PTC Enclosure Heater for Resin 3D Printing | DIY Build with W1209 Controller

[00:00:01]hey guys one of the biggest problems with resin 3d printing is temperature most resins have an ideal printing temperature and this is typically between 24 and 30 degrees celsius if the temperature falls below this the resin can become viscous resulting in reduced print quality and even print fails even angus at maker's muse in sunny australia fell fell of this issue as he noted even there temperatures dropped below ideal during the evenings resulting in print failures so in a nutshell if the temperature of our resin is correct we can expect better printing results but temperatures vary daily and as winter is coming i've been looking for a way to resolve this issue buying a suitable enclosure here in the uk has proved tricky but luckily my buddy richard over at print cast build steered me towards a perfect solution on thinkiverse this is an enclosure heater researched and put together by x3m snake from photonsters so everything you see today is the brainchild of this creator and all due credit goes to him even though this was shared freely on thingiverse a lot of effort went into this and i urge you all to please tip this creator for what he's done here he really deserves it if you follow the link to the creator's facebook page you can see there's a small shopping list and i'll repeat this in the description for non-facebook folk but in essence this is what you'll need to purchase firstly there's the w1209 wk temperature controller and this is the brains of this excellent device the next thing is this 100 watts 12 volt heater now there's all manner of heaters out there but don't go off script everything has been designed around this specific shopping list as you'll soon see next the creator recommends these very small but very powerful magnets finally we need a power supply and it's very important to choose a 12 volt 120 watt transformer with the main supply suited to your part of the world now i tally all this up at roughly 46 pounds which isn't bad for something that's going to let me print perfectly even with specialty resins and even on the coldest of winter days the creator has gone to the trouble of supporting the body of this enclosure heater for us to print and ironically when i printed mine it was a cold autumn day in my workshop so i only just got away with it and the print is a tiny bit warped in places due to support failure it quickly becomes obvious that the heater doesn't fit inside the printed body and that's because some disassembly is required these four screws need to be removed and set aside as the inner heater is exposed feed the wires through the opening and push the heater gently into place replace the spacer now feed the fun wires through in the same manner use the four screws to attach the fan to the printed body securing everything firmly into place the printed body is surprisingly strong but don't over tighten anything or you risk breaking it at this point i decided to glue the magnets in place using a strong two-part epoxy adhesive by doing this now i wanted to give the adhesive plenty of drying time the thing that might put focus off doing this is the electronics but trust me this is very easy it is very fiddly as it's a small space so i can't actually show myself doing it but here's what's involved the temperature controller has just four screw terminals plus minus s1 and s2 starting with the power adapter the chances are you'll have one of these jack plugs on it but we of course need wires mine came with the screw terminal adapter and if yours doesn't there's loads of them on amazon ebay or whatever just screw in a couple of wires making careful note of the positive and negative terminals if you're a dab hand with a soldiering iron you might prefer to use a jack socket instead and that's my personal preference but the choice is yours all the positive wires go into the plus terminal [Music] the negative from the heater goes to the s2 terminal this should leave you with two black wires and these need to go into both the negative and the s1 terminal this sounds weird but it's fine these two terminals are bridged to make life easier i used a fork connector now if my wires aren't the same colour as yours don't worry i trimmed mine down and used insulation taping places lastly there's the temperature sensor and this simply plugs in here with much fiddling and swearing you'll squeeze all the wires into the printed body and the temperature controller simply pushes in at this point you should be able to see what i mean by my slightly warped print with the power supply connected you should be greeted with something like this now you just need to program the controller and the instructions aren't the clearest in the world so let me run through the processes and critical options firstly temperature scale to switch between celsius or fahrenheit just click the bottom temperature button now we need to calibrate the temperature and for this you'll need an ordinary thermometer here you can see my sensor is suggesting the temperature is 30 degrees celsius or thereabouts and that doesn't happen often in the uk it's actually more like 22 degrees which is a difference of -8 degrees so to calibrate this we need to access the program function p4 hold the set button for 5 seconds until it beeps then release p0 should display click the set button repeatedly until p4 is displayed now press both the set and temperature buttons together briefly the blue display should now flash press either the set or temperature button to add or subtract from the current temperature in my case i want minus eight once you're there do nothing for 5 seconds and this should exit the program menu the temperature display should now be more realistic next we want to limit the maximum temperature which is program p2 again for convenience hold the set button for 5 seconds until it beeps and then release click the set button repeatedly until p2 is displayed press both the set and temperature buttons together briefly and the blue display should now flash press either the set or temperature buttons to add or subtract from the default setting 110 degrees is a bit steep for a safety cut-off temperature i think 40 is more realistic again do nothing for five seconds and this should exit the program menu my next suggestion is return difference which is p1 the factory default is two degrees but i reduce mine to just one degree so when the ambient temperature falls below one degree of my goal temperature the heater will be activated finally and most importantly is p0 the heating and cooling mode by default the controller is set to cooling but we need it to heat so enter the program menu in the usual way select p0 and alter the setting from c to h our enclosure heater is now ready to use you just need to enter the gold temperature now personally i'm going with 26 degrees celsius which seems pretty middle of the road for resins to select this there's no need for the program menu instead just click set once then press either the set or temperature buttons to add or subtract until you reach your goal temperature then do nothing for 5 seconds the finished heating unit is surprisingly compact and should easily fit inside most resin printers but i'd recommend printing the body for a test fit just in case personally i aim for the upper left side keeping clear of the z-rail the temperature sensor can dangle freely as long as it doesn't get trapped in the workings or in the resin tray this unit was designed for an original any cubic photon and these have a metal carcass so the magnets will stick perfectly unfortunately magnets don't stick to plastic so personally i took a small piece of steel cut it down and glued it with epoxy adhesive for strength this allows me to mount and dismount the heater with ease the only thing to watch out for is the power cable depending on your printer you could choose to drill a hole or maybe file a small notch don't pinch the cable as that might damage it and don't leave too big a gap or you may let in straight uv light etc quite what gluing bits of steel and filing small holes will do to your warranty i can't really say so i guess that's something you'll need to think about but the real question is does this heater work well in an enclosed space yes it works great personally i shake my resin well pour it in the tray close everything and let the heater do its job for half an hour by then in such a small space everything is of a similar temperature and i'm ready to get printing the heater should click on occasionally if the ambient temperature drops but effectively what you now have is resin printing at an ideal temperature improving print quality and reducing failures a real win-win once again if you download these files from thingiverse then please tip the original designer this is an excellent tool competently designed and constructed even a small tip is better than no tip and we really should help out those creators that share their hard work with us in this way so i hope you enjoyed this one guys take care and thanks for watching