tealvince wrote:

gr3g wrote:

Fires need oxygen.. There's no air in a vacuum.. The ultimate fire proof enclosure will be a vacuum chamber.

IMHO, an environment with an inert (or relatively inert) gas (like nitrogen or helium) would be far easier to maintain and less likely to adversely affect the heating and cooling behavior of your printer.  I imagine the main board, extruder, and motors would all fry very quickly without any air or gas to cool them or create the necessary thermal gradients for proper operation.  On the good side, however, a heated bed would finally heat up quickly!

This!

I don't know why more people don't go for this.

Because asphyxiation in your home sucks...leaks

http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Fight-Produc … 9NYAZ305PR

Any justrite/ eagle/ sandusky chemical rated fire cabinet will do. If its good enough for gallons of flammable liquid, its probably good enough for a little plastic.

NFPA Code 30 and OSHA Standard 1910.106

On a humorous note... Anyone got any of the tiles NASA used on the Shuttle? Those things were awesome.

Not Yet... the monoliths keep Failing. All I get is particulate Silica Aerogel.

I don't know why more people don't go for this. welding bottles of CO2 would also work, ...

I like the idea, it's pretty cool. I do think there are a couple of difficulties that extend beyond cost.

* To conserve gas, wouldn't we need to seal the enclosure nearly perfectly? The charge you'd lose each print (you'd have to open the enclosure between each one at least) would be enough to rack up some gas bottle bills alone, let alone letting the enclosure gently leak during 6 hr prints... There would be some mucking around and probably some cost in getting that right.

* Say the system successfully prevented a fire - that would mean there's a fire risk sitting inside the case (e.g. super hot plastic ready to combust in an overheated hot-end due to a popped mosfet driver), which once the door is opened and oxygen is allowed back in may ignite? How would one deal with this hazard?

In the commercial world, someone would be tasked with doing a bit of risk assessment and hazard analysis of such a system to see what the most effective controls should be - has anyone in the reprap world decided to have a crack at this? To be sensible (oh how I hate to be!) I think we might have a bit of ground to cover in monitoring things like FET outputs before we start on inert gas enclosures! :)

gr3g wrote:

Fires need oxygen.. There's no air in a vacuum.. The ultimate fire proof enclosure will be a vacuum chamber.

IMHO, an environment with an inert (or relatively inert) gas (like nitrogen or helium) would be far easier to maintain and less likely to adversely affect the heating and cooling behavior of your printer.  I imagine the main board, extruder, and motors would all fry very quickly without any air or gas to cool them or create the necessary thermal gradients for proper operation.  On the good side, however, a heated bed would finally heat up quickly!

This!

I don't know why more people don't go for this. welding bottles of CO2 would also work, and are cheap to buy with a regulator due to their use in welding. You can get one for about £20. Make a sealed box to hold the printer with a little potting compound where you're got the power cable and usb cables going in, and set it to slightly over atmospheric pressure

But more than the setup being fireproof at that point, You'll have far fewer clogs. Most clogging is down to the overheated plastic reacting with oxygen. That's why professional plastic moulding is done anaerobically.

less than 100$ including the shipping to canada to sleep well is cheap..

gr3g wrote:

Fires need oxygen.. There's no air in a vacuum.. The ultimate fire proof enclosure will be a vacuum chamber.

IMHO, an environment with an inert (or relatively inert) gas (like nitrogen or helium) would be far easier to maintain and less likely to adversely affect the heating and cooling behavior of your printer.  I imagine the main board, extruder, and motors would all fry very quickly without any air or gas to cool them or create the necessary thermal gradients for proper operation.  On the good side, however, a heated bed would finally heat up quickly!

All good points! Also thanks for the link to the self-deploying fire extinguisher on ebay.. Looks clutch!

professionalplastics (.com)
tapplastics (.com)
portplastics (.com)

A lot of polymers are flame retardant and self extinguishing.. Many will be UL 94 V0 compatible, which is the way to go.

aaronstalling wrote:

I'm making my enclosure out of transparent Polycarbonate which is cheap and is "self extinguishing, stops the spread of flame and also has excellent fire resistant properties"

Don't suppose you've got a link to the supplier this magical material?

I did a quick Google search with what Aaron had in the quotemarks, and found several Roofing Supplies pages about transparent tiles... Is that what it's from, by any chance?

I'm making my enclosure out of transparent Polycarbonate which is cheap and is "self extinguishing, stops the spread of flame and also has excellent fire resistant properties"

Don't suppose you've got a link to the supplier this magical material?