I should have built this thing from the word go. I ran this printer for almost a year on my desk right next to my computer. But it was loud and smelly and the high traffic area played havoc on print quality and caused a lot of warping.
Now that it’s tucked away in a back room suspended in a corner by French cleats and sitting directly on top of dense foam and a big ass paver it is merely “audible” but certainly ignorable. There’s also no more headaches from the smell, and my print quality has never been better.
Do yourself and your printer a favor and get an enclosure sorted out asap.
To avoid confusing newcomers: For anyone getting into 3D printing it’s much more space efficient to just get an enclosed printer and not having to deal with a built enclosure. Like the new Prusa core one.
This is still one of the best looking and well integrated solutions I’ve seen for external enclosures though.
And please, don’t print right next to where you sit all day. Proper ventilation and/or filtering is important, even for safer materials like PLA.
I’m wanting to build one in my office, but I also want to print in some of the more nasty filaments (ABS/ASA). Do you have any recommendations or suggestions for ventilation?
Like other folks are saying, a good carbon filter should do you right. My enclosure is mounted on an exterior wall so Im currently thinking long term that I’m going to try to vent mine out through the soffit.
Mine will be on an exterior wall, so venting is an absolute possibility. With that though, I’m unsure how much air to move… my printer is enclosed, so drafts and warping aren’t as big a concern; just VOC dispersal and safety. I don’t need to catch a lung full of stage four because I wanted to print some junk to make gardening easier.