Resin heater
The room my printer is stored in isn't terribly warm since it's in a workshop without central heating - it's only heated when people are in there which isn't very often.
I've had several failed prints with delaminations and splits all over the model that go away when I surround the printer with storage heaters and heat the room to over 25 degrees celsius.
This is consistent with my experience of other printers and the solution is usually to add a heater to the setup to keep the top half of the printer above room temperature.
To that end I've rigged up an Arduino with some heating pads and a temperature sensor but I was wondering if anyone has had any success heating the vat directly?
I saw a post on Facebook for a different resin printer where the author had achieved some success with a heating belt wrapped around the vat paired with a controller but assuming the clearances around the vat will allow the band to fit when it tilts, the thought of running mains voltage around the printer concerns me a little, not to mention the hassle of disconnecting the whole thing to remove the vat to clean it.
RE: Resin heater
If you want to avoid mains voltage, you should be able to heat the pads with DC voltage or even 24 VAC with a standard instrumentation transformer. To achieve the same level of heating you would need a lot more current than is required with mains voltage, of course.
I don't use a resin printer yet, but could you use a small DC fan (as are used on computers) to recirculate air past a heater of some type and then over or around the resin vat?
RE: Resin heater
could you use a small DC fan
That could help, only problem is there's not a lot of space in the enclosure around the build plate so it'd require some experimentation to not interfere with the operation of the printer.
RE: Resin heater
Has anybody come around to see a lean design for a Prusa SL1 resin heater? I do not really like the idea of putting a heater unter the hood but would rather prefer to heat the vat directly.
Has anybody ever tried to stick little heating cartrige(s) into the vat body (after drilling suitably positioned holes)?
RE: Resin heater
Could the UV LED be used as a heat source?