Has anyone out there tried printing in a pressurized room? How about a low pressure area like on top of a mountain?
Thats a good question. When the training center next door to me is done with their renovation I’ll have to try and talk them into letting me use their altitude chamber. They can simulate K2 altitude in there for pilot training.
What effects would there be? All I can think of is some unusual behavior by the plastic. Stuff like plasticisers burning off more, but I doubt even that would happen.
Due to the less dense air, less heat will be dissipated by the plastic after extrusion and hot end may behave differently.
I bet clear filaments would print out more clear if they were printed in a near vacuum, but any environment safe to inhabit would probably show little difference. @Wylie_Hilliard has a good point about the difference in cooling properties, but again the effects probably won’t be significant as long as the environment is habitable.
Resulting plastic density and warping may change too.
At low pressure, your electronics may overheat, that’s a common consideration when doing electronics packaging. I suppose the converse is true at high pressure, I.e. printed parts may cool faster due to denser air. But I’m wondering about the partial pressures of any of the volatiles in the plastics… Take water vapor for instance. At low pressure, air can take more vapor into solution. At high pressure, the water vapor rains out, as the capacity that the air can carry per volume is reduced. I’m not sure how this works with other liquid/vapor combinations as water behavior is easily tracked in psychometric charts.