Hey 3D printing fellas,
Are you worried about failures that can lead to disaster like printer catching on fire and burning down firniture and house? Do you use any kind of protection against fire?
I know metal enclosures are the best, but my printer is in the Ikea Lack enclosure. I checked connections and everything looks great, but I soldered cable on the heated bed anyway. Im not super worried tbh, but Im thinking about buying Stovetop Firestop and mounting it inside the enclosure just in case. This one is triggered with open flame only, so probably false activation is not possible. I would probably buy 2 more for kitchen.
There are also balls and other extinguisher shapes, but the one from the picture seems more recommended. Bad thing is I cant find that one availabls in europe. There are also smoke detectors, but they can only alarm you or cut the power.
What do you use? Can you recommend any good automatic extinguisher available in europe?
It was a significant problem in early machines. Most now have thermal runaway protection. As long as your wires don’t short out, it shouldn’t be a problem.
And the only wires that have enough energy to be a problem are the heaters- hot ends, heated beds/enclosures.
The firmware keeps track of how much energy is going to them and will shut the printer down if the energy is inconsistent with the reported temperatures. (Aka thermal runaway protection.)
You can also usually add secondary thermistors and if they deviate too much, triggers the same result. (And the machine will usually start trilling to get attention, etc,)
The only other thing to worry about are mosfets failing in an ON state.
Not sure if it’s the same risk with SSR’s
Eh. when was the last time a mosfet melted on anyone? not saying it can't happen, but mosfets are at fairly reliable. as long as you're not trying to push wayyy too much power through them; and also proper surge protection to avoid things like bad power in your house frying them.
It’s not that they melt as much as they just keep dumping heat into the heater cartridge and wires.
And if failed in an on state thermal runaway isn’t going to stop it.
It’s relatively rare though. I’m not too worried about it but it’s one of the reasons I watch my printer and of course there’s thermal fuses for such occasions if you really needed it.
Ideally the heater shouldn't be powerful enough to set itself on fire even at 100% power I guess.
For bed heaters there are thermal fuses.
The heater no, but a blob of filament with the heat pumping into it is worrying.