Home› JGAurora A5 & A3S› Modifications & Upgrades
Please note: the forum is closed.
No new user registrations are accepted. For more info, please click here.

Make Thermal Runaway Detection Less Sensitive?

cs2000cs2000 Posts: 56🌟 Super Member 🌟
in Modifications & Upgrades

Hi all,

Bit of a strange one possibly. My printer, due to its size, and the relative smallness of my home office space, has to live out in my shed. Its a pretty well built solid shed, but doesn't have any thermal insulation. I also haven't had the time or the materials at this point to build an enclosure for the A5, but it is on the list of things to do.

The printer seems perfectly happy out there when I'm printing PLA, but when I do ABS, due to the low-ish temperatures in the UK at times of the year (its 12c today) it usually throws an error "Heating failed, system stopped! Heater_ID: bed" when I'm heating the bed up to 100c.

I know this is thermal runaway protection doing its magic, which one day may prove to be useful, but in my current situation its causing me failed prints & also means I cannot leave prints running overnight due to the temperature dip over the night time periods.

Is there anything I can modify within the community firmware to make the thermal runaway detection routine a little less sensitive to prevent this from happening? Or is that just flat out a bad idea?

For what its worth, when the machine has been running hot for a bit, the shed reaches a higher ambient temperature and the printer is happy, but I usually have to leave the printer pre-heating for 45+ mins, restarting it if the systems detects any failures to achieve this.

I obviously don't want to disable the protection, one day it might actually save me!

And yes, I know this is a bit of an edge case, but its the situation I find myself in :)

Thanks.

Comments

  • Samuel PinchesSamuel Pinches Posts: 2,997Administrator
    Yep, you can change the sensitivity of the settings in the configuration_adv.h file in the firmware. You can control what deviation is considered acceptable before a thermal runaway is triggered. But, a better option is to put the printer in an enclosure :smiley: #newproject
    Thanked by 1cs2000
  • Samuel PinchesSamuel Pinches Posts: 2,997Administrator
    edited May 2019
    You can also put some insulation on the bed to help it preheat faster, a couple minutes before you start printing. Two tissue boxes work well for me.
    Post edited by Samuel Pinches on
  • Der_MuckDer_Muck Posts: 265🌟 Super Member 🌟
    I agree with Sam, printing ABS without an encloser is passible but useless. You will never have any benefit of ABS when you print it without an enclosure. The layerbonding of the ABS will be a joke, even when you print it with 260-270°C (only passible with a mod)
    Thanked by 1cs2000
  • cs2000cs2000 Posts: 56🌟 Super Member 🌟

     Thanks for the replies :)

    Ive actually done quite a lot of ABS printing this last week without an enclosure when I managed to sneak the printer into the house for a few days before it was found and I was told to remove it again :D I've found if I keep the room door closed, I actually get very good results.

    I know I really need to get this enclosure sorted, I need to make a trip to IKEA to get that Lack Table, then see how much larger I need to make the shelf I built for the printer out in the shed, then print the parts required to make the enclosure that I uploaded to Thingiverse. next time we go near an IKEA, im getting one of those tables so I can start this thing :)

Sign In or Register to comment.