Finally tired of terrible finishes, time for a dry box.

OK, I give up. I am tired of busting my butt to get smooth finishes. About two and half weeks ago, I moved my printer and most of my “stuff” downstairs to the basement. I had run out of room in the office. I am still not sure I have enough desktop space, that is for another time.

I always had a small problem with zits and some popping when printing, but it was never that bad. So I ignored it. As I started working on building a MPCNC, the final quality of the printed parts was just disgusting. (M)ostly (P)rinted CNC is what you think, mostly printed. The finish looked like someone took a steel brush to the outside surface. I  finally caved and built a dry box. Online, these are all over the place with instructions of all kinds.

Here is my incarnation. It was made with mostly parts that I had on hand. This setup allows for expansion when I get around to implementing a multi-material setup. I had to pick up the container with the clips to hold the top closed. Ever since the print quality since has been significantly better.

Bill of materials:

These are some pictures and lite instructions to help put it together. This is not hard; I had to design two pieces and pretty much had everything else. I did have to order the humidity/temp sensor, gel beads, and the Bowden tube.

20181011_182547

This is the finished product.

20181011_182638

This is the bottom side of the container cover. I used the rubber pipe insulation tape to make the cap fit snuggly, and make it airtight.

20181011_182556.jpg

I cut a hole in the top of the box to hold the humidity/temperature monitor and sealed the edges with some silicon.

20181011_182625.jpg

This is the inside of the finished box.

20181011_182614.jpg

After printing the spool separators, you need to tap the holes with the 4mm screw tap that fits with the 4mm screws that you have. You should get away with just forcing the screw into the hold.

20181011_182619

This is a close up of the installation of the tube after it has been cut. Use the M3 screws, washers, and nuts to secure the tube holder to the side of the container.

This is a screen shot of the two parts that I designed in SolidWorks.

20181011_182703.jpg

To get the Bowden tube to stay put on the standard Anet A8 direct drive, I tapped the aluminum arm to fit the threads. This is not needed, or needs to be adapted to the particular printer you have. A real E3D hotend and whatnot is in the future, so this should fit nicely to the direct drive extruder. I am not going to do the remote extruder thing. I want to be able to do TPU, etc and you need to have the extruder as close hotend to make that work well. (Ask Prusa) The other end is from Gerard Boulukan. I had to modify the inside piece to allow for the Bowden tube to cleanly get through the box without kinking. Make sure that you polish and widen the ends of the tube. They get out of shape from cutting them.

Let me know what you think.

–BA

2 thoughts on “Finally tired of terrible finishes, time for a dry box.

  1. Printed these out. They don’t fit 1″ pvc. Really like the concept though. Was exactly what I am looking for..

    1. Chris:

      Thanks for this. I designed these around some PVC pipe I had laying around. I believe in the article above I talked about;

      1.3 inch OD/1 inch ID PVC pipe

      What type of pipe are you using? With me moving to Fusion 360, I do not have access to edit the the original Solidworks files. The hobby version of Fusion does not allow you to import any other formats; which is actually pretty terrible. However, I can dig them out and send them to you so that you can resize to your application. Let me know.

      I appreciate the feedback and good luck with your project.
      –BA

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d