for my AC bed heater a few weeks back. but looking at the negligible results, not sure it's worth the effort taking things apart.
I wonder how easy it would be to do this on the CR-10 Smart. It has a rigid, non-adjustable bed mounted to the tracks with 16 screws.
Thanks for the video. What about a silicon mat for insulation? Some vendors have a silicone sock for the print head to help keep it clean and to help insulate it. Does that silicone sock make much of a difference for energy efficiency?
Keeps the hot end temperature more stable, probably makes a very small difference to energy efficiency, but nowhere near as much as the bed.
Tip 1; The bed insulation is essential for older style (12V) beds that struggle to reach higher temperatures. With insulation, such a bed can reach 100 C as where before it could not go higher than aprox. 85 C.
Tip 2; Replace the 4 metal bed M3 screws by nylon M3 screws, which do not transfer heat to your bed frame :-)
I was thinking about using some aerogel insulation that I have around the house.
Use the thermal camera on the insulated side to see what material minimises heat lost the most
I like to use these Panels for install behind heaters, on the wall, they are Form too bit with aluminium coating and glueside..
Great video !
I wonder (I'm sure) that for PLA filament the best thing for reducing consumption would not be using glue stick ? Do you think it gives as much adhesion as heated bed ?
Thank you
Or painters tape (no heat needed, unless you are around freezing temp then depending on the filament you might want to heat it, though I've done below freezing without heat). The biggest upgrade then is wrapping the heater block in Capton tape and redesigning the fan shroud (E3D V5 and V6 don't require redesign as my machine with those doesn't even have a part cooling fan and those OEM have perfect fan shrouds without leaking air near the nozzle like you'll find on Ender machines and similar where huge amounts of air is thrown around the heating block).
Could you make a video about ptc ceramic air heater
Silicone mats like the ones used in laminating machines come in different sizes and thicknesses and are rated for 300C.
DId you try insulated + encapsulated? I doubt there would be anything different much there, but I'm curious lol.
Anyone else use high temp gasket seal tape from their bbq smoker? I have a bunch of it laying around the house and put two and two together a few months ago. It works really well 🙂
I tried melamine sponge as insulator. It worked fine, but I messed up installing it. Now i'm using 10-15 layers of glass cloth wrapped with kapton tape. Even if heatbed is at 110 deg C, I can easely touch it's bottom.
I saw the other day an insulation pad that was a silver foil on the outside and not sure what sticking to the bed side. or maybe the sound deadener and heat barrier they use on car floors, Something like Dynamat ??
AH! Yes, what have I done? I don't have money to buy those faboulous printer enclosures. So I repurposed the foam and the entire box to make a heated build space for my printer. A bit clumsy, but it works :p