Beware your 3D printer (They can cause fires) (Page 1 of 8)

?!?! What happened??
Hope everyone is ok

One of my worst nightmares. My condolences.

Wow.... Never thought it would ever occur.

Absolutely no idea how the printer started it, but is was definitely the printer (or power supply).  If you can put a smoke detector in the same room as the printer it might give you early warning, but with all that plastic, it's amazing how quickly everything went up.

Can you list all the mods that were done to your printer?

Just a theory:

If the thermistor broke away from the hot end could the temps on the E3D get high enough to melt and then ignite the fan shroud?

A firmware thing to shut down if the temperature doesn't change for a while does sound like a good idea, actually..  I wonder how hard that would be to implement.

This is a real shame. I'm so sorry to hear this. I've already said most of this on G+ but I'll repeat here.

The firmware will shut down if the thermistor drops below a given temperature, the real worry it the thermistor sitting just away from the heat block, with Kapton securing it that's a real possibility.

I've seen one scourched printer, luckily fire didn't get far, but wood printers make me nervous for this reason (mines all aluminium). Even the plastic parts can light really easily, just take a lighter to the end of some filament to see!

I've melted an e3d - what happens when the thermistor goes wrong is the heat block melts and the Nozzle drops out (with molten metal on it) the print will continue with a molten heat block until it ends. The heatsink and fan do such a good job you can even re use the heat break when you get a new heat block and nozzle.

I expect this issue (loose thermistor) is mitigated more on the e3d v6. But this sounds more like an electrics or power supply issue.

That is correct, except that there is no thermocouple on a Solidoodle.

Yes, if the thermistor pulls away from the nozzle, there is no protection against the heater being commanded full on.

If the sensor fails completely, mintemp or maxtemp will be triggered depending on whether it fails open or short.

To be fair I assume (haven't checked) that somewhere in the user agreement for the solidoodle it covers them against accidents like that.

I'm not aware of a thermal fuse with a trip point higher than 240C.

You can take your pick of "why not this safety feature?", but the right answer is to never leave it unattended. Would you leave your house with your stove boiling cooking oil? Of course not. Would you go to the other room? Maybe, with a smoke detector in the kitchen.

Why is a 3D printer different?

I thought the firmware had a redundant thermistor code for adding a second one for basically this purpose?

I'm one of those people that never leave it unattended.  For one im still tweaking it so I can easily get a failure if I'm not careful.  I've printed a few 5 hour long prints from another room while watching a movie, but I ran in often to check it.

The only way I would feel remotely safe would be if I had a go pro on it with video and temperature readings sent to my phone at work. That along with an emergency stop feature in the app on my phone.

This is dangerous news for the community.  It effects more than skyminer in the big scheme of things.  The fact that suing solidoodle was brought up makes me cringe.  It just seems like a terrible system we have here in America...

People are still wary of the idea of 3d printing.  All in all though, I'm glad you were able to get your family to safety.  There are all kinds of dangerous hobbies out there.  All of which had risks unknown.  I would hope you wouldn't let it scare you, and actually turn this around.

There are companies trying to print houses. I would surely throw a few dollars towards getting you a 3d printed house.