I love my 3D printers, but in the
back of my mind, I know that they are quietly emitting all kinds of nasty
pollutants and cancer-causing compounds. And even if you only print PLA, the same
is true of your 3D printer or printers. That's why in this video, we're going to
see if and how we can drastically improve the air quality in my workspace and yours,
with affordable consumer-grade products. Let's get after it. I don't know if it was the two
separate severe sinus infections that I've gotten since moving into
this studio, reading a book about the history of some particularly nasty
cancer cells, or just seeing how many precautions the manufacturers
of these 3D printers actually take in their own workspaces, but I've been
thinking a lot about air quality lately. And while there seems to be a general
attitude of brushing aside concerns about air quality, especially for people who
don't do a lot of ABS printing, a recent video by friend and fellow YouTuber
Lost in Tech really caught my attention. In it, he built a sort of makeshift
air quality logging device, which then showed just how dramatic the VOC or
volatile organic compound emissions are for things like ABS, which is
becoming more and more popular with the increased popularity of closed printers. And of course, that's not even considering
the PM2.5 or microscopic particles emitted from other activities such as
sanding your prints, soldering, and so on. Perhaps even more alarmingly, his video
showed a surprising amount of VOCs being emitted during the pre-heating stages
of the so-called safer materials, things like PLA and PETG, due to the need to burn
the leftover material out of the nozzle. Oh, and by the way, if you haven't
already seen Lost in Tech's channel, I will link to it below so you can
check it out - ideally in a new tab, because I'm going to be referring to
it a few times throughout this video. Case in point, there was one
major idea and takeaway from that video that caught my attention. Lost in Tech pointed out that every
study that has looked into the relationships between air quality
and 3D printing has emphasized the importance of just changing and
circulating the air in the environment. Sure, it's much sexier and much more
fun to build our own clever little air filtration systems like the
Nevermore or the Bento box and so on. I love those solutions and I've used them
extensively in the past and I continue to do so, whether it's on my Voron
machines or my Bambu Lab printers, and as I'll explain later on in the video,
I think that these homemade solutions can and should be a very important part
of an overall larger clean air strategy. But there are a few issues
with using them exclusively. First of all, not all
printers are enclosed. And second of all, even for those that
are enclosed, without having sensors inside the print chamber to monitor
air quality, we actually have no way of knowing if and when the air has circulated
through the filtering medium, whether that's HEPA or activated charcoal or
even both, enough times to deem it safe. Chances are, if you're as impatient
as I am, you're going to want to open up the printer, either to wipe away
the purged material from the nozzle, or to remove a completed model, well
before the air inside is fully filtered, which means you'll still be exposed
to VOCs and fine particulate matter. Not to mention the fact that
none of these printers are truly airtight, and some nasty stuff will
always escape before filtration. Also, as Lost in Tech pointed out
to me when I reached out to him personally, carbon is very effective,
but it expires very quickly. And you have no good way of knowing
when it's reached saturation. That means that you could easily
be using the same carbon well after it is already saturated, making it
basically useless without you having any real way of actually knowing. So yeah, filtration is fine, but
circulation is just as important, if not more so, if you want
to improve your air quality. This makes sense if you think about it. I mean, filtering the air is good,
but not quite as good as completely replacing the air with clean, fresh
air, and letting mother nature deal with our nasty ass VOCs. At least that's what I thought
before embarking on this video. But more on that in a bit. Either way, I don't know about you,
but personally, I'm not an engineer and I don't know too much about
CFM, air flow, and all of that. I'm just a dude who likes 3D printing
and would like to live long enough to see our AI overlords destroy our species. So, with that in mind, I set about
doing some super professional, thorough, and diligent citizen science. I'm just kidding, you guys know me. I don't have the patience of a CNC
Kitchen or a Lost in Tech, and I barely passed high school Chemistry. So instead, I decided to partner
with Dreo, who agreed to sponsor this video, but more importantly
to send me one of their smart air circulation fans for testing. These are ideal for this type of test,
because beyond the fact that they connect to "you know who" and Google Home and
can be programmed to work with your smart home, they also oscillate up and down,
side to side and all that good stuff. I also love that these products are web
enabled so that I didn't have to wait here all day and night to turn them
on and turn them off when I'm not at the studio but want to filter the air. More on that in a minute. And because I'm not so good with the
whole building custom electronics and using them to log data thing
like some of my contemporaries are, I also asked Dreo to send over this
smart air filtration system so that I could use it to measure and generate air
quality graphs right inside of the smart phone app to show all of you, and if
needed, supplement my circulation tests with air filtration tests to compare
and contrast the different strategies for getting clean air in my workspace. Plus, for good measure, since the Dreo
filtration system judges air quality using PM2.5, I also supplemented my
citizen Science with just a cheap air quality sensor which measures VOC, which
I did verify to be working effectively. So, my original plan was to reach peak
level of air pollution by printing ABS and ASA, loading and unloading
filament, drying old filament, and then test various different scenarios
for cleaning the air, to see which was the most effective and efficient. I figured that I would try the circulating
air, versus pushing dirty air out the window, versus creating an inlet and
an outlet to channel air through the room, and then finally do the same but
in reverse - pumping clean air in, and then I would just measure how quickly
the graphs from the Dreo app showed air quality improvements, labeling
each one of the scenarios to then come up with my ideal recommendations for
cleaning the air in your workspace. Unfortunately, that's not what
happened at all, and soon as Lost in Tech tried to warn me I was down
the frustrating and confusing rabbit hole that is air quality testing. With that said, while I wasn't able
to come out with a clear and easy to follow prescription for improving
air quality, my lack of success did dredge up a lot of surprising learnings
and takeaways, and I think that those are very much worth sharing. So. Here's what I found out. Number one, ABS and ASA printing are
likely the least of your worries. This was the first and certainly the
biggest surprise of this entire project. See, going into this, I had assumed, as
most people on places like Reddit and Facebook would have you believe, that ABS
and ASA are the biggest threats to air quality in any 3D printing maker space. Therefore, one may logically assume
that if you don't print those materials, you have nothing to worry about, right? But listen up. If you take away just one thing from
this whole video, it should be this. When it comes to air quality in your maker
space, you have much bigger fish to fry. Throughout my testing, I struggled to make
a dent in the air quality, either PM2. 5 or VOCs, by simply printing
ABS on all my printers. In fact, I almost came to the
conclusion that heck, maybe if you're in a big enough room printing
relatively dry filament, this isn't as big of a deal as people may think. And then I realized, as makers,
the vast majority of us don't just 3D print things, do we? I mean, you may or may not have
an open diode laser, a resin 3D printer, a table saw, or any of the
other obvious polluters that I have kicking around in my workspace. But I bet dollars to donuts
that you do a little soldering from time to time, don't you? Or drying filament in a filament dryer,
or putting in heatset inserts, or using harsh chemicals such as 3D Gloop, or
epoxy, or acetone, or even rubbing alcohol to post process, or assemble,
or clean your prints or printers. And from all of my admittedly imperfect,
limited, and unscientific testing, these things all add up, little by
little to create a very, very polluted environment in your workspace. To illustrate this, have a look at the
chart for my first day of testing with the Dreo Purifier, wherein I printed tons
of ABS and ASA during the entire workday. Very little impact on air quality, right? But then, I left the printers running,
overnight, alongside a filament dryer with four rolls of particularly water-logged
filament of various different sorts and types in a sealed room, expecting
to come back to excellent air quality. Instead, I was shocked to find that the
air quality had plummeted overnight. I then continued testing the overall air
quality of my larger workspace outside of the print farm with all of these
other complementary activities, from gluing prints together, to soldering
and doing heatset inserts, and I was shocked to find out just how disgusting
the air in my workspace became. Which leads me to... Point number two, replacing
polluted air is absolutely crucial. There are probably no surprises here. Those will come at point number four. But if you are adding pollutants
in your workspace, particularly if those pollutants are volatile organic
compounds, you need to move those things out of your workspace and away from
your lungs as quickly as possible. Sure, you can and probably should wear a
respirator with the appropriate organic compound filters while you're working
with those materials, but you're still going to want to take the respirator off
at some point, and when you do, you're going to want to ensure that as much of
those volatile organic compounds have been moved out of the window as possible. This point was really driven home to me
during my visits to various R&D workshops in China, where I saw how seriously fume
extraction is taken and the types of large systems that were being used to clear
things like resin fumes from the room. In fact, I even discovered that
Anycubic actually moved all their resin R&D to another facility entirely. The bottom line, if you, like me, believe
that cracking a window is enough to move out all of those pollutants... It's not. You need to create a lot of air
circulation, ideally moving the air around in random patterns like Dreo's air
circulation fans can do for you, and then pushing it out of the window with another
inlet like a door on the other side of the space so that air can flow in freely. By the way, editing Jonathan here, because
I just want to add that since recording this video, Lost in Tech referred
me to two excellent YouTube videos which I will link in the description. Those videos prove in a much more
scientific way than I have here that number one, putting the fan farther
away from the window is actually much better for air flow, which probably
explains why I didn't get the results that I expected during my testing, and
two, that these Dreo fans do provide significantly much more air flow than
much larger or even purpose built fans. So, make sure to check out the link
in the description to those videos because more air flow is really, really
important for actually ventilating and clearing out all that bad stuff, which
is kind of the point of this whole video. Alright, let's get back to the main video. With that said, we do need to get to point
number three, which is that clearing out accumulated nastiness takes a long time. In my naiveté, I thought that I
would just prop up one of these fans near a window, crank up the speed,
oscillate a little bit, open a door, and within 30 minutes, the air
quality would be back to excellent. In fact, as I mentioned before, I actually
based my entire video strategy on it, planning to just compare and contrast
the speed of each of the different positions of the fan, door, window, etc.,
to see which method was the fastest. I was dead wrong. Invariably, whether it was from printing
ABS, drying filament, using the table saw, or soldering, I quickly realized
that if I let pollutants accumulate in the room, it took a long, long
time, like overnight in most cases, to bring that air quality back to normal. Now this was true no matter which strategy
I employed, from pointing the fan inwards, outwards, oscillating, static, or even
simply trying to seal off the room and then filter the air inside it using the
automatic feature of the air purifier. I repeatedly found that once
you've let the air pollution accumulate, it takes a long time
to adequately clean out that air. Now I can only assume that this has to
do with the random patterns of air flow. For example, polluted air can get stuck
in the corners of the room, or maybe that it takes multiple passes of air through
the filter to be completely scrubbed. Now, you may come to different
conclusions from this than I did, so let's discuss in the comments below,
because as I said, I am not a scientist or an expert, but personally, I took
away two major lessons from this point. First is that I should do everything
I can to prevent air pollution from concentrating in the room in the first
place, for example, by using an air filter like the Nevermore or Bento box,
or just a proper air purifier while doing things like soldering or gluing. And again, a powerful fan really helps to
circulate the air around the room and out the window whenever I'm doing anything
that could significantly pollute the air. Second, I came to the conclusion that
if I plan to do something particularly noxious, such as moving my resin prints
from the printer to the alcohol bath, or soldering, or using the laser, or burning
a clog out of my printer's nozzle, I should be doing those activities at the
end of the day so that there is adequate time for the air quality to rebound before
I'm back in there breathing the air again. And while I once again want to
acknowledge that my methods are far less than scientific, I hope that if
you take away just two points from this video, that should be the second one. Takeaway number four: the air outside
may not be as pure as you think. Now, let's get to the other major
surprise of this whole experience. As I mentioned, I expected to open up the
windows and doors, move the air out of the room using the powerful Dreo circulating
fan, and watch as the PM2.5 reading on my air purifier precipitously fell. But that's not what happened. In fact, I was so confused and frustrated,
I even reached out to Dreo to see if I was doing something wrong with the air
purifier, or maybe I had a defective unit. It was at this point that
Dreo's customer care brought to my attention the now obvious. It's entirely possible, even likely,
that the air outside my workspace is just adding more PM2.5 pollutants. Now look, you might live in a forest, in
rural Colorado, surrounded by nothing but trees, lakes, forests, and chirping birds, but unfortunately, I don't. I live in the city center of Tel
Aviv, which is currently undergoing a massive construction boom. Just within a hundred meter radius of my
studio, there are no less than four major construction projects going on, which
involve knocking down buildings, digging deep underground, pouring concrete,
welding rebar, and tons of other stuff, that result in a lot of dust
and airborne pollutants. And I'm not sure why I
didn't think of this before. Practically every single day there's a
layer of dust on my garden furniture, so thick that I've pretty much given
up on keeping things out there clean. And this was my final big "ah ha" moment. Yes, if you live somewhere where the air
is clean, you can probably rely just on circulation and ventilation alone to move
the bad stuff out and get clean air in. But most of us don't live in
a mystical, enchanted meadow. We live in big cities, full of
pollutants and cars and smog, and the air outside may not be all that
much better than the air inside, at least when it comes to fine particles. So, actionable advice going forward,
I'm still processing exactly what I want to do with all of this information,
but in the interim, I think I've adopted a sort of multi-prong strategy
for cleaning up the air in my studio. First and foremost, I'm going to be a
whole lot more conscientious about air quality as a whole, and I'll be leaving
this Dreo air purifier on auto mode at all times, even when I'm not here, that
it purifies the air automatically based on how polluted it is, without me needing
to intervene or actually be there to breathe in the air if it's polluted. And, so that at a glance, whether
by looking at the machine itself or pulling it up on the smart phone
app in the morning before I plan in to head into the office and start
breathing that air, I can see exactly what kind of air quality awaits me. But beyond that, I think my main
strategy going forward is going to be one of vent, then purify. In other words, rather than shutting all
the doors and windows to keep out the hot, humid air and protect my filament,
I plan on opening up a whole lot more and consistently using Dreo's powerful
air circulation fan to move polluted air out and replace it by way of another
window open on the other side of the studio with less polluted, at least less
polluted with VOCs, air from outside. Then, once I've adequately moved
the most toxic compounds out from whatever activities I was doing,
I'll be once again closing everything up and purifying the air that I've
brought in to remove fine particles. What's more, I'm going to be making a
much more deliberate effort to engage in the worst offenders, things like
laser cutting, sawing, soldering, and gluing towards the end of the day so
that there is adequate time overnight to clear out the air in my studio. Come to think of it, speaking of
overnight, I think I probably need to get one of these in my bedroom as
well because those same particles are following me home where there's even
more construction across the street. But hey, those are just my conclusions
from my admittedly flawed method. I'd love if we could spark up a discussion
about this either in the comments below or on The Next Layer's Discord server
where we already have the hashtag #work-stations channel which is perfect
for discussing topics just like this. I'm sure some of you out there have a
lot to contribute to this discussion, and hopefully I can do a follow up
video as I learn more about air quality because I think it's an important topic
that isn't discussed nearly enough. Really quickly, I do want to once
again give a huge thanks to Dreo for sponsoring this video so I could afford
to devote the time to an important subject like this, even though the YouTube
algorithm probably won't reward it as much as more 3D printed storage stuff. Make sure to check out their awesome
products, particularly their air circulation fans and air purifiers,
using the link in the description. Oh, and of course, thank you
to my Patreon supporters. That's all for this week, but I'll
see all of you on The Next Layer.
