Everything you need to know to make your 3D printer fireproof!

so quite recently there has been yet another 3d printer that caught fire and burned down luckily in that case no one was hurt and the building still stands but this isn't the first time this has happened every few months you'll hear one of these horror stories of a 3d printer in one way or another becoming more volatile than it should have been and way too often is it that it's just by a hair that it didn't burn the entire house down so in this video let's go through what the most common fire has it's our on a 3d printer how you can make each one less dangerous and what it can do to prevent larger fires in the case that something should go wrong that is out of your control either way there is no defect or 100% safety with really anything but there are a lot of low-hanging fruits that you can easily fix on our 3d production machines so let's check those out okay so pretty much all the ways a 3d printer could fail our electrical fires which means it's wires connectors were individual components getting so hot that either some of the plastic insulation starts burning or it ignites something else that the wire is touching so a few versions of Y insulation and connectors are actually flame retardant meaning that should something overheat the plastic is going to melt but even with an open flame touching it there is an added chemical in here that will keep it from actively burning itself however most other parts on a 3d printer are typically not flame-retardant obviously the frame of a 3d printer is the biggest flame apart if it is flammable so let's see this is pretty bad I mean it's wood mechanically it's a great material but it would make great kindling in a campfire as well this acrylic frame this is from the a Nate a8 still going to burn pretty well I mean this is going to be a decent sized fire if it does go down but an all-metal frame like on the C or 10 or on the pressure machines is of course not going to burn at least under normal conditions I'm just going to assume you're not printing in a 100% pure oxygen atmosphere where aluminum will actually burn and that was I believe the main culprit with he recently burned down a Nate a8 which uses that acrylic frame but even with a metal frame there are still some plastic parts in here for example the plastic wrap or nylon mesh in this case or the V slot covers that will actually burn also printed or injection molded parts those will burn if your 3d printing parts for you next 3d printer it might be a good idea to use one of the newer flame-retardant filaments I personally really like this very filament this is Austrian a printer Pro flame with hardened PC ABS prints great doesn't burn link in the description of course you should also check the surroundings of a machine so don't necessarily use them on wooden shelves or enclosures but pick something like a metal shelf instead like I don't know who would put this 3d printer in a wooden box that sounds irresponsible ok but really it don't want to let it get that far if your 3d printer is already on fire it is kinda too late you know there are two factors to keeping your printer running well the first one is the hardware being well built and up to the task and wellspect and the second one is the firmwares sanity checks that kick in before anything substantially goes wrong so if you fall along here I mean I wouldn't say that your 3d printer is going to be infallible anything but at least trustworthy enough to run overnight I've run my printers for thousands of hours now and have never had an issue okay so first off let's check your electronics the main thing to look here are connectors and the general power handling area let's start with connectors so the classic connector is actually this one right here this green pluggable type and this is actually a really good connector if you're using a version from a reputable manufacturer these right here on the trans are made by our area and are rated for 12 amps since the biggest loader heat is bet typically draws from around those 12 amps now these K thing ones on this cheap ramps are supposedly rated 420 amps but they're only guaranteeing a resistance that is twice as high as the Raa ones so that means this one is actually going to heat up twice as much already at the same current it yet still allows more current than the rear one something doesn't quite add up with these what do you often see with these cheaper ones is that the plastic shroud around two connectors melts as the spring connectors in here overheat has happened to me before the smell relief isn't nice next up we have these screw connectors and what's coming with all these is that they have some sort of flap in here that protects the wiring so it's not just the screw itself pressing down on the copper strands but an intermediary layer that will not share of the individual strands if you're using some screw clamp that does not have that you will need to either use solid cool wiring or add a wire and crimp so skipping past they do it Wi-Fi here for a second which obviously has this massive connector pair for the power input and the heated bed output what do you'll often see are these blue connector blocks on the side here it actually says maybe in this one yeah it says 16 amps 250 volts how much you trusted rating is up to you when a higher quality Raa one of the same type will only be rated for 13 amps but I mean overall these are actually quite decent what's not decent is this green screw connector on the MKS gen right here it even says on its side it is a 10 amp connector and you potentially want to push the total current for a 12 volt heated bed III am here to those actually stepper drivers fans etc through this single connector which can all add up to 2025 amps and you're pushing that through a single connector that is rated for 10 amps and that's already the optimistic rating so in those cases my general recommendation is just to bypass the connector entirely solder some decent gauge wires directly to the bottom of the PCB and just don't use the connector if you can avoid it you know any connector is just another potential point of failure so if you can take that out that's even better if you do use these connectors here's 2 tips on how you can reliably use them first of all double and triple check that the screw connected types are it tight give your wire a tug if you can easily pull it out by hand it was not tight enough also if you don't totally trust your connectors come back after 2 weeks of use and just check whether they need to be sucked up again if they keep loosening don't use them and the second tip do not tin wire ends that go into a screw connector even if it's same thing to make the end meter and all but if you see tinned wires from the factory in a kit slip off that tinning and strip off a fresh bit of bare copper wire the reason here is that with 10 even went cold it will still flow slightly under pressure think of us like a bowl of cookie dough that we drop an anvil into just in really really slow motion so over a time a screw connector where they tend wire that might feel super snug when he first tightened it could turn into a super loose connection that sparks out and overheats at some point down the road next up MOSFETs these switch the output to the heated bed the hot ends and the fans but the only one that's critical here is the heated bed as a general rule of thumb if the MOSFET on your mainboard needs a heatsink to stay cool like on the initate board right there or it gets too hot to the touch in the first place it's a flawed design with the wrong component choice amperage rating on a MOSFET means nothing if you use the wrong type so often you see something like 20 amps being advertised but really that is for a completely different setups then how the boards are actually using the MOSFET I go into a bit more detail on this video right here but basically with smart component choices these tiny MOSFETs essentially these these squared chips back here that's all you need in a properly engineered solution so again if you have MOSFETs on your pointer to get too hot we even need to use a heatsink you might think about swapping them for better suited ones or just upgrading the board in its entirety the other thing to look for our fuses now admittedly I'm not paying as much attention to them as I should be to but they are kind of important now think about this for a second your power supply can supply typically around 25 or 30 amps so in total it can output that maximum amount of current before it shuts off for safety so if you short out the output right there on the supply will just shut down nothing's gonna happen but imagine for example you get a short right here at the heater cartridge so we're even right in the heater cartridge now the only resistance at the output is the MOSFET in the board and the wires ice the actual load is shorted out and that often means there is now enough current flowing through the wiring that obviously isn't made for these sort of currents but there's still not enough flowing to trip the power supply over current protection so what do you need is individual fuses at every single output ideally not at the input this is split up in two that's already better than one big fuse going across it because again the power supply itself already has that self protection built-in but it is way too lenient to protect each individual lower power output so as a rule of thumb a good safe fuse level is at least 20 percent over the current you're expecting so for a 12 volt 30 watt heater cartridge a typical rating these days that typically draws around two-and-a-half amps a 3m fuse is really good and safe and for a 12-volt heated bed which is usually around 12 amps if 15 M fuse is a good choice I like these automotive fuses and the appropriate holders for them really cheap well definitely cheaper than replacing a burned-down printer that are available everywhere and then all the current ratings you'd need they work up to 32 volts so either a 12 or a 24 volt 3d printer is going to be okay for them and yeah they're super easy to use link in the description for these exact ones the other actually quite dangerous thing I see way too often is heater wires without strain relief this is a ticking time bomb basically yeah it will be fine for maybe the first year or so until the point two turns out haha but what will happen over time is as these wires get bent back and forth over and over you can already see it on these you know a 3d printer tends to do that it tends to have very repetitive motion is that over time the stream dividual strands of wire in here started weaken and eventually break if you own an iPhone charging cord you know exactly what I'm talking about and you know at that spot where the strands of Warriors start breaking you reducing the gauge of the wire to only the few strands that are left but of course the current is still the same so that spot right there so it's hitting up and faster than you know you've got an electrical fire right there so two things you can do here first create a strain relief your wires will still need to bend the same amount for the same amount of motion but now it's being spread out over more of a length so it's not just this super sharp radius right here but a longer section if you're good in effective solutions I've seen in various printers this one is actually quite good where all the wires are tied to the Bowden tube but for example flexible conduit around all the wires this bundles up your wiring really and tight and makes the entire thing more rigid which is actually what you're going for but you need to take care that you attach both ends in a way where they cannot flex and therefore create an even sharper Bend this stuff is available in all sorts of sizes but try to use as size as small as possible because they do get really large bulk and too rigid with the larger sizes now the good solution is spiral wrap now by itself it doesn't support the wires enough it bundles them well but it doesn't keep them from kinking so a good fix for that is to use a piece of semi flexible filament like a nylon secure that to the moving part again to keep it from kinking in that same spot over and over and then wrapping that in with the rest of the wires and of course if you want to go completely overboard you can use drag chains of all these solutions drag chains are the only real engineered solution which means you'll get a guaranteed lifetime for them from the manufacturer if you size everything right but typically just stuffing your existing wiring into some of this tiny drag chain might actually be a downgrade over using something like plastic conduit and that brings us to that second part proper cables for moving setups now there are specific cables that you can buy for drag chains and such but a good first step in the right direction is using cables with a more flexible installation and with finer strands on the inside what's actually a really nice choice here is the silicon wire used in our C cars because that has a very flexible silicone insulation is heat resistant and typically is very thin stranding so you know those are all things intended for lowering the risk at the source but there are a few more ways that he can safeguard against that last bit of risk like the heater cartridge falling out of the earth hardened supposedly that's what caused that in an aid to go up in flames so modern well configured furnace will have sanity checks from actually a lot of things it's going to check for reasonable temperature readings from the thermistor in the hotend and the bed it takes into account at what rate your heaters are getting up to temperature and make sure that when everything is that temperature what it's reading for example from the hot end whether that is close to the temperature it's expecting and that protects against that exact case of the heater or the thermistor falling out of the heater block but if fault these checks are enabled in fresh version of Marlon obviously do it as well Marlon but this does but some manufacturers choose to disable those safety checks because with the grade of components they use those safeguards sometimes trigger when they shouldn't end create that false positive and then emergency stop a print even though everything is fine ish but in either case I'd recommend you do enable them and reflash the firmware and while you're added upgrade to a new version of Mahlon and that's going to come with more features and often better performance and reliability as well lastly there are a few things outside your 3d printer that you can use to monitor and protect your machines octoprint where the camera is a great solution to keep an eye on your machine a smoke detector mine's right over there is totally totally well not just recommend it but I'd say very much mandatory if you're running a 3d printer unattended there are even connected ones now that will send a text or an email when they detect anything work as a simple version a set that's connected wirelessly and if one alarm goes off so do all the other ones that's actually what I'm using so if your printer in the basement spontaneously combusts you'll hear it in the third-floor bedroom as well this has actually happened to me not with a 3d printer but with an RC car so I'm pretty fond of these connected smoke alarms they work really well and if you want to go one step further you can even install one of those automatic kitchen fire extinguishers over your printer basically these have a fuse in them if fire touches that it will set up a charge of fire suppressant that should extinguish any small fire like on a 3d printer overall you know it's not that hard to get your 3d printer to a level it makes it at least trustworthy and gives you the peace of mind to let it run overnight or while you're out grocery shopping for an hour but again common sense still applies and you know your machine best and if you want to check out any of the materials and software talked about you can find those all linked in the video description below before we go today a big shout out to all my patrons who in fact make it possible for me to run this channel as a full-time job special thanks to long-term patrons Mike Jackson matthew bird neil young berg philip that have all been with the channel ever since 2016 that is awesome then hussein kuratas I'm looking among Guney wo fun.we Boyd William Devine Bobby CC wand who have all joined just in the first half of 2017 then Francisco people's Robert Milwaukee Mateus paycheck Michele here Lifeson chemical cuts Phyllis Tudor fidget and Jeffrey Nikola cheese as well as Andy Smith and 3d passion that joined before the start of 2018 and finally Marek tera and affair Dexter's you late what an awesome name and Michael waits had joined just in 2018 thank you all and all the other patrons that are supporting the channel if you want to join in you can do that right here but most importantly if you like the video let me know by hitting that thumbs up if you want to see more like it get subscribed fun fact YouTube actually shows me how many of you subscribe from each videos so if you click that subscribe button now that will be my indicator from you that yes this is the type of content that you came here for also you probably don't want to miss new videos so do click that bell after you hit the subscribe button and lastly because safety is an important topic feel free to share this video if you think someone you know could learn something from it as always thank you for watching and I will see you in the next one

Channel: Made with Layers (Thomas Sanladerer)

Views: 331,467

Keywords: 3D printing, Tom's, 3D printer, RepRap, guide, Anet, fire, burn, house, mainboard, creality, hackaday

Id: VK_K6fp4BIk

Length: 16min 57sec (1017 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 07 2018