Hi,
I have installed my temperature sensor Octoprint to control a heater fan, please may I have replies on where the best place is to mount the temperature sensor inside the enclosure and where the places would be to avoid ?
is anyone able to please help with suggestions about where the best place is to site the temp sensor ?
thanks & regards
Gavin
It seems no one has experiences on this topic. You may do some tests then.
From a physics standpoint, I'd say the best place would be somewhere near the printer's frame, as it is there that you might want to know that the temperature has been reached.
Ideally, it should be near the printhead, but not near the hotend, as it would interfere with the temperature reading... I don't think the enclosure's large enough to have so much temperature variation while moving around the print area, although you might want to experiment on that to verify.
If you place it on the chamber's wall or enclosure, you might end up overheating a bit as the enclosure is going to be the coldest part of your chamber, especially the corners. Even though the temperature difference should be no more than 2-3 degrees I'd say...
My placement was at the top of the printer frame, above the edge of the build plate. It seemed important to me to get a measurement that accounted for both the air temp of the enclosure, but with whatever microclimate the heated build plate created factored in. That’s the part that matters, anyway: that zone of air right around the printed model. That’s what’s going to determine how fast the model cools (to control warping) and how effective the nozzle and hotend fans work. Unless you have a terribly cold environment or very lossy enclosure, the wattage from the hotend and build plate should be enough to keep the interior warm enough; the earlier stages of the print are most important, however, for the air to not be too cool; that’s when warping can ruin an entire print, through detachment from the build plate, or just crappy-looking peeled-up corners on a larger piece. Also (at least with the Prusa), the printer will throw a “temp too low” error lower than 12°C and not allow the print (or hotend) to start.
My basement gets down to ~10°C in the winter, so I have more experience with this than I’d like.
I mounted mine slightly higher than the print bed and about 10cm to the left of it.
I am using a Si702 that carries out humidity and temp and very responsive and fairly accurate, the enclosure plugin uses this info to turn a heated fan on to bring the enclosure up to temperature.
I set my temp to 46 when printing ABS, if I go to high I find my pi looses connectivity with the printer and will only connect again when it has cooled down. The heated bed and nozzle do help to heat the enviroment up however its not enough IMHO.
Does anyone think that the heated fan could be bad for the ABS and cause warping ?
Would passive heat be better ?
I would avoid direct airflow from fan over print bed. But whether that will cause warping depends on a number of factors. For example: general recommendation for ABS is no cooling, but if you are printing at speeds of #speedboatrace, then cooling of abs is required, see 3D Printing Speed - How fast can you go? - YouTube
edit: corrected name of benchy race