Chamber Heater For Small Resin Printers

This heater allows small machines such as the Elegoo mars to print with engineering resins like Siraya Tech BLU or specialty resins.

Description

Engineering resins require higher than ambient temperature to print with, 25 C is the bare minimum while optimal results require around 30 degrees. There are a couple of solutions on the market today, but all other chamber heaters are too large to fit the standard small printer. Other solutions such as putting a heater mat below the printer or putting a space heater in the room with the printer are extremely slow, taking around an hour or more to get up to temp.

This resin heater can preheat the chamber to 10 C above ambient temperatures in around 12 minutes and reach a max temperature of 15 C over ambient in 45 minutes. It produces around 35 watts of heat and requires nearly no modifications to the printer itself, aside from trimming the rubber gasket of the enclosure.

This is an experimental device that is offered without warranty and we are not responsible for any damage that could be caused by the creation or usage of this device.

Details

The device uses 120 C PTC heater elements for safety and to prevent overheating. The 3D printed parts are printed with a 50/50 mix of Blu and Sculpt by Siraya Tech to give it both strength and high-temperature resistance.

The W1209 is used for precise temperature control and according to the probe on my multimeter, it maintains the chamber to around +/- 1 C of the set temperature.

This project is shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International.

KIT:

A kit containing all the needed parts will be offered next week on Amazon. Basic soldering and assembly skills are required to assemble the kit.

ASSEMBLY INSTRUCTIONS ARE A ROUGH DRAFT AND WILL BE UPDATED FOR CLARITY WITH PICTURES

Assembly Instructions:

This is my first youtube video, so please excuse the weird crop and the occasional out-of-frame shot.

https://youtu.be/RxjPgmbQe90

Or alternatively use these:

1. Scew in 3 of the 55mm screws into the bottom row of holes on base unit

2. Install each PTC heater units by resting it on the bottom screw then inserting the screw above it to secure it in. Repeat for each heater unit

3. Thread the wires through the gap in the screw and out the rear top of the unit

4. Slide the fan into the base of the unit and slide the wires through the gap behind the PTC heaters

5. Insert the thermistor into the slot in the base, a 4mm thermistor should be used, larger ones will not fit. Thread the wires through the back

6. Solder a connection between the two innermost terminals of the W1209 module

7. Trim the thermistor leads and solder them to the back of W1209 module (upper right corner)

8. Screw the thread the 5.5mm jack into the plug adapter, then screw that into the side of the base.

9. thread the power cables through the notch in the rear of the base unit

10. Trim and strip all wires, insert 3 of the PTC leads into the negative terminal, and 3 into the terminal at the farthest left location(this is controlled by the relay). Solder might be required to join all the wires together

11. Insert in the front mesh and screw in using the two side screws

12. Press W1209 into the PCB case, screw the PCB case into the base, and fasten the backer in with the 20 and 24mm screws

13. Plug the device into the wall and check that the heater is working correctly

14. Apply the thin strips of adhesive foam to the bottom of the base

15. Install the finished unit into the rear left of the printer

16. Mark where the plug adapter hits the rubber gasket and trim the rubber gasket at that location

17. Congratulations!!! You have the heater unit installed, temperatures can be set by clicking set, then the + or - buttons!

Files

PCBCase5.stl

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 15.49 MB - 03/30/2021 at 19:06

Download

PlugAdapterTextured.stl

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 4.46 MB - 03/30/2021 at 19:05

Download

MeshTextuedd2.stl

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 18.12 MB - 03/30/2021 at 19:01

Download

HeaterBaseV17 Textured.stl

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 18.12 MB - 03/30/2021 at 19:01

Download

PCB Backer9.stl

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 4.86 MB - 03/30/2021 at 19:01

Download

Components

3 × PTC Heater With 120 C Max Temp

1 × W1209 Temperature Controller

6 × 55 mm Button Head Screws

2 × 20 mm Button Head Screws

2 × 24 mm Button Head Screws

Build Instructions

Collapse

Assembly Video

This is my first youtube video, so please excuse the weird crop and the occasional out-of-frame shot.

https://youtu.be/RxjPgmbQe90

Discussions

Flatten the Skyline wrote 10/04/2021 at 08:47

Is there a specific reason the base surfaces have such a wrinkled texture? Printing them in ABS...

Are you sure? yes | no

vdaymystery wrote 04/04/2021 at 12:13

What material did you use for the 3D parts Grant? (sorry if I missed that somewhere in the description)

Are you sure? yes | no

Grant wrote 04/05/2021 at 16:06

Yeah, I used a 50/50 blend of Siraya Tech Blu and sculpt. It might work with some abs like resins because of the low temperature of the PTC heaters, but that has yet to be tried. I think standard resins won't work at all because they could shatter when the screws go in.

Are you sure? yes | no

vdaymystery wrote 04/05/2021 at 23:16

Thx Grant.
I may have a try on one of my fdm printers while I wait for parts to arrive. See how it works out

Are you sure? yes | no

Grant wrote 04/05/2021 at 23:50

Let me know if you want me to post the source files in case you need to adapt them to print off of the FDM machine.

Are you sure? yes | no

vdaymystery wrote 04/18/2021 at 12:22

That would be very useful Grant. TIA

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Andrew Riley wrote 04/03/2021 at 19:58

Cool project but I'm trying to work out why you are using individual PTCs when you can buy a triple 120C PTC complete with 60mm fan. In fact, there are many designs for resin chamber heaters that use this setup. I have built one of these myself: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3965658

Are you sure? yes | no

Grant wrote 04/04/2021 at 04:30

The main reasons are safety, cost, and ease of use, I saw that one but I believe it is a 220C PTC heater which is a little too close to the autoignition point pure isopropyl and any unknown flammable fumes coming from the resin for my comfort level. This one is around $20 cheaper to build because it runs off of a 5 amp power supply instead of needing a 10 amp one, and these heater units + fan can be had for around $10 instead of $25 for the 100 watt heater. Finally, this one is attached to the base instead of the cover, so you don't need to worry about unplugging it when you take the cover off then plugging it back in when you place the cover back on (its handy if you're like me and run multiple prints and sometimes forget to plug things back in).

Are you sure? yes | no

vdaymystery wrote 04/02/2021 at 18:29

Love to see a picture or two showing the setup.
Can you let folk see the actual heaters you used. The ones I am aware of would be far too big I think. Thanks.
Keep up the good work Grant

Are you sure? yes | no

Grant wrote 04/02/2021 at 21:48

Thanks! I'm putting together a setup video that should help and I'll add in pictures as well.

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vdaymystery wrote 04/03/2021 at 11:10

Great. Thx

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Grant wrote 04/04/2021 at 04:18

I just updated the details with the assembly video

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vdaymystery wrote 04/04/2021 at 12:12

Thx

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mhkaufman wrote 04/01/2021 at 23:04

Could you post a link to the PTC heater you used?

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vdaymystery wrote 04/02/2021 at 18:29

Yes, that would be really helpful. Thx.

Are you sure? yes | no

Grant wrote 04/02/2021 at 21:46

I just responded to the OP commenter with the links, lmk if you want any more sources.

Are you sure? yes | no

Grant wrote 04/02/2021 at 21:46

Yeah, in my earlier version I used two of these and it works well: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07GBS38SW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 they draw about 1.5 amps each. If you just fill the front two slots it should work well.

For the kits that I'm putting together, I used these:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001605653538.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.6bbb4c4dWVEtOF but when I got them in I measured that they only draw about 1 amp each so I moved to I added in the extra heater behind the previous two

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Dan Maloney wrote 04/01/2021 at 17:32

That's interesting, I didn't know that some resins required heating.

Can you clarify where the heaters are relative to the resin tank? It's not clear to me from the photos.

Are you sure? yes | no

Grant wrote 04/01/2021 at 17:39

They are roughly at the same level as the resin tank, but the fan underneath blows the hot air up into the chamber instead of conducting it directly into the resin tank. The goal of this is to provide more consistent heating and not produce any hot spots in the tank.

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Chamber Heater For Small Resin Printers

Description

Details