Automate Your 3D Printer Enclosure

If your 3D printer is sitting there exposed to the entire room, you should consider an enclosure. That will usually improve print quality by helping the printer maintain temperature, while reducing sound and fume/smell pollution in the room. A big cardboard box will perform the job in the pinch, but you can do a lot better than that. Follow this tutorial from Caelestis Workshop to build your own automated smart enclosure for your 3D printer.

This is printer-agnostic and should work with any model of 3D printer. It is, essentially, a smart switch system that plays nicely with automated setups. When combined with Octoprint, for example, it can turn on your printer, enclosure lighting, and webcam, and then start a job. While printing, it can control power to the ventilation system in order to maintain a desired temperature. After the job finishes, it can turn everything off to reduce power consumption. This is especially useful for anyone who wants to use their 3D printer while they’re away from home.

The ”switches” here are relays, which let low-voltage DC (like from a microcontroller or single-board computer) control high-voltage AC power. In this case, the single-board computer is a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B. It can toggle the relays on or off using its GPIO pins and those relays control the AC power flow. When, for example, the 3D printer’s power connection runs through one of those relays, the Raspberry Pi can turn it on and off.

The wiring for other systems and peripherals will depend on their power needs. A fan, for example, might only need 5VDC or 12VDC, but the Raspberry Pi can still control that through a relay. An LED strip may not need to go through a relay at all (depending on the type), because the Raspberry Pi can control it directly. In the build shown, an 8.5A 12VDC power supply provides power to the peripherals that need that. Those that require 5VDC can get it from a simple buck converter.

While there are other options, it makes sense to run OctoPrint on the Raspberry Pi. That is designed for 3D printer control and is quite versatile thanks to the available community plugins. The hardware all fits into an attractive 3D-printed enclosure — though it may require tweaking if your setup doesn’t match the example.

This won’t be a turnkey solution for most people, but it does provide a starting point for 3D printer automation.