Reading through a previously posted article about another Anet A8 fire, I found this comment. This guy clearly has safety in mind but I’m sure there are plenty of idiots that don’t. If you are new to printing or just aren’t aware of potential risks, do some research. Learn how to prevent your house from burning down. You can take some of the steps this guy has but you can also do things like installing mosfets to reduce the load on your board. Make sure you have adequate cooling. Make sure your PSU is rated above what the printer can draw. Replace any crappy or thin wires. Make sure the screws that hold wires in place are tight! Loose screws will incorporate more resistance than your printer was designed to handle and can start fires. There are so many ways to help prevent fires. Everyone be safe! If any of the long time vets here have any additional suggestions on how to be safe, make sure to comment!
Personal safety is the highest priority in any activity .
Blaming the end user for crappy and unsafe design. These products should be taken off the shelf. They’re being sold a finished good, the manufacturer is liable. Yes there are steps that people should take to reduce their own risk, but that doesn’t make up for negligence on the manufacturers end.
You think the manufacturer even gives warnings and tips on how to use it safely? A stupid note that says “do not use unattended” doesn’t solve the problem or the poor engineering.
And we need to get to the point where you can run them unattended. I don’t expect a paper printer to catch fire in my home, why should my 3d printers?
@Stephanie_A this is true. However, many people buy these cheap printers from over seas and the U.S. government isn’t going to go after a small company that is making 3D printers in another country. People just want to be able to get into printing but don’t have a ton of extra cash to get a nice printer.
@Nathan_Walkner many wouldn’t leave a non anet A8 unattended either
@Nathan_Walkner okay, like… Step back from an anet A8 for example. Would you leave a 3d printer unattended?
@Justin_Nesselrotte you mean like we leave toaster ovens and table saws and gasoline pumps unattended while they’re running?
What? You don’t do that? Hmm.
There are multiple issues here.
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Some folks at Anet need to go to jail. Not even exaggerating. It’s only a matter of time before somebody dies. And Anet is just one of many companies building flagrantly-dangerous products with known design flaws (like under-rated connectors) that know they’re more or less immune from legal action because they’re on the other side of the world.
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The ENTIRE PROCESS of FFF printing is inherently hazard-prone. These filaments have as much combustion energy per kg as gasoline. And we’re pumping this flammable plastic through a machine with multiple high-power-density heating elements, lots of moving parts, vibration, and unprofessional software development. What part of that sounds like a good idea?
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Hobbyists should not be dealing with >10A circuits, ever, it’s just outside the range of what the average human understands from a risk and engineering standpoint. We don’t let untrained people work on 15A household circuits. You can’t just bodge some random parts together and expect it to carry 10-20 amps safely.
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FFF is too slow to reasonably complete all prints with user attendance. It’s unrealistic for the printing technology. Until you fix that, every printer will have to be instrumented and fused out the wazoo, and nobody is willing to pay for that.
So, simple facts here… given the combination of constraints we’re facing… irresponsible vendors immune to lawsuits, unqualified users, process is inherently hazardous, but also too slow to properly monitor. What’s the solution? Sorry, this is going to piss off some people, but we need REGULATION. It should be illegal to sell an unsafe printer in the developed world. Shut off the supply and penalize vendors.
You can’t help the people who build their own unsafe printer, but the tens of thousands of Facebook 3D Printing yahoos encouraging each other to buy junk need to be protected from their own ignorance before somebody dies.
If a manual for a consumer electronics device states: “do not use unattended, product has a tendency to burst into flames due to lack of safety features and proper wiring/connectors.” Then perhaps you shouldn’t be selling the product.
The only warning should be: “check connectors and wiring before each use, excess buildup or on nozzle or improper use may result in fire.”
No different than a toaster or a soldering iron.
Can someone go back and read my responses? Because for some reason the responses to me in this thread are making it sound like I support the safety ratings of an anet A8.
Not all that safe, I bet he still prints in an oxygen environment. You only need heat fuel and oxygen for a fire. LOL
Just buying from overseas bypasses safety regulations. I think selling kits also bypasses safety regulations too. There’s a lot of bad practices going around and some of these machines are excessively unsafe.
But even Smoothieware didn’t have runaway detection until a couple years ago, then they added it and a raft of other safety features. A year before that, Marlin had defaulted to “runaway detection off” apparently for misguided policy reasons.