Now I want to see what effect all this has on your prints, how it affects warping, etc, and how humidity is affected by all this. This is all especially important to anyone who wants to print with materials that are sensitive to these things such as PVA.
My suggestion is to not think of it as multiple passes through a filter (or even dead spaces), but rather you are dripping warm water into a cold bathtub. It is going to take quite a while for the filtered air (warm water) fills any portion of the room. Perhaps there are additional forces at play with the fan, meaning that it's possible the fan is pushing air that is around the fan (and not only the air that is going through the filtration). An example of this is a guy trying to blow up something, but he blows much more as he backs away from the nozzle. Perhaps this is how that fan cylinder might play into the filtration ecosystem.
As someone who does work as a researcher with 3D printers, I agree with the majority of your points but there are two things missing. An explanation of what air you think of as safe or problematic to reference back to and the best advice when it comes to working with macro particles. The problems with polluted air that has a high concentration of macro particles really make an impact when you both have long exposure to this air *and* when you do not ventilate your own lungs. Going out to nature\ jogging a couple of times a week or even getting back home by foot makes a drastic difference and should have been the highest recommended tip of this great video
Wow. that's something I never heard of. Good to know. I somehow thought, that all particles are kind of like asbestos. once inside lungs, they;re there.
There is a far far more important part he is missing. Not all VOCs are harmful to breath. A VOC (Volatile Organic Compound) is defined as a type of organic chemical that has a high vapor pressure at room temperature, which means it can easily evaporate into the air. Alcohol is a VOC, specifically ethanol, the kind you drink, and it is generally not not harmful to breath. The only measurements he has are for VOCs and not the actual chemicals like the toxic styrene gas created during abs printing. If what we really care about is the toxic particles, why mention VOCs? Because something that can detect and measure VOCs is like $50 and something that can do that with styrene gas costs around $5,000.
@@anthonykgarland How do you block a channel? As far as I know that's not possible, but what do I know. Hope I'm wrong there are a lot of channels I'd like to block so I'd never see them again. Like PC tech rumor channels. "the 8900xtx will destroy nvidia, the 8900xtx is cancelled, then the 8900xtx will destroy nvidia in a later video again even if it was cancelled a few videos ago".
@@anthonykgarlandChrist almighty... The topic is complex enough for several PHDs, maybe cut a guy some slack when even studies are hard pressed to actually quantify issues.
The conclusion of the test is literally that he is now going for a full air exchange first and filtration second. Which is exactly because the VOCs are more dangerous than what's outside...
I use Indoor Plant tents with fumigation holes for enclosures for my 3d printers. Then I can use exhaust fans and carbon filters and pump the air directly outside. I wear my mask with appropriate filters whenever the enclosures are open. Videos like this are important to bring this to more 3d printers attentions as this is not something people are being told about when they are buying these printers most of the time. Especially if they just buy from amazon.
Can I just ask why you still use carbon filters if you're immiedietly pumping the air outside anyways? Is it just to avoid residual stuff once you open the enclosure?
@@johannd1100 First floor window and homes in close proximity, using the filter to keep the smell down and yes, it also helps keep the residual smell in the enclosure down.
As a scale modeler who is starting to get into 3d printing - I deal with a lot of fumes from modelling glues and paints, etc., and another thing that can help with things like soldering and painting and gluing is an airbrush booth that has a fan and an exhaust hose to a window. If you've not used one before it's great for the hands-on detailed work with VOCs and I highly recommend trying one of those as well. I use it not just for airbrushing, but for gluing and sanding and everything else. Hope it helps!
I'm not an expert but what the hell is buying a bunch of tiny fans to move air around the room going to do for removing pollutants? First it should be obvious that physics dictates that bigger fans move more air. I seriously doubt those tiny Bento Boxes have any appreciable effect. Have you seen how large and heavy the carbon filters are in e.g. cannabis grow rooms? They need fans to draw air through it in order to work. Like imagine if a smoker doesn't blow air through a Smokebuddy carbon filter, but blows all the smoke into the room, and then wait for the air to magically circulate back into the filter. That's basically what you're doing in this video. Those enclosed 3D printers aren't airtight, and I'm pretty sure there's more pressure for the air to escape that box than to be pulled into a tiny filter that's not connected to anything.
Yeah, to put it nicely, this is obviously not a very brilliant approach. As a professional whose works in advanced composite material shops in aviation I can tell you we use about a and that's just for cooling. Seriously all of this stuff should probably technically have downdraft tables and vent hoods from the word go. Beyond that you should be wearing a full-face mask I don't know why you would think like oh and just take my mask off cuz it's so convenient but go ahead and do that all you want just know that it's in no way safe. The entire environment needs to be completely and continuously circulated and a couple fans here and there are going to do next to nothing aside from maybe get you a sponsor. Seriously I kind of don't know why I watched this it's a bit of a joke.
I purchased a forced air purifier designed for circulating a small house for my workspace, and that can barely keep up with my space. But he is definitely right that the printers are the least of your problems; for just FDM printing, a small fan and an open window keeps the quality high enough that my purifier rarely turns on. Soldering and sanding are the big ones for me (I imagine laser work is even worse), and for that I have to run a downdraft table that vents directly outside, even then the purifier runs at full blast to keep AQ above 70%. The resin printing airborne VOC is HIGHLY dependent on which resin I use; some barely kick out anything, and others quickly get AQ into the danger zone. I've noticed the flexible resins tend to be the worst, while the water washable ones tend to be the best. Here's me wishing I'd paid more attention in organic chemistry class.
The Bento Boxes work really well. Tests have shown they eliminate VOCs nearly entirely (there was another TH-cam video on this that did a great job in a test situation). The Bento Box is designed for a closed box printer, not one that is open.
Even those of us that live in the country can't just open a window all year round. I live in midland Sweden and winter is coming. Not going to open a window or door when it's -15º outside.
There is a way to deal with it, but knowing you guys in EU with your eco and efficiency craze, you probably not gonna like it... You see, one can use something like a radiant kerosene burner to heat your working room and it requires by design that you'll have that window open to avoid things like carbon monoxide poisoning etc. There are other options like diesel heater (that are designed for autonomous van-house kind of thing... you know those american houses on the wheels stuff) which are kind of overpowered (4-8kW) for a small room and that's exactly how you keep it warm. You just use that and open the window (not that they dump exhaust in your room, they have a pipe to put it outside through a hole in a wall). That sure is wasting some energy but believe me, active filtering and then replacing filters, checking filters condition, buying new ones, using automatic purifiers like in this video and a bunch of other things are much more expensive than just heating your room a bit more and venting it during the cold season. The key is to have a really tiny room where you do this, then you won't waste too much energy. Also I would rely more on infrared heating (like those kerosene ones provide) than convection through air (like deasel heaters do). It is probably more efficient to heat solid surfaces instead of the air that is being circulated anyway and would carry your heat away just like that. Of course there are more refined solutions like vent systems with automated air filtering + air preheating or cooling down for the summer and what not, but they are probably constly (obvisouly those are for businesess, not for hobbyists) and may not be available everywhere you may want them.
@@user-qn6kb7gr1d They might have more efficient heating systems up there. The go-to solution should be extracting the air through a one way tube, as shown at 11:00. You make a hole in the wall, insulate it, then connect the extension
@@LollosoSiTV if heating is the main concern, I believe the go-to solution should be (not are yet) those split system heat pumps with filtered fresh air intake. No idea why it's not a widespread thing. Modern 3d printers usually have a vent and a reasonably well insulated chamber. So there should be not need to pollute everything in the room, those pipes can be connected just to those vents in the chamber and air dumped out through it only when it is reasonable (no reason to do that during the entire printing process in a well insulated chamber).
I’m Canadian and umm I open windows in the winter all the time…. I can’t stand stagnant air and well I hate being in 22c and up as a rule…. I’m a bit crazy that way. I tend to open the upstairs windows more since the cold air drops to the basement.
Me: continue printing and soldering as usual ans slowly die from cancer 🤣. More seriously, man this is a hard problem to solve when living in an apartment. Also me living in Finland doesn't make it any easier, with our cold winters...
@@Iisakki3000 I understand and I also have a soldering station🤣. I am in college so I don't have much choice too. We die but die happy with 3d printers xD
@@Iisakki3000edit: carbon filters might not be enough ... if y'all have access to carbon filters, you can use a PC fan to make a fume extractor. With a 3d printer, you can make a moving arm to point this where you want to suck.
@@Iisakki3000 Opening a window seems like a "tempered climate"-comment. 😅 Try looking for air scrubbers. They have both HEPA-(for PM) and active coal-(for VOC) filters.
@@rafael.b.almeida For soldering i personally usr lead free solder but the fumes are still bad for you even when no lead in there and since i don't usr fume hood of at least a fan to take those fumes away i usually hold my nose closed while soldering so i don't really breath as much fumes in
I have a P1S and have printed a hood with magnetic fasteners, this attaches over the outlet on the back of the printer, and connects to a 2” duct about 15” long. This is routed through the wall of my study, and has a 3 flap cover on the outside wall. I have also removed the activated carbon filter, as it is no longer required, and restricts the flow. When the printer is running the fumes inside the P1S are vented directly outside, and the printer operates in exactly the same way.
I had a polarized media air cleaner installed on my HVAC system which has not only removed a lot of the visible household dust, but it also is rated and tested to remove VOCs.
I started printing back in 2012, the first week I noticed the ABS filament was intolerable indoors and sent it to my garage. My 3D printers have sat in a sealed closet with HEPA filter running since bring them back in I've always thought it was a false sense of safety when I started seeing "filtered" enclosed 3D printers, when they do a single pass and pump the air straight out into the environment
When you say out into the environment, do you mean the room or out through a hose at a window? I am trying to be very conscious of this problem, and so I'm getting an enclosure. The only problem is the enclosure that I needed doesn't come with a fan vent, so I'm going to cut one in it and stick a computer fan in it, with about a 1m pipe to a window.
@@arc5015 I just copy a other comment from this comment section you better consider: @kevinmitchell3168 said: Mixing up air IS A BAD IDEA! You need slow moving air flowing across the work space with fresh air being introduced where people are working, and being exhausted out on the other side of the pollution source. This is typically done with a fan pulling fresh air from outside and blowing it into a long fabric duct that has tiny holes in it to evenly introduce it throughout the entire area. The goal is to SLOWLY introduce fresh air. Then inside the print chamber, or the back side of a work bench, away from where people will be, you have the exhausted ducts. The amount of air going out should be slightly higher than the incoming so it creates a slightly negative pressure in the room and prevents polluted air from escaping into the rest of the building. You don't want fast moving air that will mix up the pollutants in the breathing area. This type of setup allows for slow air exchange and FAR less wasted energy. Filaments and printers need to be in climate controlled areas. This allows you to add a heater and/or air conditioner to the incoming duct (aka makeup unit), keeping the entire space climate controlled. You only need just enough air to ensure the polluted air is flowing away from the working area to the outside. I got this information from a US military report where they tested air quality in hundreds of facilities with harsh chemical environments. Their finding was that the number one cause of poor air quality was fans blowing air around and mixing it up.
Minor/major detail Formaldehyde is a nearly colorless, highly irritating gas with a sharp odor. It dissolves easily in water and is found in formalin (a solution of formaldehyde, water, and methanol). Formaldehyde is used in the manufacture of plastics; urea-formaldehyde foam insulation; and resins used to make construction materials (e.g., plywood), paper, carpets, textiles, paint, and furniture. OSHA PEL (permissible exposure limit) = 0.75 ppm (averaged over an 8-hour work shift) OSHA STEL (short-term exposure limit) = 2 ppm (15 minute exposure) NIOSH IDLH (immediately dangerous to life or health) = 20 ppm Formaldehyde is a nearly colorless gas with a pungent, irritating odor even at very low concentrations (below 1 ppm). Its vapors are flammable and explosive. Because the pure gas tends to polymerize, it is commonly used and stored in solution. Formalin, the aqueous solution of formaldehyde (30% to 50% formaldehyde), typically contains up to 15% methanol as a stabilizer. "fresh air in the bottom junk out the top" is the recommendations standard but PPM don't mean squat unless you know what your measuring for! you measured up to 6000 PPM and formaldehyde as an example is dangerous at 2-3 ppm not 6000 PPM industrial air exchanges in higher VOC areas should be 3:1 at minimum MSDS sheets should be included/some require a request in the the supply of each material and simply follow the safety in section 4 MATERIAL SAFTEY DATA SHEETS
I got very sick after getting into printing ABS. I got really good at it, so I had my printer going almost 24/7, it was in an enclosure, but not ventilated. It took me 3 months after I stopped all 3d printing to get better to the point my doctor was not concerned any more. Since then my printer has been in an enclosure that vents to the outside via a 4" duct and a very slow moving 80mm fan. Now that I ordered a Bambu P1S, I will design a way to route the air from the enclosure to the outside via that same duct. I am still scared to print ABS / ASA just because the smell of the filament triggers horrible memories. But I'll figure out.
@@killdozer3464 I have a P1S and have printed a hood with magnetic fasteners, this attaches over the outlet on the back of the printer and connects to a 2” duct about 15” long. This is routed through the wall of my study, it has a 3 flap cover on the outside wall. I have also removed the activated carbon filter, as it is no longer required, and restricts the flow. When the printer is running the fumes inside the P1S are vented directly outside, and the printer operates in exactly the same way.
@ If you are referring to to the Hose Mount. It is on Bambu MakerWorld, “Bambu X1C P1S Air vent 50mm Hose Mount”. I think I added additional magnets, to ensure it stayed in place. You will see that this is for a 50mm hose, which is suitable for a short run. I think I also mentioned removing the activated charcoal filter, and using a modified tumble dryer external cover. The flow is not great, but it is sufficient, I’ve made a clip to hold the centre flap open when using the printer. If you need a longer hose, you might require a small, adjustable speed inline fan to increase the flow. They are available online, around a tenner I recall.
@@Jestey6 thank you for the reply. I am still using the P1s as my main printer and it does ABS perfectly. The solution that worked for me was this: I sealed the enclosure completely, including removing the exhaust fan and blocking the vent. Then I printed the Cursd Dual Hepa Carbon filter, using the AUX fan. I control the fan from my filament profile settings. It works great. It cleans the air while the print is going. Once the print is finishes, it continues to filter at max power until i stop it. So the chamber air is clean when i open the printer to remove the print. I change the hepa filter about once a month, and the carbon pellets once they start becoming ineffective (every few months).
Most homes don't filter the incoming air, they often use reverse air flow through the kitchen vents! I added an external vent with 20 inch high rating and another carbon filter after that and my meters can even detect any pollution, so they filters work. I pressurize the house lightly with the incoming fan. Then my workshop has a wind exhaust with a fan outside to muffle the noise. It clears pretty fast, a few hours, and you can keep it on, though you might want to add a heat recover unit.
What about exhaust hoods? I’m sure you could easily design an exhaust hood to go over top of your printers. I’d use it for both enclosed and open printers to try and suck up the air from those spaces. You can throw in a computer fan in the inlet and then have the hose dump it out a window.
I DO NOT recommend Dreo fans. They are extremely overpriced for what they do. I bought into the marketing and got one and they barely moved any air and they were not quiet when on high, which was the speed I had to use in order feel anything. A $17 Honeywell that looks like a Vornado copy put out WAY more air while only being slightly louder. Project Farm did a review of fans not too long ago, if you're interested in his recommendations.
Ideally you would use vent hoods and downdraft tables for all of it and then you would wear respirator whenever in the environment. Then you perform regular industrial hygiene surveys. Anything less is a half-measure.
I found regular use of a robot vacuum cut down the dust levels more than anything else and when I moved to a higher elevation, the outdoor air quality improved dramatically and it became clear that if you’re in the bottom of the valley, especially near a city or farming, the dust settles to the bottom so just few hundred feet of elevation can make all a difference in air quality
i am genuinely amazed by how far down i had to scroll before anyone mentioned pressure. the best, bar none, solution to VOCs, 2.5ppm, and anything else, is negative pressure. any 3D printer put in an enclosure should have an exhaust system that puts the entire machine in negative pressure. this means that air cannot and will not flow out of the enclosure. it will only leave via the exhaust, which you can vent directly outside, preventing it from entering your workspace in the first place. for things like soldering, chemistry has you covered with things called "fume hoods". they're enclosures that put everything placed inside them under the same negative pressure environment. nothing can leave the enclosure without going through the exhaust system. how negative of a pressure you need (practically, this means how strong the suction is) depends on what you're doing. with an enclosure like was shown in the video with the filter under the print bed, you don't need it to be that negative, or that big of a pressure difference, while the doors are closed. if you want to maintain the negative pressure while the doors are open, you need to increase the difference quite a bit, but this will introduce new noise and other problems, especially if you want your chamber to be heated. realistically, the only option i can think of for heated chambers is to have a dedicated intake for the printer which passes the air through a heater (a DIY option would likely be a simple hair dryer or heat gun if you wanna go with more control). this way you can have the chamber still be heated, while also being able to directly vent the air outside.
Hi! That white little air quality tester I see on your video often comes with faking HCHO and TVOC sensor. It may actually not have them inside (I disassembled it and checked mine). Instead the HCHO and TVOC values seemingly depend on current CO2 value. You may want to check yours...
In Canada, or at least in Alberta, weather reports now routinely include the Air Quality Health Index number. Everyone who's endured this past summer where basically every forest in the country caught fire is well aware that the outside air might be awful... Anyway, I don't know if a similar resource is available elsewhere, but if practical, checking on the local outside air quality can help make decisions about ventilation - and potentially projects. There where a few days this summer where I just shut down my 3d printer because the smoke was so bad outside I didn't want the vent fan running.
Damn, that's a good idea, too. I didn't even THINK to check the air quality index of my city, and yet, I checked it all the time when I was in China... I'm learning so much just from the comments of this video and the discussions I'm having here... I'm really glad I did this video :)
Any thought of supplementing your Dreo with a dust collector? Woodworkers use them to help keep PM2.5 levels down when sanding, sawing ,etc. It would probably extend the life of your Dreo's filters.
I was waiting for PLA is more toxic than ABS but i was mislead. My takeaway from this is if you print in an enclosed space it's pretty much just going to give you the same air quality as a city
What kind of a system can we build to automate a good strategy for dealing with air quality? Perhaps with some monitors ventilation and purification products linked to home assistant?
I would echo the earlier comments. I did research for the U.S. Army for a few years. 1 micron to .1 micron are much more likely to lodge deep in your lungs than 2.5. Your lungs don't have a mechanism to sweep out these small particles. They do for the larger ones as long as you haven't damaged them with smoking. I'm only running one printer so putting it in an enclosure and connecting it to a window with a dryer vent and 120mm fan was a fool-proof solution. The fan pulls enough air out of the enclosure to keep the printer from overheating. The whole setup was under $100 US. You and your family only get one set of lungs.
@@coboss4198 I printed a connector for the hose to the enclosure. Everything else if off-the-shelf: Printer enclosure Comgrow 3D Printer Enclosure Fireproof and Dustproof Tent for Ender 3/Ender 3 Pro/Ender 3 V2/Ender 3 S1/Ender 3 S1 Pro, Constant Temperature Protective 3D Printer Cover Room Storage 635x535x750mm 4 Inch 5 Feet Black Air Ducting, Flexible 1.5m Length Aluminum Dryer Vent Hose for HVAC Ventilation with 2 Silver Clamps 120mm ×38mm Easy Cloud Axial Fan 120V 220V Muffin Fan 110V with Variable Speed Controller, Computer Fan with AC Plug, 120mm Case Fan for PC Cooler Cabinet Receiver Xbox DVR Greenhouse, 1 Pack
I could have missed it, but did you run a control experiment/test?? If not, you cannot be certain that your observed decrease in air quality within the data is directly correlated to 3D printing, filament drying, soldering and etc. For example, the observed decrease in air quality could just as plausibly be caused by urban-related air pollution.
All of my printers are enclosed with 3" ducting and large online fans sending the air from inside the enclosures outside. If I wait for prints to cool and the printer to cool wouldn't this insure a the air in the room is clean? I also put my filament dryers in a vented enclosure and do have an oscillating fan bring air from the door into the room. Would have been nice to see a test with enclosed ventilated printers etc. At work we have a lot of printers going in the office space. I am a retired firefighter and medical responder and had to treat a fellow working for breathing the pollutants from 3D printers and we ultimately moved them to their own space with exhaust ventilation. I am using online axial fans that are 75 cfm for each enclosure.
I have just bought a plant growing box, that can be sealed and have ventilation to a window, a friend of mine recommended us getting one as we live in an apartment with doors to only 2 rooms.. It has been hell printing anything on my resin printer bc of the air quality, and as a result i haven't really printed anything.. I really hope putting my printer in an isolated box with ventilation to the outside will help, but i think ill buy a air quality checker thingy so i can keep an eye out on ventilating our apartment too. I do think the best thing would be to have any kind of printer in an area you aren't in often, and/or in a closed off box/cabinet/closet/whatever that can contain the toxic fumes and ventilate them out.
I want to see what effect all this has on your prints, how it affects warping, etc, and how humidity is affected by all this. This is all especially important to anyone who wants to print with materials that are sensitive to these things such as PVA, and if you end up needing to try the filaments more often as a result.
Honestly I didn't even think about Humidity in all of this. It's 74% humidity here right now, so basically I was like "screw it, I'm not going to try, I'm going to prioritize air quality and protecting my LUNGS over protecting my filament." Print quality has been fine on my open printers, but again, it's 33 celsius here... i think it would be very different if it were 8!
Humidity affects a lot more than just your filaments. Organic macro particles get coated by a layer of water and become heavier, harder to move around and exponentially more prone to aggregate or to be weighted down to the bottom air layer of the room and to the dust. Try placing the sensor on a high table one day and on the floor the next. The difference is clear @@thenextlayer
With regard to gaps in enclosures, the way most designs mitigate that is via negative pressure: The fan sucks air out of the enclosure and exhausts it via a filter. As a result the airflow through all other paths should be mostly into the enclosure rather than out. Where this gets tricky is when you use closed-loop filtration systems like the ones sold by PrintedSolid. In that case there is no "net suction" from the enclosure, and bad stuff can leak out of all of the other openings in the enclosure. I think that your point about the relative harmlessness of printing well-dried ABS/ASA is valid.
Great video. I don't do any sanding/glueing/building in my room. That all happens in the garage (I know I am blessed to have that option). I do almost entirely FDM PLA printing, but still want to migrate them to my basement at some point.
That's a great idea. Do that + add some webcams and you're good. Just don't forget to ventilate / circulate / filter in the basement, because you don't want all that stuff building up so much.
the only saving grace of air management is negative/positive pressure I built a fume hood in my workshop and it works great I do need to improve the whole room circulation though and I can't leave the hood running 24/7 so it probably leaks resin fumes a little bit
At 10:38 it looks like you have your respirator cartridges attached wrong. Assuming your mask is a 3M 7503, which it looks like, the long end should be going back towards your ears, not down. They are supposed to be keyed so they can only go on one way. Your keyed tabs are probably messed up if they let the cart's go on wrong, which also means the cart's probably are not sealing to the mask correctly. I recommend getting a new mask if you really want to be certain you are getting proper filtration.
PLA irritates my throat and lungs a LOT. Asthma makes me way more sensitive than normal people, but the fact is, the nanovirus fills the entire house even with an enclosure with an exhaust hose and a fan, several closed doors, and open windows. I am waiting for a HEPA air purifier, but the PLA particles are still smaller than what HEPA can manage. Looks like a deadend. My best solution so far: open the windows and leave the house and go to the nearest mall like a bum and let the machine overlord live in my house (or give up and not print in the house, which means no winter printing). The funny thing is, I switched to FDM printing to escape from nasty resin fumes that destroy my heart, only to find out that “completely safe” PLA is an extreme irritant for me as well. But asthma aside, I don't think breathing nanoplastic is much good for anyone, even tough guys from reddit. This vid, honestly, paints a picture that is even worse than what I thought. Ugh.
According to publicly available articles on the Internet, PLA fumes are also harmful and can probably cause cancer. Fortunately, I don't have asthma, but during "printing seasons" I suffer from coughing, sneezing and also pain in my lungs. One of my friends has similar problems. I print almost exclusively from PLA, very rarely some small things from PETG. And what are the "printing" seasons? Up to 8 weeks before Christmas, same for Easter and about 4 weeks before summer holidays.
You should filter the air coming IN the window, also my house has the highest level of air filters in the A/C system, and to top all that off, I use an IQ Air HyperHepa filter (Yeah, REALLY expensive, but I got mine at an auction!) in my bedroom, this is designed to filter out the air using 3 stages with the last one small enough to filter out viruses. Also, I if the air quality seems low, I can leave the central air unit running on fan (unless it is really hot outside, as that blows air through the ducts in the attic which can pick up heat/cool and raise your cooling/heating bills a lot.). And yeah, air outside can be nasty...
I just wanted to interject that if you're using a carbon filter you can weigh it on a gram scale before using it. As it absorbs pollutants it will gain weight. We use carbon filters on anesthesia machines and starting at around 300-350g of carbon to start with we change them when they gain 50g of mass
I was thinking the other day about whether drawing the air from an enclosure through a bubbler tank would work, so the VOC's and anything else become suspended in the water, then replace the water periodically. Could be a cheaper solution than HEPA and charcoal filters. Also, if it worked, it might work for those people in colder countries that can't just vent to outside, due to temperature difference.
You talked about moving air around the room as well as outside, but would a strong bathroom vent work in a small room? My workspace, if you could call it that, is just a somewhat large closet. I have one resin printer and one FDM printer in there. I disconnected the AC vent from there and added a new duct with the plan of exhausting the air outside, but at the moment it only exhausts to a crawlspace. That's obviously not ideal, especially since the kitchen is right above the exhaust port, and the crawlspace runs along the underside of half the house. My idea is, since I sometimes run a second FDM printer in the crawlspace, I could probably drill a hole to the outside under the front porch, put a bathroom fan connected to that hole, and run the duct through a splitter to the crawlspace as well as to the closet. I could then cover the end of the duct in the crawlspace when I don't need it and it would exhaust residual resin fumes from the closet. Anyways all I'm really asking is whether or not a bathroom vent fan will suffice for 2 small workspaces. I also sometimes sand and such in the larger room the closet is connected to.
I bought a broken gas station fridge that's 30"x30" on the outside, Made a shelf with a drawer in it, and printed some Lack enclosure hepa filtered fan housings. As well as a small recirculating hepa fan. I've never tested the air quality in that room, but im sure it's OK.
Depending on size, orientation, airflow dynamics, and volume of material passed through it, an activated carbon filter with a HEPA prefilter lasts somewhere between 2 weeks (heavy use) and 1 year. Moderate daily use will reduce the life expectancy of the filter to 1 to 3 months. You really need monitoring devices to determine how long the filter remains effective at eliminating particles.
lol all you had to do was get a fan, exhaust tubing and vent it out the window. instead you got a bunch of fans to circulate the VOC in the room? I dont see how this is even remotely a good idea.
Great video! Air quality is recently a problem I have taken on for my setup which I recently enclosed. I print a ton of ASA, and thought I better start to take counter measures to potential pollutants. In my enclosure, I have a fresh air intake to bring cool outside air into the chamber. I also have a speed controlled (controlled by temperature inside the enclosure) exhaust fan paired with a 3 stage Hepa/carbon filter that for now vents to the room. I have been considering recirculating the exhaust into the chamber to conserve heat allow multiple passes through the filter. For now, I just have a 3-stage room air cleaner sitting on the exhaust side of my enclosure. it does seem to make a difference in the "dust" that had been settling on objects in the room before enclosing the printer. I can only assume though that the air quality is also better at this point as I do not have the tools to test that currently (next purchase).
I guess I am very lucky. I live in the woods in Northern Michigan with excellant air quality. But, this has given me much to think about as we head into WINTER and closed air flow homes.
I'm getting ready to set up my printer space. I plan on setting up a fume hood that will have a tee and dampers. I plan to have an activated carbon filter that can recirculate the air in the room and then adjust the dampers to vent outside, and a hole in the wall down low to let in clean air. Since I'll have an AC in the room I want to be able to circulate the air in the room and not just blow it all out and bring in new hot humid air. I might throw a HEPA filter in too. My resin printer, my new X1C and my IPA station will be under the hood.
Thanks for the research. I just got my first printer and was wondering about air quality. And thanks for the reminder of why we moved from the middle of Los Angeles to the mountains of New Mexico, surrounded by pine trees and chirping birds :) However, I still need to figure out ventilation for the winter months when it's too cold to leave the windows open.
THANK YOU!!! I respect the makers who equally value healthy solutions while making cool stuff. We the "followers" of all this social media content should also be hearing what content creators are doing to stay safe. Appreciate to balance between creativity and safety conscious. Thanks for raising this issue up and highlighting the importance.
Drafts and random air movements can cause huge problems with print quality... is it not an issue in your situation, since your printer room is enclosed and all the circulated air is one temperature? Also, can you let us know what that "cheap air quality sensor which measures VOC" you were using is, and where we can get one? :)
There’s some things anybody can learn as soon as you see it with your own eyes so here’s something I learned that was an eye-opener. I was playing with air filtration and to check it. I would turn off all the lights at night and use a very bright LED, which allows you to see airborne particles With extreme clarity what I learned was the unused closed room that nobody had been in or even walk-through for hours had the cleanest air simply walking through a room turns up dust, but running an air filter keeps the entire room turned with super fine. Dust! Any fan never lets the rest of it settle! VOC’s that’s a different story yeah I know carbon works great but without a VOC meter as you pointed out, it would be useless. Very good point.
LMAO, yeah. People can do what they want. I'm never going to tell anybody else what to do, but for myself I've had zero issues by simply keeping my printers in the closet. Even resin doesn't bother me.
Love your stuff! And this was super informative! Anecdotal at best. But I did a big project and had 8 p1ps running in my living room 24/7 for 15 days printing pla. I can sometimes still smell pla now. Now Henriertta Lacks story is more about how horribly the establishment treated this young ladys family.
Sucking the air out of a window (or even a dedicated hole with a dryer vent on the outside) by using a bounce house fan (and printing adapters to match dryer hose etc that are flanged to mate with the blower) will move a lot of air. I use those fans and carpet dryer fans to ventilate my shop when welding and they are aggressive. No need to filter what you completely remove.
Very well done. I think I'm going to look into an air purifier, too, and rethink where I do it, which is currently a ground floor that I don't like leaving the window open.
You need lot of circulation combined with HEPA+Activated Charcoal (for reducing small particles+chemical absorption) + UV activated TiO2 catalyst( to breakdown vocs). Also need electrostatic filtering for reducing PM2.5 count. It is better to have recirculation controlled by remote timers, than moving fresh air + exhausing pollutants for 3d printing(both resin, FDM) to extend life of filters and to limit exposure. Fresh ventillation and exhaust with inline charcoal filtering may be the only best option for laser cutters and engravers. Just some 💭♥️👍
Whoa. You're blowing my mind. I haven't heard of TiO2... or electrostatic filtering. I have a lot to learn. Where can I learn more of this without going to night school or getting a degree in it?
@@thenextlayer Actually, some HEPA units of the past came with builtin UV TiO2 catalyst(produces ozone and helps breakdown VOCs). There were also some TiO2 bulbs to remove bad odor. May be it is not that economical to add that option to HEPA units. Also the electrostatic filtering is unique in that, it uses a high voltage wire(s) to electrically charge the dust particles, which then get collected on an opposite charged paper or plates. The short comings being need for circulating air, reduced capacity(if larger particles are present), and generation of residual ozone(lung irritant). There has been atleast one consumer unit(with a single wire and a replaceable vellum like paper), and honeywell units for hvac filtering that uses plates, willneed cleaning in a dish washer. I've been using these for a while, along with many hepa units with long life filters (similar to sharp plasma clusters) running 24x7, spread out in living/bedroom areas. You can easily observe the effects of 3d printing on people with sensitive lung conditions, even without any air quality monitoring. I even developed a portable personal ventillator for that purpose. It has been the result of continued research on moving to a home with recirculating hvac(primarily all of U.S. homes). Also, if you have an unfinished attic, it could benefit to exhaust the fumes(not the laser kind, which needs exhaust to outside after charcoal filtering), safely through a wall mounted exhaust fan into the attic area.
What about those that have an open air bedslinger like a Ender 3 series, and I only print in PLA and not very often? Like I'm printing something now, but I haven't used my printer in a few weeks actually.
@@thenextlayerthe house grade ERVs/HRVs are expensive. Maybe it is time for an open source hardware version that’s closer to the DIY air filters that woodworkers use. Focus would be on exhausting the PM2.5 + VOCs and trying to condition the incoming air to remove humidity and filter it a little. Doesn’t need to be perfect.
@@thenextlayerA ERV/HRV is a fresh air filtration and ventilation device that is pretty basic at its core. It's two fans with a heat exchanger core. One fan pulls air from the outside through the heat exchanger and a filter while the other fan exhausts the indoor air through the heat exchanger to the outside. This gives you a constant flow of filtered fresh air so that you aren't adding particulates to your indoor environment and the heat exchanger core helps to temper the incoming air so that you aren't bringing in hot air in the summer or cold air in the winter.
So at least in the US the whole house units can be a few thousand for the unit plus labor and materials depending on your setup. But there are some that are more of a single room version that is somewhat like a bathroom fan that is in the 400-600 dollar range, and could maybe be diy depending on how handy you are. That might be a good small workshop size and give a good air exchange and filtering system without needing a remodel for a whole house system.
I recently had my first baby and ive been trying to take air quality in our home a lot more seriously for his sake. I keep my makers space in a separate room where i have added an air purifier an exhaust fan for my resin printer and I always have a window open so i can get some fresh air. I will be purchasing one of these dreo fans as the data clearly shows that it does a good job at circulating the air. Thank you for the video! It was just what i was looking for.
Man as an artist I have had lectures on why / basics of avoiding killing yourself via solvents and pigment poisoning. The whole lack of solid info on how / what causes issues has had me very nervous about buying a 3D printer (especially any resin based ones). I have a house rule that nail polish / acetone must be done ideally outside if not the patio entrance door way is wide open. So many glues and polishes are super dangerous to breathe in. Thank you for the information even if you didn’t follow scientific methods. ❤
Place your printers in an enclosed case (I used mdf to build a box with a door to place my printer in) and make sure it's air tight, you also want to ensure there is enough open space in the enclosed case to take your lid off resin printer and be able to do everything necessary inside. Then get a boat motor fan 3-5" and use it as a exhaust suction fan to suck out all the voc's in the case and push them through a exhaust hose or pipe headed outside your house (I cut hole in wall of house and ran it through there). From the outside of your house have the exhaust pipe or hose aim upward and be at least 3 ft above that rooms roof (to decrease odds of voc's being pushed out and pulled back in through open window). I am hazmat and HazWhopper certified, anyone wishing to handle dangerous chemicals should get the same certifications. The room I keep this case in I have two fans circulating air while a window is open. Always wear the proper PPE when 3-d printing
This is a huge wake up call for me. I got a 3d printer in 2021, and my asthma started getting worse as time went on. "PLA is safe, right?" I have 4 printers running in my basement, about 20 ft from my bedroom door. About six months ago I was admitted to the hospital with acute respiratory failure and had a cloudy ct scan indicating lung damage. We were thinking it was from covid or from thc vape pens. But I never officially had covid, and I barely used those pens in the past. Now I think it was from the printers. That's a big bummer. Time to put the hobby on hold I guess. Your comment was very insightful. Thank you.
@@mikek3658 all resins and filaments produce VOC's (resins at a higher volume than filaments when in liquid form) they are dangerous when inhaled, can cause cancer, breathing problems, calcification/crystalization of lungs and other organs (though rare, the exposure would have to be great and long term). Always wear a respirator when around resins or filaments.
@@mikek3658 fellow asthmatic here, that’s 1000% certain PLA particles 0,1 micron diameter. HEPA H13 filters manages up to 0,3 diameter. A shed somewhere outside, or a balcony.
This is a bit off topic...but those particulates will cover everything in your workspace, spread out to other areas via everyone that enters, and will be absorbed through the mouth, nose, and eyes, when you touch them. Attic fans would be great, here. They move a lot of air and have a great vent strategy. If possible, exhaust from the highest point in the "dirty space" and draw from the furthest and lowest part of the room. You should also use commercial air filters. If you run a business, you really need to use commercial solutions.
I am doing a lot of research in this area. and have some notes. I will tell you that I had to move Resin printing to the garage. and isopropyl alcohol use causes my meter to max out for tvoc. like really fast .
Yep, that is the same as my findings, but as you probably noticed in the video, turning on a powerful oscillating fan + opening a window cleared all that out in a way that even opening the window + oppposite door couldn't do.
Good points were "Even with BentoBox and such you don´t know if the air quality is good enough inside" this shows to me how important it is to increase the filtering action of the bento boxes by installing for instance a 5015 fan or similar, increasing the filter surface with a bigger filter and so on. I should err on the more clean side, because those little solutions can clean the air pretty well but it takes hours in some cases since they can´t usually speaking not keep up with the emissions while the printer is running.
Some of the Nevermore filters have VOC sensors integrated (on both sides) to indicate when the filters need changing. You can probably add an indicator (if they haven't already) for clean air.
@@sierraecho884 Yeah, the sensor does nothing to air quality, it just measures VOC concentration before and after the filter, and it should be pretty easy to program a cheap RGB indicator light with different colors for when it detects - clean inlet air (safe to open enclosure) - high VOC inlet air (don't open the enclosure yet) - high VOC outlet air (saturated carbon filter)
@@reddragonflyxx657 Still would take hours before you can open the door with those small filters and you still would have to change the filter material once per month. At least. And now you need those sensors, and wiring, and all that crap.
From those floor shots, it looks like you have a particulate issue at least as heavy as any VOC issue :). I'm lucky enough to live in that mystical, enchanted meadow called the Mountains of N Alabama, but I still use air circulation and filtration for my FDM and Resin printing environment.
One more thing to add is that every time you bring home a new product, like a printer, or anything manufactured, it may give off VOCs for a period of time. That "new smell" might seem nice, but may not be great for you.
I guess I'm screwed, lol. I've been wanting to get into 3D printing, and had picked up a printer a couple years ago that I brought back out to try using again, but the only place I can have it setup is in my bedroom. It's unfortunately a small space, and I thought of the possibility of air pollution, and been trying to come up with ideas. Currently I plan to re-arrange my room and place the printer in my closet with a ventilated enclosure that leads into a filter, but now I'm wondering if that may not be enough.
I have a fan blowing into the room, and a fan in the window blowing out. Fan into the room on low. Window fan on high. I can feel the flow go to the window. I'm also building a filter system. The printer will be relatively close to the window so it didn't have time to move elsewhere.
Theres some PLAs where i get headaches if the window isnt open Honestly i wouldn't even try printing stuff like abs without a fully filtered enclosure that vents straight out the window
What do you think they will do on the ISS or Mars when they start printing there? Sounds like a major problem when you cant just open a window to dilute your pollution. Sounds like 3D printing is going to have to be done outside the habitat (in mars atmosphere or the vacuum of space).
I've also been down the rabbit hole of air quality for VOC's from 3D printing and smoke with pollution (wildfires in my area). I think there is a critical thing people miss with particle count on air purifiers like the Dreo and any PM 2.5 meters. PM 2.5 is measured in µm (micrometer), VOC's in some publications with FDM printing are measured in nanometers. I've read a couple of them in the past and a lot of VOC's for plastic like ABS, PETG and others would be around 25 -100 nm in size which is 0.02 - 0.1 micrometer, far under PM2.5 capable measurement range. Also a bladed fan like the Dreo in the video only pushes 375cfm and there is very little static pressure especially when it reaches the window. I use a 900cfm B-AIR VP-25 with a custom 12" duct, but there are many squirrel cage style blower fans that would be smarter to use with a flexible duct. I think setting up a blower fan at one side of the room and running a duct across the room to a window and sealing the duct to the fan and window is best as long as your house has some air leakage which most do and that means there will be positive airflow into that room. You could always crack open a window in another room and the static pressure will pull air from there. The bigger the better for CFM when having a lot of printing or VOC's I think. What I've learned is my PM2.5 meters are fine to gauge the air quality for wood working and also wildfire and any outdoor pollution because with those applications there is a wide variety of particle sizes so as they all increase or dissipate and you can see from the larger particles whats happening. If you want to test your room to see what's how its working after setting up a fan system you can use a smoke test, try and fill the room and see how long it takes to filter it to clear again. You may discover that placing the fan in a different area will be more effective but keep in mind a windy day outside might limit or increase airflow as it will overcome some of the fans static pressure.
In air PM refers to solid or liquid particles, while VOC refers to gas. Methane is a VOC, as is Sarin. Both are colourless, odorless gases. The former is non-toxic enough that I wouldn't be surprised if 80% methane/20% oxygen (800,000 ppmv VOC) was breathable. The latter has an IDLH of 0.1 mg/m³ (which is ~17.4 ppbv if I did my math correctly). It *really* matters what the VOCs are, far more than their total concentration.
@@reddragonflyxx657 That makes sense. I was basing my comments on the nm measurement and comparing it to the PM 2.5 just for a size reference to the video. All the articles I've read on VOC's with 3D printing are in nanometers. It's a grey area for me as nothing is completely clear of how harmful some of the VOC's are with certain printed materials Gases seem to linger for a long time. For example any paint thinner fumes I can smell for hours if I dont have a proper ventilation fan in a well sealed room. I think the smarter thing to do is understand the room ventilation and know for sure all air is exchanging quickly.
In my garage currently have my ender 6 in a tent enclosure with an exhaust fan that goes to a rubbermade tub with some tiny holes drilled in the lid. I only print PLA and PETG. The particles are heavy enough that they just accumulate at the bottom and I just clean it up with a shop vac every 6 months and there's not that much. I make sure to clean the enclosure and the printer while wearing a respirator. My goal is to build a big enclosure made of plexiglass, silicone, rubber, and construction lumber and have a in-line fan in there to extract the air. That way I can have a decent space for doing resins and epoxy. I live in a suburb of a big metro area, so it has its issues, and there is a bunch of pollen in the air almost year round, not to mention just general dust from living in the midwest. So I'll put in an air purifier or two to handle the cars and get a hookup for the shop vac to make working with it a little cleaner. Ultimately it is worth everyone's time to at least do a little bit to prevent themselves from breathing in more crap. You are never going to be able to avoid breathing in VoCs but you can limit your exposure on things that you can control.
Great video. I would like to make a request for a video if you are willing and interested. As someone relatively newer to 3D printing and the owner of a Bambu printer, I find lots of random tutorials and information on youtube about how to tune and dial in for filament like PETG etc.. temp towers.... all types of twekas and manual setting changes... but I stuggle to find any Bambu Studio specific guides .. I see similar settings in the slicer to ones mentioned in other slices in these videos and tutorials... but I don't always know if they translate directly to a setting in Bambu Studio. I guess what I'm looking for is a Bambu Studio specific guide to tuning filaments like PETG with the right settings for temp etc.. if something already exists out there please anybody share this with me.
I live in Austin we are in cedar fever time, when the cedar trees bloom. The air quality drops everywhere here down during this time. So moving unfiltered air into the house just is 😢 a no go. On the charcoal filter on your filter , when it shows that it not reducing the air as much than I would change all filters. check on how long it takes to drop on its cleaning, is it 1 week, 2 weeks #weeks or #months. After that based on that I would set up a plan on replacing the filters in stages, based on time and printer usage. If the printer is not being used or has just a few hours or days of print time than I would not change the filters inside the print. In the military this would be call a planned maintenance schedule or Pms check list. This could be done when you are doing Maintenance on your machines. Just having a filter inside the printer is useless unless you clean the inside of the printer and your work space. At the end of the you should do a work space cleaning and printer that have stopped printing for that day. A wipe down on the print that has ended use for that day would be huge on your reduce of VOC levels. Than at the end of the week clean all the outside of the areas of the printer.
Snap, this is good advice, I didn't even THINK about pollen when I talked about forests and such, but a few comments like yours (and yours obviously) have opened my eyes.
Your air purifier is significantly under sized for the room. You want to pay attention to ACH (Air Changes per Hour) of your air filter solution. The ideal for filtering PM2.5 is 5 ACH. Clean Air Kits or corsi rosenthal box are better options than the DREO air purifier.
I'm surprised you didn't know that workshop spaces are so polluted. Every serious factory have to monitor the air quality on a daily basis and even have those monitor kits that they are putting on workers once in a while to get accurate data. The government even regulate it. I'm strongly advising every workshop worker / makers to put mask with quality filters. Still great video! Keep doing your thing!
I had no idea about that... wow! I don't have an engineering or manufacturing background, and I've never worked in a company that wasn't internet-related, so yeah, this is all new to me. Thanks for sharing. I wonder what kind of sensors etc they use... it would be good to pick some of those up for each of the rooms of my work-space
On my Lathe i have a suction tube that sucks the light dust away and dumps it in a filtered box, I was going to try it on the enclosed printer but then keeping it hot in there becomes a nightmare as that thing moves alot of air. Then i thought about recirculating the air through a carbon or panel filter but that would be hurricane force drafts with that air shifter, I Think this would be the best option but on a smaller scale. Just means spending more money. But, Health wins over money. Stay safe.
The table saw is one of the worst things to use in a closed room. The amount of particulates that puts out is crazy. In my back room, I open 4 windows and run fans if I'm running a saw, sander, or planer One of the big takes I got on this, was that if I'm printing with pla in my basement and I don't do any other processing or anything, I should be fine. The basement is open to the stairs to the top floor and it's open around the stairs too. The house is 2400 sq ft, so the total air space is pretty big. Eventually I'll be moving the printer to the back room and when I do, I'll set up ventilation for it.
Thanks to DREO for sponsoring this important discussion! Go to bit.ly/46rTY0D and get a fantastic deal when you buy a DREO air-circulation unit.
Now I want to see what effect all this has on your prints, how it affects warping, etc, and how humidity is affected by all this. This is all especially important to anyone who wants to print with materials that are sensitive to these things such as PVA.
My suggestion is to not think of it as multiple passes through a filter (or even dead spaces), but rather you are dripping warm water into a cold bathtub. It is going to take quite a while for the filtered air (warm water) fills any portion of the room. Perhaps there are additional forces at play with the fan, meaning that it's possible the fan is pushing air that is around the fan (and not only the air that is going through the filtration). An example of this is a guy trying to blow up something, but he blows much more as he backs away from the nozzle. Perhaps this is how that fan cylinder might play into the filtration ecosystem.
What's the air quality sensor you're using? Have you found it works okay?
Support Apple not just google.
Yaye DREO!
As someone who does work as a researcher with 3D printers, I agree with the majority of your points but there are two things missing. An explanation of what air you think of as safe or problematic to reference back to and the best advice when it comes to working with macro particles.
The problems with polluted air that has a high concentration of macro particles really make an impact when you both have long exposure to this air *and* when you do not ventilate your own lungs. Going out to nature\ jogging a couple of times a week or even getting back home by foot makes a drastic difference and should have been the highest recommended tip of this great video
Wow. that's something I never heard of. Good to know. I somehow thought, that all particles are kind of like asbestos. once inside lungs, they;re there.
im pretty sure this video is just a big ad for those dreo fans and needed some way to plug it
There is a far far more important part he is missing. Not all VOCs are harmful to breath. A VOC (Volatile Organic Compound) is defined as a type of organic chemical that has a high vapor pressure at room temperature, which means it can easily evaporate into the air. Alcohol is a VOC, specifically ethanol, the kind you drink, and it is generally not not harmful to breath. The only measurements he has are for VOCs and not the actual chemicals like the toxic styrene gas created during abs printing. If what we really care about is the toxic particles, why mention VOCs? Because something that can detect and measure VOCs is like $50 and something that can do that with styrene gas costs around $5,000.
Enclosing your printers in a compact space, and having a direct vent to the outside, so that you only have to circulate air through the
This entire test fundamentally ignores the fact that VOC quantity is far less of a concern than WHAT VOCs are in the air.
Nah mate, didn't you hear him, you don't have to worry about ABS now. 🤣
He's not a scientist or any sort of expert, he's a salesman
@@anthonykgarland How do you block a channel? As far as I know that's not possible, but what do I know. Hope I'm wrong there are a lot of channels I'd like to block so I'd never see them again. Like PC tech rumor channels. "the 8900xtx will destroy nvidia, the 8900xtx is cancelled, then the 8900xtx will destroy nvidia in a later video again even if it was cancelled a few videos ago".
@@anthonykgarlandChrist almighty... The topic is complex enough for several PHDs, maybe cut a guy some slack when even studies are hard pressed to actually quantify issues.
The conclusion of the test is literally that he is now going for a full air exchange first and filtration second. Which is exactly because the VOCs are more dangerous than what's outside...
I use Indoor Plant tents with fumigation holes for enclosures for my 3d printers. Then I can use exhaust fans and carbon filters and pump the air directly outside. I wear my mask with appropriate filters whenever the enclosures are open. Videos like this are important to bring this to more 3d printers attentions as this is not something people are being told about when they are buying these printers most of the time. Especially if they just buy from amazon.
Can I just ask why you still use carbon filters if you're immiedietly pumping the air outside anyways? Is it just to avoid residual stuff once you open the enclosure?
@@johannd1100 First floor window and homes in close proximity, using the filter to keep the smell down and yes, it also helps keep the residual smell in the enclosure down.
Ahah awesome I have the same thing sitting ins storage I was wondering if it’s air tight enough for this 🤙🏼 Thank you
bad for the atmosphere as well. some of these compounds can take decades to break down in nature, just like the plastics themselves.
I'm pretty sure the damage my lungs get from constantly having to be exposed to car exhaust fumes is a lot higher than the damage from printing pla
As a scale modeler who is starting to get into 3d printing - I deal with a lot of fumes from modelling glues and paints, etc., and another thing that can help with things like soldering and painting and gluing is an airbrush booth that has a fan and an exhaust hose to a window. If you've not used one before it's great for the hands-on detailed work with VOCs and I highly recommend trying one of those as well. I use it not just for airbrushing, but for gluing and sanding and everything else. Hope it helps!
I'm not an expert but what the hell is buying a bunch of tiny fans to move air around the room going to do for removing pollutants? First it should be obvious that physics dictates that bigger fans move more air. I seriously doubt those tiny Bento Boxes have any appreciable effect. Have you seen how large and heavy the carbon filters are in e.g. cannabis grow rooms? They need fans to draw air through it in order to work. Like imagine if a smoker doesn't blow air through a Smokebuddy carbon filter, but blows all the smoke into the room, and then wait for the air to magically circulate back into the filter. That's basically what you're doing in this video. Those enclosed 3D printers aren't airtight, and I'm pretty sure there's more pressure for the air to escape that box than to be pulled into a tiny filter that's not connected to anything.
Yeah, to put it nicely, this is obviously not a very brilliant approach.
As a professional whose works in advanced composite material shops in aviation I can tell you we use about a and that's just for cooling. Seriously all of this stuff should probably technically have downdraft tables and vent hoods from the word go.
Beyond that you should be wearing a full-face mask I don't know why you would think like oh and just take my mask off cuz it's so convenient but go ahead and do that all you want just know that it's in no way safe. The entire environment needs to be completely and continuously circulated and a couple fans here and there are going to do next to nothing aside from maybe get you a sponsor.
Seriously I kind of don't know why I watched this it's a bit of a joke.
Just look at the grow room fans.They have to exhaust to grow fast.
I purchased a forced air purifier designed for circulating a small house for my workspace, and that can barely keep up with my space. But he is definitely right that the printers are the least of your problems; for just FDM printing, a small fan and an open window keeps the quality high enough that my purifier rarely turns on.
Soldering and sanding are the big ones for me (I imagine laser work is even worse), and for that I have to run a downdraft table that vents directly outside, even then the purifier runs at full blast to keep AQ above 70%.
The resin printing airborne VOC is HIGHLY dependent on which resin I use; some barely kick out anything, and others quickly get AQ into the danger zone. I've noticed the flexible resins tend to be the worst, while the water washable ones tend to be the best. Here's me wishing I'd paid more attention in organic chemistry class.
It honestly just feels like a gimmick to sell the fans.
The Bento Boxes work really well. Tests have shown they eliminate VOCs nearly entirely (there was another TH-cam video on this that did a great job in a test situation). The Bento Box is designed for a closed box printer, not one that is open.
Even those of us that live in the country can't just open a window all year round. I live in midland Sweden and winter is coming. Not going to open a window or door when it's -15º outside.
There is a way to deal with it, but knowing you guys in EU with your eco and efficiency craze, you probably not gonna like it...
You see, one can use something like a radiant kerosene burner to heat your working room and it requires by design that you'll have that window open to avoid things like carbon monoxide poisoning etc. There are other options like diesel heater (that are designed for autonomous van-house kind of thing... you know those american houses on the wheels stuff) which are kind of overpowered (4-8kW) for a small room and that's exactly how you keep it warm. You just use that and open the window (not that they dump exhaust in your room, they have a pipe to put it outside through a hole in a wall).
That sure is wasting some energy but believe me, active filtering and then replacing filters, checking filters condition, buying new ones, using automatic purifiers like in this video and a bunch of other things are much more expensive than just heating your room a bit more and venting it during the cold season.
The key is to have a really tiny room where you do this, then you won't waste too much energy. Also I would rely more on infrared heating (like those kerosene ones provide) than convection through air (like deasel heaters do). It is probably more efficient to heat solid surfaces instead of the air that is being circulated anyway and would carry your heat away just like that.
Of course there are more refined solutions like vent systems with automated air filtering + air preheating or cooling down for the summer and what not, but they are probably constly (obvisouly those are for businesess, not for hobbyists) and may not be available everywhere you may want them.
@@user-qn6kb7gr1d They might have more efficient heating systems up there.
The go-to solution should be extracting the air through a one way tube, as shown at 11:00.
You make a hole in the wall, insulate it, then connect the extension
@@LollosoSiTV if heating is the main concern, I believe the go-to solution should be (not are yet) those split system heat pumps with filtered fresh air intake.
No idea why it's not a widespread thing.
Modern 3d printers usually have a vent and a reasonably well insulated chamber. So there should be not need to pollute everything in the room, those pipes can be connected just to those vents in the chamber and air dumped out through it only when it is reasonable (no reason to do that during the entire printing process in a well insulated chamber).
I’m Canadian and umm I open windows in the winter all the time…. I can’t stand stagnant air and well I hate being in 22c and up as a rule…. I’m a bit crazy that way. I tend to open the upstairs windows more since the cold air drops to the basement.
As I have learned from growing "Tomatoes" that air flow/circulation/new air, are not the same thing. You need ALL.
Thanks, that confirms my findings :)
@@thenextlayer Great video, I have been enjoying your channel a lot!
Me having my printer in my room seeing the intro of this video 😬
Me: continue printing and soldering as usual ans slowly die from cancer 🤣. More seriously, man this is a hard problem to solve when living in an apartment. Also me living in Finland doesn't make it any easier, with our cold winters...
@@Iisakki3000 I understand and I also have a soldering station🤣. I am in college so I don't have much choice too. We die but die happy with 3d printers xD
@@Iisakki3000edit: carbon filters might not be enough ...
if y'all have access to carbon filters, you can use a PC fan to make a fume extractor. With a 3d printer, you can make a moving arm to point this where you want to suck.
@@Iisakki3000 Opening a window seems like a "tempered climate"-comment. 😅
Try looking for air scrubbers. They have both HEPA-(for PM) and active coal-(for VOC) filters.
@@rafael.b.almeida For soldering i personally usr lead free solder but the fumes are still bad for you even when no lead in there and since i don't usr fume hood of at least a fan to take those fumes away i usually hold my nose closed while soldering so i don't really breath as much fumes in
I have a P1S and have printed a hood with magnetic fasteners, this attaches over the outlet on the back of the printer, and connects to a 2” duct about 15” long. This is routed through the wall of my study, and has a 3 flap cover on the outside wall. I have also removed the activated carbon filter, as it is no longer required, and restricts the flow.
When the printer is running the fumes inside the P1S are vented directly outside, and the printer operates in exactly the same way.
I just got the P1S and is also mounting an exhaust vent... Just waiting for my magnets...
Anything else is just for show...
I had a polarized media air cleaner installed on my HVAC system which has not only removed a lot of the visible household dust, but it also is rated and tested to remove VOCs.
Which one did you install? Was in installed in your printer room or inside the printer itself?
@@EnchiladaBro it’s a PremierOne P6100 whole house filter.
I started printing back in 2012, the first week I noticed the ABS filament was intolerable indoors and sent it to my garage. My 3D printers have sat in a sealed closet with HEPA filter running since bring them back in
I've always thought it was a false sense of safety when I started seeing "filtered" enclosed 3D printers, when they do a single pass and pump the air straight out into the environment
When you say out into the environment, do you mean the room or out through a hose at a window? I am trying to be very conscious of this problem, and so I'm getting an enclosure. The only problem is the enclosure that I needed doesn't come with a fan vent, so I'm going to cut one in it and stick a computer fan in it, with about a 1m pipe to a window.
@@arc5015 I just copy a other comment from this comment section you better consider:
@kevinmitchell3168 said:
Mixing up air IS A BAD IDEA! You need slow moving air flowing across the work space with fresh air being introduced where people are working, and being exhausted out on the other side of the pollution source. This is typically done with a fan pulling fresh air from outside and blowing it into a long fabric duct that has tiny holes in it to evenly introduce it throughout the entire area. The goal is to SLOWLY introduce fresh air. Then inside the print chamber, or the back side of a work bench, away from where people will be, you have the exhausted ducts. The amount of air going out should be slightly higher than the incoming so it creates a slightly negative pressure in the room and prevents polluted air from escaping into the rest of the building. You don't want fast moving air that will mix up the pollutants in the breathing area. This type of setup allows for slow air exchange and FAR less wasted energy. Filaments and printers need to be in climate controlled areas. This allows you to add a heater and/or air conditioner to the incoming duct (aka makeup unit), keeping the entire space climate controlled. You only need just enough air to ensure the polluted air is flowing away from the working area to the outside.
I got this information from a US military report where they tested air quality in hundreds of facilities with harsh chemical environments. Their finding was that the number one cause of poor air quality was fans blowing air around and mixing it up.
Minor/major detail
Formaldehyde is a nearly colorless, highly irritating gas with a sharp odor. It dissolves easily in water and is found in formalin (a solution of formaldehyde, water, and methanol). Formaldehyde is used in the manufacture of plastics; urea-formaldehyde foam insulation; and resins used to make construction materials (e.g., plywood), paper, carpets, textiles, paint, and furniture. OSHA PEL (permissible exposure limit) = 0.75 ppm (averaged over an 8-hour work shift)
OSHA STEL (short-term exposure limit) = 2 ppm (15 minute exposure)
NIOSH IDLH (immediately dangerous to life or health) = 20 ppm
Formaldehyde is a nearly colorless gas with a pungent, irritating odor even at very low concentrations (below 1 ppm). Its vapors are flammable and explosive. Because the pure gas tends to polymerize, it is commonly used and stored in solution. Formalin, the aqueous solution of formaldehyde (30% to 50% formaldehyde), typically contains up to 15% methanol as a stabilizer.
"fresh air in the bottom junk out the top" is the recommendations standard but PPM don't mean squat unless you know what your measuring for! you measured up to 6000 PPM and formaldehyde as an example is dangerous at 2-3 ppm not 6000 PPM
industrial air exchanges in higher VOC areas should be 3:1 at minimum
MSDS sheets should be included/some require a request in the the supply of each material and simply follow the safety in section 4 MATERIAL SAFTEY DATA SHEETS
Wow. Thanks for this good stuff.
I got very sick after getting into printing ABS. I got really good at it, so I had my printer going almost 24/7, it was in an enclosure, but not ventilated. It took me 3 months after I stopped all 3d printing to get better to the point my doctor was not concerned any more. Since then my printer has been in an enclosure that vents to the outside via a 4" duct and a very slow moving 80mm fan. Now that I ordered a Bambu P1S, I will design a way to route the air from the enclosure to the outside via that same duct. I am still scared to print ABS / ASA just because the smell of the filament triggers horrible memories. But I'll figure out.
@@killdozer3464 I have a P1S and have printed a hood with magnetic fasteners, this attaches over the outlet on the back of the printer and connects to a 2” duct about 15” long. This is routed through the wall of my study, it has a 3 flap cover on the outside wall. I have also removed the activated carbon filter, as it is no longer required, and restricts the flow.
When the printer is running the fumes inside the P1S are vented directly outside, and the printer operates in exactly the same way.
@@Jestey6 Would you be willing to share a link for it? Sounds like a good solution
@ If you are referring to to the Hose Mount. It is on Bambu MakerWorld, “Bambu X1C P1S Air vent 50mm Hose Mount”.
I think I added additional magnets, to ensure it stayed in place. You will see that this is for a 50mm hose, which is suitable for a short run. I think I also mentioned removing the activated charcoal filter, and using a modified tumble dryer external cover. The flow is not great, but it is sufficient, I’ve made a clip to hold the centre flap open when using the printer.
If you need a longer hose, you might require a small, adjustable speed inline fan to increase the flow. They are available online, around a tenner I recall.
@@Jestey6 thank you for the reply. I am still using the P1s as my main printer and it does ABS perfectly. The solution that worked for me was this: I sealed the enclosure completely, including removing the exhaust fan and blocking the vent. Then I printed the Cursd Dual Hepa Carbon filter, using the AUX fan. I control the fan from my filament profile settings. It works great. It cleans the air while the print is going. Once the print is finishes, it continues to filter at max power until i stop it. So the chamber air is clean when i open the printer to remove the print. I change the hepa filter about once a month, and the carbon pellets once they start becoming ineffective (every few months).
Most homes don't filter the incoming air, they often use reverse air flow through the kitchen vents! I added an external vent with 20 inch high rating and another carbon filter after that and my meters can even detect any pollution, so they filters work.
I pressurize the house lightly with the incoming fan. Then my workshop has a wind exhaust with a fan outside to muffle the noise. It clears pretty fast, a few hours, and you can keep it on, though you might want to add a heat recover unit.
What about exhaust hoods? I’m sure you could easily design an exhaust hood to go over top of your printers. I’d use it for both enclosed and open printers to try and suck up the air from those spaces. You can throw in a computer fan in the inlet and then have the hose dump it out a window.
I DO NOT recommend Dreo fans. They are extremely overpriced for what they do. I bought into the marketing and got one and they barely moved any air and they were not quiet when on high, which was the speed I had to use in order feel anything. A $17 Honeywell that looks like a Vornado copy put out WAY more air while only being slightly louder. Project Farm did a review of fans not too long ago, if you're interested in his recommendations.
I can pollute the entire room in about 5 minutes after eating a bowl or two of the wife’s chili.
Yeah you get nasty VOC emissions after chili! 🤣
Ideally you would use vent hoods and downdraft tables for all of it and then you would wear respirator whenever in the environment. Then you perform regular industrial hygiene surveys. Anything less is a half-measure.
I found regular use of a robot vacuum cut down the dust levels more than anything else and when I moved to a higher elevation, the outdoor air quality improved dramatically and it became clear that if you’re in the bottom of the valley, especially near a city or farming, the dust settles to the bottom so just few hundred feet of elevation can make all a difference in air quality
i am genuinely amazed by how far down i had to scroll before anyone mentioned pressure. the best, bar none, solution to VOCs, 2.5ppm, and anything else, is negative pressure. any 3D printer put in an enclosure should have an exhaust system that puts the entire machine in negative pressure. this means that air cannot and will not flow out of the enclosure. it will only leave via the exhaust, which you can vent directly outside, preventing it from entering your workspace in the first place. for things like soldering, chemistry has you covered with things called "fume hoods". they're enclosures that put everything placed inside them under the same negative pressure environment. nothing can leave the enclosure without going through the exhaust system. how negative of a pressure you need (practically, this means how strong the suction is) depends on what you're doing. with an enclosure like was shown in the video with the filter under the print bed, you don't need it to be that negative, or that big of a pressure difference, while the doors are closed. if you want to maintain the negative pressure while the doors are open, you need to increase the difference quite a bit, but this will introduce new noise and other problems, especially if you want your chamber to be heated.
realistically, the only option i can think of for heated chambers is to have a dedicated intake for the printer which passes the air through a heater (a DIY option would likely be a simple hair dryer or heat gun if you wanna go with more control). this way you can have the chamber still be heated, while also being able to directly vent the air outside.
Hi! That white little air quality tester I see on your video often comes with faking HCHO and TVOC sensor. It may actually not have them inside (I disassembled it and checked mine). Instead the HCHO and TVOC values seemingly depend on current CO2 value. You may want to check yours...
correct answer! True VOC meters are expensive. Certainly won't find those on aliexpress.
Affordable ppm2.5 meters do exist however.
In Canada, or at least in Alberta, weather reports now routinely include the Air Quality Health Index number. Everyone who's endured this past summer where basically every forest in the country caught fire is well aware that the outside air might be awful... Anyway, I don't know if a similar resource is available elsewhere, but if practical, checking on the local outside air quality can help make decisions about ventilation - and potentially projects. There where a few days this summer where I just shut down my 3d printer because the smoke was so bad outside I didn't want the vent fan running.
Damn, that's a good idea, too. I didn't even THINK to check the air quality index of my city, and yet, I checked it all the time when I was in China... I'm learning so much just from the comments of this video and the discussions I'm having here... I'm really glad I did this video :)
Any thought of supplementing your Dreo with a dust collector? Woodworkers use them to help keep PM2.5 levels down when sanding, sawing ,etc. It would probably extend the life of your Dreo's filters.
I was waiting for PLA is more toxic than ABS but i was mislead. My takeaway from this is if you print in an enclosed space it's pretty much just going to give you the same air quality as a city
What kind of a system can we build to automate a good strategy for dealing with air quality? Perhaps with some monitors ventilation and purification products linked to home assistant?
I would echo the earlier comments. I did research for the U.S. Army for a few years. 1 micron to .1 micron are much more likely to lodge deep in your lungs than 2.5. Your lungs don't have a mechanism to sweep out these small particles. They do for the larger ones as long as you haven't damaged them with smoking. I'm only running one printer so putting it in an enclosure and connecting it to a window with a dryer vent and 120mm fan was a fool-proof solution. The fan pulls enough air out of the enclosure to keep the printer from overheating. The whole setup was under $100 US. You and your family only get one set of lungs.
@@jeffturner415 where'd you find an enclosure that cheap or did you diy it?
@@coboss4198 I printed a connector for the hose to the enclosure. Everything else if off-the-shelf:
Printer enclosure Comgrow 3D Printer Enclosure Fireproof and Dustproof Tent for Ender 3/Ender 3 Pro/Ender 3 V2/Ender 3 S1/Ender 3 S1 Pro, Constant Temperature Protective 3D Printer Cover Room Storage 635x535x750mm
4 Inch 5 Feet Black Air Ducting, Flexible 1.5m Length Aluminum Dryer Vent Hose for HVAC Ventilation with 2 Silver Clamps
120mm ×38mm Easy Cloud Axial Fan 120V 220V Muffin Fan 110V with Variable Speed Controller, Computer Fan with AC Plug, 120mm Case Fan for PC Cooler Cabinet Receiver Xbox DVR Greenhouse, 1 Pack
"open a window" *cries in Houston swamp*
🤣
Houston has swamps too???
😂😂
@@TheBinklemNetwork it's literally called the Bayou City. We have alligators less than ten miles from my house.
@@tenchuu007 Man talk about having a bad day walking in on an alligator trying to break into your home
I could have missed it, but did you run a control experiment/test?? If not, you cannot be certain that your observed decrease in air quality within the data is directly correlated to 3D printing, filament drying, soldering and etc. For example, the observed decrease in air quality could just as plausibly be caused by urban-related air pollution.
All of my printers are enclosed with 3" ducting and large online fans sending the air from inside the enclosures outside. If I wait for prints to cool and the printer to cool wouldn't this insure a the air in the room is clean? I also put my filament dryers in a vented enclosure and do have an oscillating fan bring air from the door into the room. Would have been nice to see a test with enclosed ventilated printers etc.
At work we have a lot of printers going in the office space. I am a retired firefighter and medical responder and had to treat a fellow working for breathing the pollutants from 3D printers and we ultimately moved them to their own space with exhaust ventilation.
I am using online axial fans that are 75 cfm for each enclosure.
I have just bought a plant growing box, that can be sealed and have ventilation to a window, a friend of mine recommended us getting one as we live in an apartment with doors to only 2 rooms.. It has been hell printing anything on my resin printer bc of the air quality, and as a result i haven't really printed anything.. I really hope putting my printer in an isolated box with ventilation to the outside will help, but i think ill buy a air quality checker thingy so i can keep an eye out on ventilating our apartment too.
I do think the best thing would be to have any kind of printer in an area you aren't in often, and/or in a closed off box/cabinet/closet/whatever that can contain the toxic fumes and ventilate them out.
I want to see what effect all this has on your prints, how it affects warping, etc, and how humidity is affected by all this. This is all especially important to anyone who wants to print with materials that are sensitive to these things such as PVA, and if you end up needing to try the filaments more often as a result.
Honestly I didn't even think about Humidity in all of this. It's 74% humidity here right now, so basically I was like "screw it, I'm not going to try, I'm going to prioritize air quality and protecting my LUNGS over protecting my filament." Print quality has been fine on my open printers, but again, it's 33 celsius here... i think it would be very different if it were 8!
Humidity affects a lot more than just your filaments. Organic macro particles get coated by a layer of water and become heavier, harder to move around and exponentially more prone to aggregate or to be weighted down to the bottom air layer of the room and to the dust. Try placing the sensor on a high table one day and on the floor the next. The difference is clear @@thenextlayer
With regard to gaps in enclosures, the way most designs mitigate that is via negative pressure: The fan sucks air out of the enclosure and exhausts it via a filter. As a result the airflow through all other paths should be mostly into the enclosure rather than out. Where this gets tricky is when you use closed-loop filtration systems like the ones sold by PrintedSolid. In that case there is no "net suction" from the enclosure, and bad stuff can leak out of all of the other openings in the enclosure.
I think that your point about the relative harmlessness of printing well-dried ABS/ASA is valid.
Great video. I don't do any sanding/glueing/building in my room. That all happens in the garage (I know I am blessed to have that option). I do almost entirely FDM PLA printing, but still want to migrate them to my basement at some point.
That's a great idea. Do that + add some webcams and you're good. Just don't forget to ventilate / circulate / filter in the basement, because you don't want all that stuff building up so much.
the only saving grace of air management is negative/positive pressure
I built a fume hood in my workshop and it works great
I do need to improve the whole room circulation though
and I can't leave the hood running 24/7 so it probably leaks resin fumes a little bit
At 10:38 it looks like you have your respirator cartridges attached wrong. Assuming your mask is a 3M 7503, which it looks like, the long end should be going back towards your ears, not down. They are supposed to be keyed so they can only go on one way. Your keyed tabs are probably messed up if they let the cart's go on wrong, which also means the cart's probably are not sealing to the mask correctly. I recommend getting a new mask if you really want to be certain you are getting proper filtration.
I have build a full negative pressure exhaust system for my p1s, that sucks directly everything directly out to the window
More awareness around this is a great thing. Thanks for putting this together and giving great resources, too.
Glad you enjoyed it!
PLA irritates my throat and lungs a LOT. Asthma makes me way more sensitive than normal people, but the fact is, the nanovirus fills the entire house even with an enclosure with an exhaust hose and a fan, several closed doors, and open windows. I am waiting for a HEPA air purifier, but the PLA particles are still smaller than what HEPA can manage. Looks like a deadend. My best solution so far: open the windows and leave the house and go to the nearest mall like a bum and let the machine overlord live in my house (or give up and not print in the house, which means no winter printing). The funny thing is, I switched to FDM printing to escape from nasty resin fumes that destroy my heart, only to find out that “completely safe” PLA is an extreme irritant for me as well. But asthma aside, I don't think breathing nanoplastic is much good for anyone, even tough guys from reddit. This vid, honestly, paints a picture that is even worse than what I thought. Ugh.
Same here, I just print outside, under an awning. It solves a lot of issues.
According to publicly available articles on the Internet, PLA fumes are also harmful and can probably cause cancer. Fortunately, I don't have asthma, but during "printing seasons" I suffer from coughing, sneezing and also pain in my lungs. One of my friends has similar problems. I print almost exclusively from PLA, very rarely some small things from PETG. And what are the "printing" seasons? Up to 8 weeks before Christmas, same for Easter and about 4 weeks before summer holidays.
You should filter the air coming IN the window, also my house has the highest level of air filters in the A/C system, and to top all that off, I use an IQ Air HyperHepa filter (Yeah, REALLY expensive, but I got mine at an auction!) in my bedroom, this is designed to filter out the air using 3 stages with the last one small enough to filter out viruses. Also, I if the air quality seems low, I can leave the central air unit running on fan (unless it is really hot outside, as that blows air through the ducts in the attic which can pick up heat/cool and raise your cooling/heating bills a lot.). And yeah, air outside can be nasty...
wouldn't all this air flow hurt a non enclosed printers printing process, like the bambu a1?
I just wanted to interject that if you're using a carbon filter you can weigh it on a gram scale before using it. As it absorbs pollutants it will gain weight. We use carbon filters on anesthesia machines and starting at around 300-350g of carbon to start with we change them when they gain 50g of mass
I was thinking the other day about whether drawing the air from an enclosure through a bubbler tank would work, so the VOC's and anything else become suspended in the water, then replace the water periodically. Could be a cheaper solution than HEPA and charcoal filters. Also, if it worked, it might work for those people in colder countries that can't just vent to outside, due to temperature difference.
You talked about moving air around the room as well as outside, but would a strong bathroom vent work in a small room?
My workspace, if you could call it that, is just a somewhat large closet. I have one resin printer and one FDM printer in there. I disconnected the AC vent from there and added a new duct with the plan of exhausting the air outside, but at the moment it only exhausts to a crawlspace.
That's obviously not ideal, especially since the kitchen is right above the exhaust port, and the crawlspace runs along the underside of half the house.
My idea is, since I sometimes run a second FDM printer in the crawlspace, I could probably drill a hole to the outside under the front porch, put a bathroom fan connected to that hole, and run the duct through a splitter to the crawlspace as well as to the closet. I could then cover the end of the duct in the crawlspace when I don't need it and it would exhaust residual resin fumes from the closet.
Anyways all I'm really asking is whether or not a bathroom vent fan will suffice for 2 small workspaces.
I also sometimes sand and such in the larger room the closet is connected to.
I bought a broken gas station fridge that's 30"x30" on the outside, Made a shelf with a drawer in it, and printed some Lack enclosure hepa filtered fan housings. As well as a small recirculating hepa fan. I've never tested the air quality in that room, but im sure it's OK.
Depending on size, orientation, airflow dynamics, and volume of material passed through it, an activated carbon filter with a HEPA prefilter lasts somewhere between 2 weeks (heavy use) and 1 year. Moderate daily use will reduce the life expectancy of the filter to 1 to 3 months. You really need monitoring devices to determine how long the filter remains effective at eliminating particles.
lol all you had to do was get a fan, exhaust tubing and vent it out the window. instead you got a bunch of fans to circulate the VOC in the room? I dont see how this is even remotely a good idea.
Great video! Air quality is recently a problem I have taken on for my setup which I recently enclosed. I print a ton of ASA, and thought I better start to take counter measures to potential pollutants.
In my enclosure, I have a fresh air intake to bring cool outside air into the chamber. I also have a speed controlled (controlled by temperature inside the enclosure) exhaust fan paired with a 3 stage Hepa/carbon filter that for now vents to the room. I have been considering recirculating the exhaust into the chamber to conserve heat allow multiple passes through the filter. For now, I just have a 3-stage room air cleaner sitting on the exhaust side of my enclosure. it does seem to make a difference in the "dust" that had been settling on objects in the room before enclosing the printer. I can only assume though that the air quality is also better at this point as I do not have the tools to test that currently (next purchase).
I guess I am very lucky. I live in the woods in Northern Michigan with excellant air quality. But, this has given me much to think about as we head into WINTER and closed air flow homes.
I'm getting ready to set up my printer space. I plan on setting up a fume hood that will have a tee and dampers. I plan to have an activated carbon filter that can recirculate the air in the room and then adjust the dampers to vent outside, and a hole in the wall down low to let in clean air. Since I'll have an AC in the room I want to be able to circulate the air in the room and not just blow it all out and bring in new hot humid air. I might throw a HEPA filter in too. My resin printer, my new X1C and my IPA station will be under the hood.
What would be a good (enough) measurement device to check the air quality ? Pricerange 50 Euros or so ? What should it measure ?
Thanks for the research. I just got my first printer and was wondering about air quality. And thanks for the reminder of why we moved from the middle of Los Angeles to the mountains of New Mexico, surrounded by pine trees and chirping birds :) However, I still need to figure out ventilation for the winter months when it's too cold to leave the windows open.
Why checking only for organic compounds? And the inorganic ones? I know that all the plastics are organic compounds but..
THANK YOU!!! I respect the makers who equally value healthy solutions while making cool stuff. We the "followers" of all this social media content should also be hearing what content creators are doing to stay safe. Appreciate to balance between creativity and safety conscious. Thanks for raising this issue up and highlighting the importance.
2:19 - A negatively pressured work space using a ventilation system… wasnt shown here at all.
Drafts and random air movements can cause huge problems with print quality... is it not an issue in your situation, since your printer room is enclosed and all the circulated air is one temperature?
Also, can you let us know what that "cheap air quality sensor which measures VOC" you were using is, and where we can get one? :)
There’s some things anybody can learn as soon as you see it with your own eyes so here’s something I learned that was an eye-opener. I was playing with air filtration and to check it. I would turn off all the lights at night and use a very bright LED, which allows you to see airborne particles With extreme clarity what I learned was the unused closed room that nobody had been in or even walk-through for hours had the cleanest air simply walking through a room turns up dust, but running an air filter keeps the entire room turned with super fine. Dust! Any fan never lets the rest of it settle! VOC’s that’s a different story yeah I know carbon works great but without a VOC meter as you pointed out, it would be useless. Very good point.
For those of you who want to skip the sponsor's ad part with no real research or conclusion, click here: 20:13
LMAO, yeah. People can do what they want. I'm never going to tell anybody else what to do, but for myself I've had zero issues by simply keeping my printers in the closet. Even resin doesn't bother me.
16:07 It's worth noting that trees output a lot of VOCs too. Then there's pollen.
Love your stuff! And this was super informative! Anecdotal at best. But I did a big project and had 8 p1ps running in my living room 24/7 for 15 days printing pla. I can sometimes still smell pla now.
Now Henriertta Lacks story is more about how horribly the establishment treated this young ladys family.
I hope all is well and that you and your family are safe.
Thank you.
Sucking the air out of a window (or even a dedicated hole with a dryer vent on the outside) by using a bounce house fan (and printing adapters to match dryer hose etc that are flanged to mate with the blower) will move a lot of air. I use those fans and carpet dryer fans to ventilate my shop when welding and they are aggressive. No need to filter what you completely remove.
Very well done. I think I'm going to look into an air purifier, too, and rethink where I do it, which is currently a ground floor that I don't like leaving the window open.
You need lot of circulation combined with HEPA+Activated Charcoal (for reducing small particles+chemical absorption) + UV activated TiO2 catalyst( to breakdown vocs). Also need electrostatic filtering for reducing PM2.5 count. It is better to have recirculation controlled by remote timers, than moving fresh air + exhausing pollutants for 3d printing(both resin, FDM) to extend life of filters and to limit exposure.
Fresh ventillation and exhaust with inline charcoal filtering may be the only best option for laser cutters and engravers. Just some 💭♥️👍
Whoa. You're blowing my mind. I haven't heard of TiO2... or electrostatic filtering. I have a lot to learn. Where can I learn more of this without going to night school or getting a degree in it?
@@thenextlayer Actually, some HEPA units of the past came with builtin UV TiO2 catalyst(produces ozone and helps breakdown VOCs). There were also some TiO2 bulbs to remove bad odor. May be it is not that economical to add that option to HEPA units. Also the electrostatic filtering is unique in that, it uses a high voltage wire(s) to electrically charge the dust particles, which then get collected on an opposite charged paper or plates. The short comings being need for circulating air, reduced capacity(if larger particles are present), and generation of residual ozone(lung irritant). There has been atleast one consumer unit(with a single wire and a replaceable vellum like paper), and honeywell units for hvac filtering that uses plates, willneed cleaning in a dish washer. I've been using these for a while, along with many hepa units with long life filters (similar to sharp plasma clusters) running 24x7, spread out in living/bedroom areas. You can easily observe the effects of 3d printing on people with sensitive lung conditions, even without any air quality monitoring. I even developed a portable personal ventillator for that purpose. It has been the result of continued research on moving to a home with recirculating hvac(primarily all of U.S. homes). Also, if you have an unfinished attic, it could benefit to exhaust the fumes(not the laser kind, which needs exhaust to outside after charcoal filtering), safely through a wall mounted exhaust fan into the attic area.
I have my printer in my room because I have no other place to put it. Is there any recommendations to help?
Open windows and vent. Move air, or use vent hoods, filter, etc..
Do you print 24hr or longer prints? If so how the hell do you even sleep? 🤣
@@bobbyhenshall7464 you get used to it after a while 😭🙏
What about those that have an open air bedslinger like a Ender 3 series, and I only print in PLA and not very often? Like I'm printing something now, but I haven't used my printer in a few weeks actually.
Maybe it’s time for an ERV/HRV for your studio? That’ll filter and condition the outside air as it enters the unit.
Agree with having an ERV/HRV to about any space, these systems are not commonly known from what I’ve seen.
What’s that? Like a professional system? Sounds so expensive
@@thenextlayerthe house grade ERVs/HRVs are expensive. Maybe it is time for an open source hardware version that’s closer to the DIY air filters that woodworkers use. Focus would be on exhausting the PM2.5 + VOCs and trying to condition the incoming air to remove humidity and filter it a little. Doesn’t need to be perfect.
@@thenextlayerA ERV/HRV is a fresh air filtration and ventilation device that is pretty basic at its core. It's two fans with a heat exchanger core. One fan pulls air from the outside through the heat exchanger and a filter while the other fan exhausts the indoor air through the heat exchanger to the outside. This gives you a constant flow of filtered fresh air so that you aren't adding particulates to your indoor environment and the heat exchanger core helps to temper the incoming air so that you aren't bringing in hot air in the summer or cold air in the winter.
So at least in the US the whole house units can be a few thousand for the unit plus labor and materials depending on your setup. But there are some that are more of a single room version that is somewhat like a bathroom fan that is in the 400-600 dollar range, and could maybe be diy depending on how handy you are. That might be a good small workshop size and give a good air exchange and filtering system without needing a remodel for a whole house system.
I recently had my first baby and ive been trying to take air quality in our home a lot more seriously for his sake. I keep my makers space in a separate room where i have added an air purifier an exhaust fan for my resin printer and I always have a window open so i can get some fresh air. I will be purchasing one of these dreo fans as the data clearly shows that it does a good job at circulating the air. Thank you for the video! It was just what i was looking for.
Nice. You’re gonna be a great dad… put the kids and their health first!
Hell yeah, we need to talk WAY MORE about this!
Be safe! Got me thinking about air filtration, thanks!
Man as an artist I have had lectures on why / basics of avoiding killing yourself via solvents and pigment poisoning. The whole lack of solid info on how / what causes issues has had me very nervous about buying a 3D printer (especially any resin based ones).
I have a house rule that nail polish / acetone must be done ideally outside if not the patio entrance door way is wide open.
So many glues and polishes are super dangerous to breathe in.
Thank you for the information even if you didn’t follow scientific methods. ❤
Place your printers in an enclosed case (I used mdf to build a box with a door to place my printer in) and make sure it's air tight, you also want to ensure there is enough open space in the enclosed case to take your lid off resin printer and be able to do everything necessary inside.
Then get a boat motor fan 3-5" and use it as a exhaust suction fan to suck out all the voc's in the case and push them through a exhaust hose or pipe headed outside your house (I cut hole in wall of house and ran it through there). From the outside of your house have the exhaust pipe or hose aim upward and be at least 3 ft above that rooms roof (to decrease odds of voc's being pushed out and pulled back in through open window).
I am hazmat and HazWhopper certified, anyone wishing to handle dangerous chemicals should get the same certifications.
The room I keep this case in I have two fans circulating air while a window is open.
Always wear the proper PPE when 3-d printing
This is a huge wake up call for me. I got a 3d printer in 2021, and my asthma started getting worse as time went on. "PLA is safe, right?" I have 4 printers running in my basement, about 20 ft from my bedroom door. About six months ago I was admitted to the hospital with acute respiratory failure and had a cloudy ct scan indicating lung damage. We were thinking it was from covid or from thc vape pens. But I never officially had covid, and I barely used those pens in the past. Now I think it was from the printers. That's a big bummer. Time to put the hobby on hold I guess. Your comment was very insightful. Thank you.
@@mikek3658 all resins and filaments produce VOC's (resins at a higher volume than filaments when in liquid form) they are dangerous when inhaled, can cause cancer, breathing problems, calcification/crystalization of lungs and other organs (though rare, the exposure would have to be great and long term). Always wear a respirator when around resins or filaments.
@@mikek3658 fellow asthmatic here, that’s 1000% certain PLA particles 0,1 micron diameter. HEPA H13 filters manages up to 0,3 diameter. A shed somewhere outside, or a balcony.
@@mikek3658thc vape pens are really bad from what I've researched.
Ok that's a lot of info that's scary...i just got my 1st printer....if it's in the furnace room and isn't running constantly do i still have to worry?
This is a bit off topic...but those particulates will cover everything in your workspace, spread out to other areas via everyone that enters, and will be absorbed through the mouth, nose, and eyes, when you touch them. Attic fans would be great, here. They move a lot of air and have a great vent strategy. If possible, exhaust from the highest point in the "dirty space" and draw from the furthest and lowest part of the room. You should also use commercial air filters. If you run a business, you really need to use commercial solutions.
I am doing a lot of research in this area. and have some notes. I will tell you that I had to move Resin printing to the garage. and isopropyl alcohol use causes my meter to max out for tvoc. like really fast .
Yep, that is the same as my findings, but as you probably noticed in the video, turning on a powerful oscillating fan + opening a window cleared all that out in a way that even opening the window + oppposite door couldn't do.
@@thenextlayer air circulation is the key!! I'm building an air circulation exchange system for the house and garage.
You try heat exchange unit?
But can I integrate Dreo into Home Assistant without having to sign up for an account or app?
You need to sign up for a DREO account I'm afraid :(
Where can I find your background print files? The black and orange
I did a whole video about it check my back catalogue
Good points were "Even with BentoBox and such you don´t know if the air quality is good enough inside" this shows to me how important it is to increase the filtering action of the bento boxes by installing for instance a 5015 fan or similar, increasing the filter surface with a bigger filter and so on. I should err on the more clean side, because those little solutions can clean the air pretty well but it takes hours in some cases since they can´t usually speaking not keep up with the emissions while the printer is running.
Some of the Nevermore filters have VOC sensors integrated (on both sides) to indicate when the filters need changing. You can probably add an indicator (if they haven't already) for clean air.
@@reddragonflyxx657 The sensor does not make the air cleaner sooner it just indicated when it´s done, but that´s a good point.
@@sierraecho884 Yeah, the sensor does nothing to air quality, it just measures VOC concentration before and after the filter, and it should be pretty easy to program a cheap RGB indicator light with different colors for when it detects
- clean inlet air (safe to open enclosure)
- high VOC inlet air (don't open the enclosure yet)
- high VOC outlet air (saturated carbon filter)
@@reddragonflyxx657 Still would take hours before you can open the door with those small filters and you still would have to change the filter material once per month. At least. And now you need those sensors, and wiring, and all that crap.
From those floor shots, it looks like you have a particulate issue at least as heavy as any VOC issue :). I'm lucky enough to live in that mystical, enchanted meadow called the Mountains of N Alabama, but I still use air circulation and filtration for my FDM and Resin printing environment.
Bingo. City air quality. With construction. So many particles
I’m a new 3d print enthusiast, but a long-time HVAC technician. You should look into a Panasonic erv, or their exhaust fans. They are good stuff
Are they priced for consumers? A lot of the exhaust systems I found with good reviews were $800+
on fdm's I only print with nylon and pp, the printer's plastic smells more than the filaments.
How's that OnShape class going?
One more thing to add is that every time you bring home a new product, like a printer, or anything manufactured, it may give off VOCs for a period of time. That "new smell" might seem nice, but may not be great for you.
True!
I guess I'm screwed, lol. I've been wanting to get into 3D printing, and had picked up a printer a couple years ago that I brought back out to try using again, but the only place I can have it setup is in my bedroom. It's unfortunately a small space, and I thought of the possibility of air pollution, and been trying to come up with ideas.
Currently I plan to re-arrange my room and place the printer in my closet with a ventilated enclosure that leads into a filter, but now I'm wondering if that may not be enough.
I have a fan blowing into the room, and a fan in the window blowing out. Fan into the room on low. Window fan on high. I can feel the flow go to the window. I'm also building a filter system. The printer will be relatively close to the window so it didn't have time to move elsewhere.
Theres some PLAs where i get headaches if the window isnt open
Honestly i wouldn't even try printing stuff like abs without a fully filtered enclosure that vents straight out the window
What do you think they will do on the ISS or Mars when they start printing there?
Sounds like a major problem when you cant just open a window to dilute your pollution.
Sounds like 3D printing is going to have to be done outside the habitat (in mars atmosphere or the vacuum of space).
Or just PETG, not so much ABS, and not soldering and gluing
I've also been down the rabbit hole of air quality for VOC's from 3D printing and smoke with pollution (wildfires in my area). I think there is a critical thing people miss with particle count on air purifiers like the Dreo and any PM 2.5 meters. PM 2.5 is measured in µm (micrometer), VOC's in some publications with FDM printing are measured in nanometers. I've read a couple of them in the past and a lot of VOC's for plastic like ABS, PETG and others would be around 25 -100 nm in size which is 0.02 - 0.1 micrometer, far under PM2.5 capable measurement range. Also a bladed fan like the Dreo in the video only pushes 375cfm and there is very little static pressure especially when it reaches the window. I use a 900cfm B-AIR VP-25 with a custom 12" duct, but there are many squirrel cage style blower fans that would be smarter to use with a flexible duct. I think setting up a blower fan at one side of the room and running a duct across the room to a window and sealing the duct to the fan and window is best as long as your house has some air leakage which most do and that means there will be positive airflow into that room. You could always crack open a window in another room and the static pressure will pull air from there. The bigger the better for CFM when having a lot of printing or VOC's I think. What I've learned is my PM2.5 meters are fine to gauge the air quality for wood working and also wildfire and any outdoor pollution because with those applications there is a wide variety of particle sizes so as they all increase or dissipate and you can see from the larger particles whats happening. If you want to test your room to see what's how its working after setting up a fan system you can use a smoke test, try and fill the room and see how long it takes to filter it to clear again. You may discover that placing the fan in a different area will be more effective but keep in mind a windy day outside might limit or increase airflow as it will overcome some of the fans static pressure.
In air PM refers to solid or liquid particles, while VOC refers to gas.
Methane is a VOC, as is Sarin. Both are colourless, odorless gases. The former is non-toxic enough that I wouldn't be surprised if 80% methane/20% oxygen (800,000 ppmv VOC) was breathable. The latter has an IDLH of 0.1 mg/m³ (which is ~17.4 ppbv if I did my math correctly). It *really* matters what the VOCs are, far more than their total concentration.
@@reddragonflyxx657 That makes sense. I was basing my comments on the nm measurement and comparing it to the PM 2.5 just for a size reference to the video. All the articles I've read on VOC's with 3D printing are in nanometers. It's a grey area for me as nothing is completely clear of how harmful some of the VOC's are with certain printed materials Gases seem to linger for a long time. For example any paint thinner fumes I can smell for hours if I dont have a proper ventilation fan in a well sealed room. I think the smarter thing to do is understand the room ventilation and know for sure all air is exchanging quickly.
In my garage currently have my ender 6 in a tent enclosure with an exhaust fan that goes to a rubbermade tub with some tiny holes drilled in the lid. I only print PLA and PETG. The particles are heavy enough that they just accumulate at the bottom and I just clean it up with a shop vac every 6 months and there's not that much. I make sure to clean the enclosure and the printer while wearing a respirator.
My goal is to build a big enclosure made of plexiglass, silicone, rubber, and construction lumber and have a in-line fan in there to extract the air. That way I can have a decent space for doing resins and epoxy. I live in a suburb of a big metro area, so it has its issues, and there is a bunch of pollen in the air almost year round, not to mention just general dust from living in the midwest. So I'll put in an air purifier or two to handle the cars and get a hookup for the shop vac to make working with it a little cleaner. Ultimately it is worth everyone's time to at least do a little bit to prevent themselves from breathing in more crap. You are never going to be able to avoid breathing in VoCs but you can limit your exposure on things that you can control.
Makes me feel great having one bedroom/office/workspace and plenty in nice Massachusetts window opening weather.
Great video. I would like to make a request for a video if you are willing and interested. As someone relatively newer to 3D printing and the owner of a Bambu printer, I find lots of random tutorials and information on youtube about how to tune and dial in for filament like PETG etc.. temp towers.... all types of twekas and manual setting changes... but I stuggle to find any Bambu Studio specific guides .. I see similar settings in the slicer to ones mentioned in other slices in these videos and tutorials... but I don't always know if they translate directly to a setting in Bambu Studio. I guess what I'm looking for is a Bambu Studio specific guide to tuning filaments like PETG with the right settings for temp etc.. if something already exists out there please anybody share this with me.
i have a Bambu X1c and print PETG with the setting built in with 0 problems
I live in Austin we are in cedar fever time, when the cedar trees bloom. The air quality drops everywhere here down during this time. So moving unfiltered air into the house just is 😢 a no go. On the charcoal filter on your filter , when it shows that it not reducing the air as much than I would change all filters. check on how long it takes to drop on its cleaning, is it 1 week, 2 weeks #weeks or #months. After that based on that I would set up a plan on replacing the filters in stages, based on time and printer usage. If the printer is not being used or has just a few hours or days of print time than I would not change the filters inside the print. In the military this would be call a planned maintenance schedule or Pms check list. This could be done when you are doing Maintenance on your machines. Just having a filter inside the printer is useless unless you clean the inside of the printer and your work space. At the end of the you should do a work space cleaning and printer that have stopped printing for that day. A wipe down on the print that has ended use for that day would be huge on your reduce of VOC levels. Than at the end of the week clean all the outside of the areas of the printer.
Snap, this is good advice, I didn't even THINK about pollen when I talked about forests and such, but a few comments like yours (and yours obviously) have opened my eyes.
How worried should I be about printing PLA with an activated carbon filter, an enclosure (BambuX1C) and an air purifier adjacent to the printer?
Sounds like you’re taking precautions! But not a bad idea to test the air quality
Your air purifier is significantly under sized for the room. You want to pay attention to ACH (Air Changes per Hour) of your air filter solution. The ideal for filtering PM2.5 is 5 ACH. Clean Air Kits or corsi rosenthal box are better options than the DREO air purifier.
I'm surprised you didn't know that workshop spaces are so polluted. Every serious factory have to monitor the air quality on a daily basis and even have those monitor kits that they are putting on workers once in a while to get accurate data. The government even regulate it.
I'm strongly advising every workshop worker / makers to put mask with quality filters.
Still great video! Keep doing your thing!
I had no idea about that... wow! I don't have an engineering or manufacturing background, and I've never worked in a company that wasn't internet-related, so yeah, this is all new to me. Thanks for sharing. I wonder what kind of sensors etc they use... it would be good to pick some of those up for each of the rooms of my work-space
On my Lathe i have a suction tube that sucks the light dust away and dumps it in a filtered box, I was going to try it on the enclosed printer but then keeping it hot in there becomes a nightmare as that thing moves alot of air. Then i thought about recirculating the air through a carbon or panel filter but that would be hurricane force drafts with that air shifter, I Think this would be the best option but on a smaller scale. Just means spending more money. But, Health wins over money. Stay safe.
whats a good air quality meter? a lot of them are poop
The table saw is one of the worst things to use in a closed room. The amount of particulates that puts out is crazy. In my back room, I open 4 windows and run fans if I'm running a saw, sander, or planer
One of the big takes I got on this, was that if I'm printing with pla in my basement and I don't do any other processing or anything, I should be fine. The basement is open to the stairs to the top floor and it's open around the stairs too. The house is 2400 sq ft, so the total air space is pretty big. Eventually I'll be moving the printer to the back room and when I do, I'll set up ventilation for it.