NexGen3D: Chamber Heater

Im proud to release the version 1 of my universal chamber heater, the control system and power setup will be up to you, I will add these details later on the next version.

BOM:

• 1 x 24v 7530 Dual Ball Bearing GDStime Blower Fan https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32843738437.html
• 1 x 24v 140x32x26 200w PTC Heater Core https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1970683050.html
• 16 x M3 Heat Inserts
• 8 x M3 8mm BHS (For the cover)
• 4 x M3 10mm BHS (For the PTC heater)
• 3 x M3 12mm BHS (For the heater to mount)
• 3 x M3 12mm BHS/SHS/CHS or longer depending on your side panel thickness, 12mm will be okay for 4mm Plexi Side Panels
• 18G Cable, I use PTFE coated, but FEP or Silicone coated is perfectly fine
• 1 x 3D Printer capable of printing ABS or better.

I printed mine from ABS-CF and the accent's done in standard orange ABS.

Why Use a Chamber Heater:

The reason I created this was for better printing of ABS and Nylon parts, having high chamber heat helps to keep the printer’s bed and nozzle temps more stable, it also allows you to use more fan cooling for better bridging without compromising the layer adhesion, it also eliminates warping with part cooling, 70 to 80C hot air is still cool enough to set ABS as its well below its melting point.

I don’t recommend going much higher than 80C even when printing Nylon’s as you start to affect other things in your printer, some gantry systems can’t handle the heat, my custom printer's (Xamus-Maximus, 3Dimension-200 and 3Dimension-300) have been built for high temps and all internals are metal or PC-CF, and I have melted a few gantry assemblies in stock printers, the QIDI TECH X-Max is one I will mention.

Assembly Destructions:

Print Lid01, Lid02, Lid03 all together, if you don’t want the accent colour and logo, then just print in one colour, if you want multi colour, you will only need to do a manual colour change a couple of times as the accent is only 0.4mm deep, I use Orca Slicer as its dead easy to print multi colour on any machine as it will just insert a pause and wait for you to change the filament, colour changing is done on the first few layers, after that you can leave it to print on its own.

Assembly is pretty self-explanatory, 8 heat inserts for the top cover and 4 for the PTC heater, then 6 for the mounting bracket, best to use the mounting bracket as a jig to mark your holes before putting in the heat inserts.

Additional Notes:

In a large format printer like the X-Max version 1 this heater running constantly will keep temps above 70C with the printer in operation and will drop to around 60C when idle and you can just connect it directly to a spare power-supply that can provide 250w of power (I use an older Ender 3 power-supply)

In a smaller printer you will need to fit a chamber temp sensor and have your control board regulate it, in my 200mm3 printer I currently use a pin out on my control board to switch a solid-state relay that turns the heater on and off, and a basic NTC temp sensor to monitor and regulate the temp in Klipper.

The heater is rated to pull 200w constant, but it can spike above this when starting up, so I would recommend make sure you have 250w spare, some Meanwell units can handle surges far above their rating for short periods.

Achtung! One more more final note, do not run the heater core without the fan running, or it will warp the heater lid and body, the core is insulated with high temp nylon mounts but if the fan gets blocked or is not running, it will warp the ABS, so the fan should be wired in parallel to the heater core, heater on, fan on and vise versa, I recommend you fit a thermal sensor to the heater though as this will be the safest option.

Filament Type: Use ABS as a minimum, no PLA or PETG!

Printing: No supports required, all parts print flat on the bed, I used 0.2 layer height with 0.5mm nozzle (My nozzle of choice for CF filaments), the model was designed for a 0.5mm nozzle, but 0.4 or 0.6 should also be okay.