After learning about the emissions of PLA I built this “Chamber” for my Ultimaker.
How do you think this will affect print quality? positively or negatively?
Used “FrostKing” insulation plastic intended for windows.
M3 Screws and Rubbermaid “roughneck” plastic container
Temperature at the bottom is about 20C at the top around 40-50C
If anyone wants it I will post the files for the little legs.
What about the emissions of PLA?
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.5b04983
I dont have kids lol
This doesn’t accomplish anything, the particles just build up inside the enclosure and enter the room when you go to take a part out, or leak out over time if you don’t. The real solution is a negative pressure enclosure ducted to the outdoors.
I hope the particles will fall down and will be able to be wiped up or swept up with a vacum, vent to the outside is not an option for me at this moment.
Tim, what about some sort of HEPA filter? are they fine enoth?
Hepa filters aren’t fine enough. If you try to vacuum anything your just going to blow the UFPs around your house making the problem worse.
If this seriously concerns you, you may want to look at how your foods cooked too. Teflon, charcoal grills, broilers and other methods release many of the same particles in much greater quantities.
So what did you learn about health risks of PLA emissions?
@Ross_Bagley maybe water"filter" would be the best choice.
Their are two types and both can be really easy build the diy way.
A)
a staple of many parallel plates with a little bit distance between them
The water(with help of a little bit surfaceactive substance added) runs down on their surface.
B) the spray method
In its cheapest form its a tunnel standing like tower on the upper side you spray water in it with the help of nozzles and from below your air would enter.
If activated carbon works then adapt one of these:
I also made a similar box for my 3D printer, I am planning to use a active carbon filter like for soldering fume extractors. I also hope the heat will be more homogenous inside
I strongly suspect that the Ultra-fine Particles (UFP) are not a health concern.
The links in the study do not show any causal relationship, merely a ‘potential’ problem.
UFPs have not been studied much, and the studies to date are not conclusive of any health effects - the evidence for UFPs actually causing health problems is very weak thus-far.
Thus UFPs at the levels that PLA filament emits have not been demonstrated to be a concern for human health.
On the other hand, the gasses emitted by ABS are know to be serious concern, in particular cyanide, emitted at around the same level as smoking a cigarette. I would definitely ventilate well if I was printing with ABS.
Employee of Ultimaker here. We recently had a company do measurements for us in our testing room. 30 printers in a small room.
Biggest thing they found that there was a bit of a shortage of O2 and too much CO2. Because the ventilation was not working properly. No other health hazards.
If you have ventilation in your house/building/room. Which you should have anyhow (for CO2 buildup prevention). You’ll be fine.
Also, look up how many fine particles burning a candle makes.
@Kai_Laborenz PLA is made from lactid acid which exists in many forms in your everyday life. It can be found in milk, tomato juice and beer. Your yoghurt pot is probably made from PLA too. PLA is used as a material for implants, as an absorbable suture material and for wrinkle treatment. I think the 4-5µg per minute are relatively harmless then. As long as you don’t live in the same small room as your 3d printer and don’t print 24/7 and don’t ventilate, there seems to be no harm for you.
@Folke_Schwinning
Thats why I was asking. Reading the study I couldn’t find any hints on PLA beeing problematic.
UFPs are known to be emitted when most things char or combust, but this is a very long way from saying that UFPs by themselves are a problem for human health. Charring and combustion can also emit toxic and carcinogenic substances, like the hydrogen-cyanide gas emitted in small amounts when ABS is used for printing.
But PLA does not emit any toxins or carcinogens during printing. So even though it does emit low levels of UFPs, there is no evidence of health issues from that alone.
It’s a bit like the dreaded Dihydrogen Monoxide *, which is a significant component of acid rain, has been found in medical biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors, is known to corrode and oxidize most metals, can cause burns in its solid state, and contributes significantly to soil erosion.
Very insigtfull, thanks. I already had an enclosure made before the study was published, just decided make a cleaner looking solution, I will deffinetly look into the carbon filter.
So my other question is how about the print quality?
Especially layer adheration?
I use the printer to prototype and surface finish isn’t really much of concern.
Sebastian Since PLA absorbs water, the water filter would affect print quality too much, I already have a desiccant box installed by the spool to maintain the area as dry as possible.
Just finished up designing a fairly compact ABS HEPA/CARBON air scrubber. I should be releasing the designs this week (my twitter feed has some air flow results from my testing).
The one thing that I’ve discovered is it’s fairly hard to ‘scrub’ the air from the bottom of a printer, but equally difficult pulling from the top of an enclosure using small axial fans. The amount of air that seems to be needed is hard to pull through carbon pellets. I posted a video using a Delta 12v high pressure fan to pull air through a Neiko R-621 respirator filter… It just doesn’t work well unless you don’t mind the MASSIVE amount of noise.
Robert, I was also thinking of putting a layer of silica for water removal as well. any thoughts on that?
Nathan, the enclosure is not purely for containing the particles. It also reduces sound, contains heat (reducing power consumption), protects the printer from dust and water, even heat prevents warping of large parts. Only concern I have is degraded cooling and large overhangs.
