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Temperature and humidity sensor for printer location

Posted by Wpflum 
Temperature and humidity sensor for printer location
April 12, 2018 03:48PM
While waiting for my Mk3 to ship I was noodling around ebay and noticed cheap humidity and temperature sensors that can, I think, be integrated into a printer fairly easily. My question is would it be any use to be able to have the printer adjust the bed and nozzle temp based on the environment?

What I was thinking with a bit of testing you could come up with some basic tables for humidity, temperature and materials so that if the printer senses a cold environment it might change the nozzle temp to compensate for the filament cooling down quicker or if it's very dry adjust temps for that?? Not exactly sure what I'm aiming for but anything cheap that could help with print quality is a good thing in my book.

Ideas?
Re: Temperature and humidity sensor for printer location
April 12, 2018 11:28PM
I believe the Mk3 has an ambient temp thermistor in the electronics enclosure, so it's already got the hardware you're looking for. But why would you want to change the temperature based on ambient? You'll still want to print at the same temperatures, the plastic doesn't care if the room is at 10 C, it'll still melt at the same temperature as if the room was at 30 C. If you mean you want it to heat up faster, what you'll want to do is adjust PID settings (likely to cause overshooting, though), or better yet get a more powerful heater or an enclosure so the heat doesn't escape.

If you want to ramp up the temperature for some reason, it's very easy to do when you slice the gcode. That being said, ramping up the temperature to compensate for a cold room just increases the temperature gradient the part is exposed to and can make warping/delamination worse.
Re: Temperature and humidity sensor for printer location
April 13, 2018 02:31AM
A humidity sensor might be useful in a filament storage container.
Re: Temperature and humidity sensor for printer location
April 13, 2018 09:40AM
Quote
Trakyan
I believe the Mk3 has an ambient temp thermistor in the electronics enclosure, so it's already got the hardware you're looking for. But why would you want to change the temperature based on ambient? You'll still want to print at the same temperatures, the plastic doesn't care if the room is at 10 C, it'll still melt at the same temperature as if the room was at 30 C. If you mean you want it to heat up faster, what you'll want to do is adjust PID settings (likely to cause overshooting, though), or better yet get a more powerful heater or an enclosure so the heat doesn't escape.

If you want to ramp up the temperature for some reason, it's very easy to do when you slice the gcode. That being said, ramping up the temperature to compensate for a cold room just increases the temperature gradient the part is exposed to and can make warping/delamination worse.

I guess that is what this question is for, I don't care one way or the other to change the temps but was wondering out loud if this would be something useful to tweak a prints finish/adhesion or some such. It's just more data for the controller to use.
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