Testing my printers for fire hazards - results all over the place...

hello there so the last two videos I did were mostly about 3d printer safety both in what you can do hardware wise like using good components strain relief etc to cut down on the risk of you know causing a fire with these machines but also on how you can configure your thermos so the software that runs these machines to detect when something goes wrong and also take countermeasures to of course the extent that these machines can do something about for example be hot and overheating MOSFET failing or a cable burning down but I feel like I should still go through my personal stash of 3d printers and test them I'm not gonna be testing every single one because some of them I've modest heavily like the load spot mini which is not running the original load spot family but has one on there that's running actually a prototype III Aero Titan extruder so I just think that's not gonna be a fair comparison but most of these other machines are mostly stock so I've not updated the firmware on many of these for example the hobbyking mini fabricator the init a 8i i've not assembled the printer yet that is still the firmware that you know is out there in the wild the most this is not running a community modified firmware where those chicks might be enabled this is still rockin what people get out of the box and let's face it that's what people are gonna be using most of the time so I'm gonna be going through and be testing for min temp max temp and thermal runaway protection let's just go through those again before we start min temp means you have no thermistor connection so your thermistor wire broke max temp is either the opposite of that so the thermistor for the hot and shorting out or actually the hot and or heated bed if your printer has one getting over the maximum safe temperatures the printer should shut off any heaters in either case and then thermal runaway protection is basically protecting against the thermistor falling out of the hot end or just reading a wrong fixed value and that is going to protect against the 3d printer trying to heat up the hot end but not reading back the actual temperature increase it's causing so those are the three safety features that these 3d printers could have enabled I'm gonna be checking each one for all three let's get started this video is sponsored by Squarespace stick around till the end or jump right to the conclusion of this video a 24 minute mark to learn more about them and for discount code so this is the machine that I want to start with this is obviously the original Prusa i3 mark 3 by Joseph Prussia and this one I know has all these safety features enabled but they've actually put a bit of extra effort in and are checking for a few more plausibility things so I just want to start out by showing you what is possible with today's hardware and software you gotta remember this is still running or at the old 8-bit atmega board this is not running some fancy-pants 32-bit controller this is you know somewhat similar to what you'd find on any other machine ok so set up a second camera right here that is just showing you the LCD screen and you'll be able to see the live feedback from the screen while I miss with the electronic spec here so in the firmware configuration video I've already shown what the push on mark 3 is gonna do but here's a little dirty secret for you that was actually edited down because the mark 3 behaves somewhat differently to stock Marlin it's running their own modified version of Marlin so it doesn't quite behave exactly like another 3d printer would with a default Marlin firmware so starting out right here you can see it's somewhat cool down here it has 15 degrees roughly but because it's warm outside I can still wear shorts and a t-shirt this is actually quite nice so I'm just gonna start out by shorting out the thermistor which should trigger a max temp error so just keep an eye on that temperature there you go 739 degrees and which you actually cannot hear okay it's it's beeping yes okay that is actually that is actually super annoying but let me actually show you one more thing so if we actually hone in on the hot Android here we have the part cooling fan which blows over your part and your cooling fan which blows over the hot and cooling area so let's just keep those in view while they're short out the thermistor again they go so both of these are spinning up so both the part cooling one second ah that's actually quite loud so both of these fans were spinning up both the part cooling fan and the hot end cooling fan and we're spinning up to full blast yes they're not really loudly this is a genuine nock to a fan and this is also one that's running relatively slow but the airflow still is enough to keep the hot in that temperature so that was actually a flaw in the earlier pressure machines that they then fixed with software that if you are using your part cooling fan on full blast you're hot and would actually not exceed two hundred and thirty degrees Celsius so you couldn't print PLA in a super high temperature and use the part cooling fan at full blast now they are using that effect right now to keep that hot and at a safe temperature so even if the MOSFET on the board which rode out or in some other way the heater cartridge will be connected straight to the input power so the printer has no way to shut that off it can still keep the hot in there 230 degrees Celsius which is safe for any filament and for the printer itself so unless you have a double fault which you're typically not engineering for except if you're doing like automotive or military or whatever this is so unlikely that it's gonna meet every single safety specification there is for this sort of a machine so that is pretty well done all right okay let's move on to min temp which is just straight up unplugging the thermistor let's see if I can get it with my fingers there we go so you can see that the reported temperature immediately drops to zero degrees Celsius on the hot end but the mark three is not immediately triggering min temp because it's not heating it's not putting power into the hotend so let's try actually heating up the hot in and giving it some juice interesting ah minton there we go okay it triggered minton that was weird I might have slightly interfered with the display cables here I don't know but it triggered min time perfect and lastly it's checked for thermal runaway protection now there are these two different modes where either it monitors the temperature while heating up and then also monitors what's a temperature that it's not dropping and I'm only going to test for the heater portion of that so let's actually go in here before we unplug anything we set this temperatures there we go and set it to preheat PLA that's two and a fifty degrees and let's unplug the heater coverage there we go so you can still see it heating up slightly but that is just the thermal energy inside the heart and then just got before we unplug the heater cartridge and that's slowly making its way to the thermistor so right about now of 43 degrees Celsius yeah that's that's where it's gonna stay and it should start dropping now there we go 42 and it's definitely not going to rise again because it is not getting any power so let's see when this triggers and there we go well I'm getting tools to disassemble to maker it through the preheat error and obviously this is not heated up this is 29 degrees Celsius all good all protected against very nice let's move on all right next up the Omega 3 so the ultimate electronics are actually on the bottom right here and that's the Box flowing out all right let's see yeah I mean looking at the at the cables coming out back here this right here this must be the extruder but I have no idea what the pinout is let's see can I actually test this at the tool head itself not really because this is all this is all encased in plastic but yeah it looks like I have no way of testing this except for actually digging in through the schematics I'm hoping that is published now because this is supposed to be an open-source machine I guess if you guys know the old maker 3 has any of these checks disabled I would assume it does not have that disabled but you never know you never know just let me know in the comments down below oh yeah this is this is way harder than I expected with the olds maker 3 let's move on to some machines where I actually know what I'm doing like this you're 10 now the C are 10 I've already shown some bits of this in the firmer configuration video but let's actually test those things out again mint and Maxim NT thermo run away protection and just see what happens first of all I must say that I actually do like the way that the sear 10 electronics compartment is built it's very clean and very organized in there so the only problem is that we're working on the electronics board in here but the LCD screen is right there so now weird of warning here this is working on open 230 volts do not try this at home I'm an engineer I know what I'm doing trust me most of these connectors are insulated but there are a few that are just bare open 230 volts so just yeah don't don't use a printer that is open that has exposed high voltage just close it up before you plug anything in okay fans are going camera criolla t3 3d ready nice okay let's see there is one connected as b'moth next 10 bed immediately cool that's good and then the hotend next time immediately there was a bit of a sparks I'm not sure how much resistance that has or it might just be a reflection I'm not sure but the picture is still displaying correctly yes it is 16 degrees so it's unplug the thermistor and we immediately getting minton that is perfect you know for the piece there is a stones let's check the thermal runaway protection umm screwdriver there you go no fix your part of the software I'm doing stuff it doesn't need to be plugged in heater wire is coming out that is just straight-up disconnected control temperature nozzle and let's just crank it up to something realistic 229 perfect now this machine of course in this case is not actually heating up in the fail mode this would be heating up but the printer wouldn't be registering it it's the exact same thing that the printer will be reading so I'm gonna give this two minutes to trigger now within two minutes any regular hotter than this one as well will be an operating temperature I don't know how long the pressure took it did take a while but definitely way less than two minutes so that is kind of a safe timeframe now we're at 1 minute 30 roughly and it's not triggered yet now that means it will heat up uncontrollably if your thermistor is not connected it will heat up as far as it gets but I guess the redeeming factor in this case is that the hot end cooling fan is not very well constrained so if you look into this side you can actually see it's not just blowing over the heat sink which is poking out up here but it's blowing just over the entire hot and so this fan is not thermally controlled like on some other printers that you know dudes in a smart way we're at 50 degrees typically the hot and cooling fan kicks on this is just why it's straight to 12 volts so this will limit the maximum temperature that the hotting can get up to which I guess is better than nothing but I mean just to be clear the thermal runaway feature is disabled this will heat uncontrollably it's just that in case the fans so runs and it will tip we'll give you running because as long as there's power this fan is powered it's very unlikely it's actually going to destroy anything especially because this thing is mostly metal and there's nothing that could actually burn except for this nylons leaving and cause a fire in the end so thermal runaway protection most definitely is turned off in the Sierra 10 okay next why don't we move on to the Syrah 10 wannabe to the a net e 10 I mean this is very much built exactly to look like a Syrah 10 that's the entire purpose of this machine if you might be looking for Co 10 you see this thing you're like hey that looks just like it but let's be honest ee 10 just really doesn't live up to the Sierra 10 at all yeah so let's see how well this one does when it comes to destroying itself okay there we go oh look it's the same boy yes sir a8 let me give you guys a view of what it looks like in here the boy definitely is a lot smaller but just the wiring job in here is a whole different league I'll have to take through this give me a second I believe the et connector is extruder temperature that makes sense now one thing to note as well is that the entire high voltage wiring right back here with the input and switch and everything is very crudely soldered and completely exposed so by the way also they're using red and black for 230 volts which is not to code let's put it like that let's start out where do it touch this thing it's here extruder thermistor let's short that out that is max temp cool 3d printer don't think they could have made it any more generic it's disconnect et Minton immediately that is good and unplug end that looks like heater wires and then she preheated preheat P let's just do the entire thing 17 degrees that should not increase because the heater is physically disconnected interestingly here that both the part cooling fan and the hot and cooling fan are spinning at full speed I don't know why there are two fan connectors in here I'm not sure if this is using one of these nodes so this electronics cooling fan is wired or these two fans are wide straight to the power supply there are two outputs on the board which are looks like they have MOSFETs for them so I'm not sure why these two are just straight up spinning non-stop yeah and I'm not gonna assume anything is intentional in this machine but that might just be a unintentional safety feature in the case of the n88 same thing I'm gonna give it two minutes to trigger the thermal runaway protection and at that point we're just gonna cancel the test and move on yeah okay two minutes are over this is not triggering the thermal runaway protection again it's it's a safety feature that they say they could be enabled but with the fans going all the time I don't know why these are just going all the time I know they should be switched I feel like with these going all the time I don't think this is actually gonna you know physically have the option to overheat so another point right there so the a8 board is actually pretty much the same that's in here so what I'm gonna be doing is I'll just be wiring in the n8a eight board into the case of the e 10 it's all the same connections most stuff just plugs straight in it's just two peas do you no fuss and that way we can also test the a eighth power hardened thermistor thermistor okay that should be it let's see if this actually powers up no fans oh yeah we how about a power cord oh wait does the does the a8 have it yeah does the a8 have a different style of a LCD oh he does front to face that's okay we're getting 15 degrees on the tool hit and on the bed so we can just control it through the pronterface interface so let's see this should also spew out errors if you get any well it's disconnected bed okay and it's good it's immediately going into temperature sensor defect that is good let's try the same with the extruder temp sensor defect heated bed working perfect so that is good and lastly let's check for the thermal runaway by disconnecting the heater actually I never needed to have the heater connected and let's try and set a temperature of like 210 so on the board two LEDs just went on two red ones one here and one there so it is trying to heat up but of course it's not reading back a temperature increase I'm gonna do the same thing I'm gonna give it two minutes to trigger the safety check and if it doesn't trigger within that time we can very safely assume that the thermal runaway protection is disabled on the a8 which I guess we kind of know already because the a8 is the one that likes to burn down when the thermostat falls out of hardened and that's the exact case that this is trying to protect against okay so it's been at least two minutes and nothing has triggered on the eight it's still sending back okay for just a periodic temperature checks that pronterface is sending out so yeah the a eight does not have that safety check now where's on the e10 you have a very metal heavy bill that has very few plastic parts da it has mostly plastic parts so again there's a lot more fuel and I also don't know if on the a8 configuration the fans are spinning all the time the part cooling and the hot and cooling fan which would kind of mitigate the issue but yeah definitely if you're running an a8 to enable those chicks kind of important you know all right let's get this this connected before I shot myself bye-bye you turn our head let's try this one this is the hobbyking fabricator mini this is the original one not the newer version two built after the tiny boy and yeah it's a very basic printer actually it does not have a part cooling fan like that's I think that the biggest limitation which I did mention the review it does have an e3d v6 clone so it does have that fan on the heatsink but otherwise you know it's an old plastic construction and yeah let's just see what this one does so while my computer is rebooting we can take a look at the hardware that's in here so this is actually an MKS base V 1.3 so it's a relatively large board for a really tiny printer this is the thermistor and then we have a output this right here this is the here cartridge wires in a screw terminal so that's pretty good but let's check if these safety features are enabled on this one so keep an eye on the console here and I'm just going to disconnect the thermistor that should throw a mint temp immediately it does not ok it's showing negative 20 degrees right here let's see what happens if we try to heat this up Wow Wow okay nothing there's okay I don't have the power connector that's it I guess a good thing okay Heating failed so that's really interesting it is throwing the heating failed error which means the thermal runaway protection is enabled which is I guess the most complex of safety tricks but it did not throw a mint Emperor which is again a super easy way to check for just the presence of a temperature sensor so that is very interesting okay quick reset let's actually do something else in short out the thermistor I don't know how well you can see that but it should be it should be somewhat legible let's short out the thermistor input right here with just some tweezers 892 degrees okay it's this a 24 volt system I don't know but I think I can hear the fan spinning up on the hot and so that's temperature activated but it's at eight hundred ninety-two degrees and it's not doing anything it's not disabling anything it's not you know throwing an error so you could just as well use the printer as is which is quite these scary oversight okay so so what can we make of this like it has the most basic safety checks this M which is min time and Max them completely off like it doesn't care at all yet it does have the thermal runaway protection abled which is kind of puzzling to me I know I believe at the time this was released midterm and maximum were enabled by default and the thermal runaway protection was disabled so they must have they must have done that intentionally I have no idea why though Wow okay so if you're using the hobbyking mini fabricator one with the acrylic frame definitely try and update the firmware and enable beam intended Maxim it's just I mean there's there's literally no downside like why would your heart and ever be at negative 20 or positive 893 degrees Celsius like those are 100% unrealistic values and the firm we should at least you know throw an error and say hey something is wrong here so Wow okay unexpected I feel like we should at least be testing this Sigma since we skipped old maker 3 and I think the Sigma is kind of a closest thing to it Sigma man this is a beast of a machine okay so the electronics are in the bottom compartment here I don't know if I make sure gonna be able to get it those so I'm just gonna try and open up the hotend shroud right here so that's actually what is connecting the actual Haughton because these are relatively easy to swap ok so that's what that looks like there's this four pin connector that just plugs into this little board right at the back of the X carriage right here now it only disconnects the thermistor wires which are the two white ones at the same time it disconnects the heater cartridge but I think I can just take out the wires from this connector and just plug in the semister to test the runaway protections so let's get at that so we do have an LCD screen which should make this entire thing relatively easy oh yeah the purple blue is back that is so characteristic for the Sigma ok 14 degrees let's just unplug the hot end in its entirety so this is lift hardened remember this is still running an 8 bit firmer so this is running Marlin 0 degrees let's see so it's not immediately like screaming at me or anything let's try and heat this up how does this work lefteris are not detected cool it's even got a little animation going nice ok tappy tappy tab so yeah right extruder this one right here is perfectly working left one is disabled since it is not detecting a thermistor cool let's try the other use case of a thermistor short by just shorting out bridging out the thermistor wires in the back like so yeah I hear the hot end fan coming up and it's a 357 degrees Celsius it's showing that let's try to heat it up lift thermistor not detected okay so it's throwing the same error but it's max temp that's happening here 357 if I take off my tweezers we drop right back down to 14 so that is good and lastly testing for the heating failed for the thermal runaway perfect so let's plug this back in so the heater is disconnected right here there you go Circle Circle 215 degrees let's see how long it takes it to realize that something is wrong okay I'm putting two minutes on the clock yeah no sorry okay two minutes are over and it's still happily trying to heat so this guy unfortunately also has thermal protection disabled again it's a metal shroud yeah but yes it should be on it should be on it's not that hard yeah new shirt because this is actually day three of me shooting and editing this video is it was quite the Beast okay so what's our takeaway here well I guess first of all which shouldn't be a surprise at all is that most machines and most manufacturers are gonna use whatever any Marlin firmware if the EZ Marlin is gonna give them as a default so that means most machines have minton and max temp enabled which is good which is enabled by default but they're gonna have the thermal runaway protection disables to some extent I feel like the Marlin deaths should have enabled that feature way way earlier back when it was still like unstable and then testing I just feel like thermal runaway protection is such an essential feature to keep your machine safe that it would be better to have a few false positives where your printer stops even though nothing is wrong and they have those cases where it's not detected and a printer actually catches on fire what's interesting is that the hobbyking fabricated mini is actually the exact reverse of that so it has the runaway protection enabled but max temp and min 10 disabled now to a certain extent that's good but the problem here is you could just set it to 2,000 degrees Celsius and it would actually he tried to heat up that far it would never stop hitting until it reaches that temperature and at that point like the heater block is gonna melt off so that's not a good way either you really need both those features enabled but since so many printers actually have the thermal runaway protection disabled with their original firmware I would heavily advise you to update to at least a newer version from the manufacturer and test for that to be enabled or use some sort of community firmware that has those features enabled or where you can enable them yourself again I did make a video on how to do that it's super simple if you have the firm resources already now for a few printers there is that redeeming factor kind of where they have the part cooling fan and the hot and cooling fan just always enabled so those keep the hot end from actually reaching dangerous temperatures in the first place I'm not sure if that's intentional or if that's just lazy either way it does make the printer actually a bit safer but it's more of a crutch than a real solution to the issue of these things overheating and maybe this is giving you a bit of perspective to why I think the pressure is doing such a great job with very development efforts right now because they're not just taking these stock model and firmware like everyone else and using it without really configuring it for the machines but they've actually developed their firmware to be better than what you can get off-the-shelf right now and because they're doing that it is slowly being rolled back into the Marlin firmware that is more widely compatible with more machines and I think they're over-temperature handling is by far the best right now for example the thing where it turns on the particle in fan to full blast when it detects an over temperature situation that's just a really smart feature and it doesn't even require any special hardware it's just you know setting it up right and putting that development effort into it now if you guys have tested your own printers by these methods and check them into maximum thermal runaway protection please let me know what the results are especially like that that ultimately that I couldn't test because I don't have the pin out at hand let me know in the comments below what your results are and whether or not you're actually doing anything about it whether you're just gonna like whatever it's it's gonna be fine or whether you're actually updating your firmware to be a bit safer in that regard also if you have questions on this topic I would recommend the community forum and discuss that comes through the other org that's the forum that I set up to be an open place for discussion not really attached to this channel but just being in the same spirit of encouraging a constructive discussion right over there and before we go today a big shout out to today's sponsor Squarespace Squarespace is the easy way to get yourself seen on the Internet whether you're creating an online store or creating a portfolio for work online Squarespace lets you create the website that is right for your needs they will take care of the entire text backend for you I can actually sing a song about that my website runs on WordPress still and it's just a beast to maintain so on Squarespace there's nothing to update it Sall patch ever they will take care of that for you and the nice thing is you can just open up your browser pick any of their award-winning themes and your own content and that's it like it's gonna look good on a phone on a big desktop monitor and anything so go to squarespace.com slash sonora now to get a free trial and a 10% discount on your first purchase so as always thank you for watching I hope this video was helpful to you and you learn what Printers typically tend to do these days get subscribed if you want to see more videos like it or support this channel right over on patreon and also big thanks to all the patrons that are already supporting this channel and making it possible for me to run this full-time yeah thank you and I'll see you in the next one you

Channel: Made with Layers (Thomas Sanladerer)

Views: 106,578

Keywords: 3D printing, Tom's, 3D printer, RepRap, guide, Fire, Safety, Testing, Review, Firmware, Hotend, Configuration, Danger

Id: ckQ9UWlmdVA

Length: 28min 40sec (1720 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 30 2018