Speed up 3D prints & save money. Insulation is important! 

I'm really glad you touched on enclosures, but I really wanted to see what improvement you got with both the bed insulation AND the enclosure combined.

Some people have been asking about fumes from this being heated up. Based on the piece that was labelled, this is LDPE foam. I looked through MSDS for this material and it only seems to be hazardous when heated to the point of melting. Of course there will be variations in foam used, so if you are concerned, please use cork or another material. The main message from me in this video is that insulation is worthwhile and that anything will likely be better than nothing, so insulate away. www.redwoodplastics.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/LDPE-2012.pdf www.simco.net.au/wp-content/uploads/MSDS-PE-Foam.pdf www.interpak.ltd.uk/Downloads/Novostrat%20Fire%20Safety.pdf

I've been doing this for a few years. This also works great for older printers with 12v beds. Mine struggled to heat and hold the bed @ 100C for ABS until I insulated it, now it has no issue at all.

Really interesting tests and results. I dod enjoy this video a lot. Thank you.

I have moved the racking in my shed to create a false room for my 3d printers and use all the packaging to build a sound reduced area. I'll give this a go. Cheers

Just wanna stress here, some materials are not only flammable, but also emit super toxic, thick, and lots of smoke when ignited. Don't use this stuff without testing it first. Also consider the stuff they might emit when warm... No idea how they behave then. Be safe.

So far I've been using this type of foam to help organize/hold my tools in the shop, saves plenty of $ compared to buying the branded stuff and works just as well. Stack the sheets with spray adhesive, then contour cut around your tools and peel away as many layer as you need :)

Thank you for considering fire hazards and showing how to test it!

FANTASTIC video, Thanks for sharing! I wish I had thought to experiment with this when I had the space to use my 3D printer.

I did this to my Ender 3 v2 shortly after I got it, over a year ago. I used a piece of foam core, held in place by Kapton tape and the corner bed mounts. Power consumption dropped, PID tuning changed. ONE BIG DOWNSIDE: it takes the bed longer to cool off! I have some purpose-made insulation for appliances to try, but the foam core works well enough that I'm not going to try the new stuff until I do something to the printer where I need to remove the bed. Thanks for the video!

Nice video. I sometimes wondered if this would help but never realized that it was something that some printers already had

Another great informative video, did this to both of my printers when i first got them. an easy mod to achieve.

Yes, I have been using this way quite a lot of times. Almost all of my printers that didn't come with insulation below the bed from factory have these pieces of packing-foam added. And yes, also first testing for fire-hazard Also Using the foams for insulation and just building a complete enclosure from the foams as well. Just uses some pins and/or tape to connect the big pieces of the foams and then around the printer or better half-inside so that the electronics are outside this kind of fast-made enclosure. Printing some hinges is easy to make a door but already covering most sides in this self-made foam-box helps a lot too. holes can be covered with packaging-tape. i like to use the white foams that come with some printers to the inside or cover some foam with some white paper. i actually never used capton-tape under the bed, but just put the foam under the plate. Also under the printer itself if it does not have a fan there. It makes less difference then the other sides but it is fast and easy to do and you can attach the sides to it with just some metal pins/parts you have or printed pins from left-over filaments or printing-tests. Cutting: I generally use a warm soldering-iron or a melting-wire for this. This gives very straight and closed edges that are a bit more firm then when cut with a knife. About VOC's and such: I tested it and it was not measurable in changes, of course inside the case the normal fumes get higher as expected but easier to capture and ventilate outside the room or with a small airfilter then when it is in an open space. most of the foam does not get really hot during printing since the underside of the bed is way less hot then the upper-side especially at normal print-temperatures of 48-75 degrees that I use most often (PLA, flex, PETG and sometimes ABS, all on top of flex or fixed plates). Also about energy-saving: do not print on glass since that is also a good insulator (less then foam) as we know from using it for windows for example. It needs more time to heat up and after the print to cool down so especially with big printers this is a noticable amount of energy that is first stored and then lost.

Very interesting topic. I've added an acoustic sponge as sound insulation for my custom-made wooden enclosure for Snapmaker 2.0 A350. Interestingly, it preserves the temperatures very well and allows the heated bed to reach and maintain higher temperatures for printing ABS even with such a large heated bed. That sponge for acoustic isolation is also safe from fire. The best part is that its screen/controller is on USB-C, so by adding a simple extension cable it can be used outside of the enclosure without worry that it will overheat and damage after excessive use.

My room gets noticeably warming when printing with an open-frame Ender 3, so anything to help cut down on that waste heat is a plus. This video definitely gave me something to think about.

For my old JGA5, used a sheet of 3mm or so 'cork' and a thin layer of self-curing silicone adhesive.

So happy to contribute a fun research project! Thanks for doing this!😎

I see the Dani Ric t-shirt after his win at Monza last weekend

Awesome video and testing! I only missed the enclosure plus isolated bed together. I would like to see more videos about the enclosure and isolation. Also you could add a aluminum foil under on the foam to see if make any difference

Since last year electricity got quite pricey here in Germany😮‍💨 So I will definitely try that bed isolation hack with the packaging foam soon. Thank you👍

This video gave me the idea of making an enclosure out of foam. You can get rigid foam insulation panels for pretty cheap. Something like foilboard would work.

The PID parameters for the bed before and after would also be an indicator of thermal efficiency.

Nice tests! I can recommend self adhesive automotive insulation. It can handle high temperatures and is pretty cheap.

I used corkboard to insulate my bed, attached with high-temperature aluminum flue tape. The kapton tape that I had been using for the wiring didn't seem to have enough adhesive strength for me to be confident in it as a means to attach the insulation long-term.

Great information! Thank you!

I saved about 5 whole minutes every print. Really adds up.

I use a cork tile for my insulation. With the bed at 80 degrees the tile is barely warm so I think it is doing a good job.

Awesome use of that packaging foam. Great how you showed it’s thermal property. Got me thinking can I use this on my car..😂😂😂 “All roads lead back to a car”.. Or should it be, “what came first, the road or the car”.😂😂 Going by this video, I must say the Artillery X1 heat shielding ain’t too bad.... Heat shielding being the key word. 🤓

Yeah I had some LDPE from printer packaging. I taped it under the bed and tried it. It set off the fire alarm and partially evaporated. I am now successfully using cork.

I use foil backed foam that is generally sold for car sound and heat insulation. Come in rolls with self adhesive back. It appears to be similar to what comes on the biqu b1

I've always been using that insulation foam with glue on one side and aluminium foil on the other that they have pretty cheap on Aliexpress, never even bothered testing a comparison (what's the point of seeing how much worse it gets when saving .... 2 dollars?), would be interesting to see a comparison between insulation materials in the future. I can imagine there won't be extreme differences, but just like the enclosure test showed, it might actually have a considerable impact when you insulate the bottom from all 3 forms of heat transfer.

I just orderd some sound isolating foam to cover my printers enclosure from the inside, let's see if it also helps isolating heat as well

Hi Mikel, you can test cork sheets as a better insulation. Cork is cheap, easy to cut and also not inflamable. Cork has been usted as thermal protection both on Soyuth, Geminis and Apollo Space programs.

I have high temp adhesive foam with an aluminum backing, but I haven't benched it, though it prevents thermal runaway prevention from being a problem at under 15c ambient.

My heated bed insulation is radiator reflection foil lined with kapton tape, it is cool to the touch indicating the heat isn't being lost much

Was VOC's considered with this? Heating up foam can release some pretty nasty chemicals depending on the type of foam.

your videos are very interresting !

Nice going with the DR3 t-shirt

I used granulated rubber mats for the inside of my enclosed printer. They insulate but also damp vibrations and noise.

I use car engine bay heat shield adhesive foam. You can get them in many different thicknesses and the have a silver/gold IR reflective layer that helps reflect heat/light.

Great experiment. Thank you

Unless you have enclosed chamber with the intention to print abs, then the radiation off the bottom serve as chamber heating source.

DR3. Great t-shirt Michael.

I use a silicone sheet as insulation, followed by a final layer of acrylic sheet to exert good clamping force from the bottom.

looks like i have something to do this weekend

I looked at using PE foam for this but the degradation temperature (80-120C) was rather low for my taste

I had used my foam from my Ender 3 packaging and put it under the bed, but it was rubbing on my Y-stepper motor and nudging the front of the bed downward when running a mesh with my BLTouch. I tried unwinding the bed level screws as far as I felt safe to see if I could get enough clearance, but that endeavor was unfruitful.

Good tip - but DON'T use a polyolefine foam (PE/PP as used as packaging material for most 3D printers) as it is usually very flammable and NOT self-extinguishing (test a small piece first). If I had to, I'd probably use spray-on PUR foam in a flame-retardant formula or better even a mineral fiber product wrapped in aluminium foil to prevent particles getting into the air.

My enclosure for my Ender 5 gets to 60+ degrees without an additional heater. I will be testing efficiency soon too, I assume it will be a good bit more efficient thanks to the surrounding air temp being so much higher. I thought about adding a heater but unless I need higher air temps for printing there is no point, I can print ABS now with zero warping. I used reflective foil insulation for loft insulating

Great video

I want to know how different bed materials affects heat efficiency. Will for example adding a glass sheet add a lot to heating time and power consumption? A flex plate? Buildtak vs Pei etc. Or even the colour of the bed surface, if I recall, black colours not only absorb heat faser, the also radiate heat away faster than white colours?

It would be interesting to see if putting an insulation pad on top of the bed during initial heating made any significant difference to the time to temperature.

At what temp does the foam burn? What is the additional risk of putting flamable material next to heating elements?

on the ender 3, it may help to keep the electronics under the bed cooler as well.

I coated the underside of the bed with RTV silicone. Its less than 10 dollars for a caulking gun sized tube. I used the high temp because why not. There is a lot of acetic acid off gassing until it cures a day later. It is safe to touch now and is completely fire safe and also non conductive. Also it cant fall off or debond.

Thanks to artillery for already doing this for me👍🏾

A added a piece of cardboard covered in aluminium tape covered in kapton tape (to prevent short circuits) attached with kapton tape to the bottom of the bed. Unfortunately the kapton tape got unglued and cardboard dropped onto the carriage. Anecdotally, the setup seems to be even worse than before. Your video gave me some ideas about using foam wedges to prop-up cardboard agains the bed. Now with the wedges, I was able to heat up the bed to 110C outside of the heated chamber. Previously I was only able to heat up the bed to 107C inside of the chamber. Based on this, I suspect that the bed cools down mostly due to airflow, and blocking it in any way brings efficiency and the reflectors might not matter as much.

I grabbed me some cermaic insulation for my Prusabear. You only gotta grind a metal pipe to hammer trough the holes for the screws under the bed. Helps A LOT with heat up time. Also i'd be scared to use some packaging material since it is usually not fire retardant. Good for you to test it beforehand but the fumes it gives out are probably not exactly healty :|

I used cork board on my Ender 3 pro a couple of years ago. Absolutely no problems and I assume (no measurment equipment) I have saved enough electricity to pay for a spool of filament by now!

As far as enclosures go, I have gotten great results using half inch pink insulation foam board. It gets the air temp inside my Ender 3v2's enclosure to over 60 °C. This is actually too hot for the printer to function correctly for extended periods of time.

Hello. Nice video. I have a question. What if you used dow insulation foam for better thermals ?

I changed the bed heater om my Flsun SR over to a mains powered silicone heater pad and insulated it with cork board underneath, with the aim of having a shorter heat-up time and higher max temp. But I made the mistake of using a 1/4" thick plate of aluminum to replace the thinner circuit board heater as a base. More thermal mass, heat-up time just as long, with a delay in the surface reaching the same temp as reported by the thermistor, takes longer for the bed to cool. Oh well, I'm not about to peel the heater off of the plate and ruin the adhesive. I guess that at least I'm putting less strain of the 24 volt PSU.

Would be interesting to also see this before and after PID tuning on the bed

Would like to see compared test on Aerogel Insulation , the foam and others. What is the flash point of each type of material which type is high and which out gases on each material is safer.

Those large aluminum heat sinks, um support bars, made a heat insulation barrier, trapping the heat in the center. As you can tell from the FLIR camera.

Alright, you convinced me :D

Nice video 🖖 👍

I like to use these Panels for install behind heaters, on the wall, they are Form too bit with aluminium coating and glueside..

do you agree the whambam enclousure is the same as a regulat plant tent ?

Please can you do a video on filament sensors, I'm interested in how the prusa ir sensor works, I wanted to use it on my ender 3 but I don't know how to use it and how it is wired.

It's a really good idea to insulated the bed. I think this can be improved if you added som reflective material, like aluminium foil tape, so you can be sure that the most of the heat goes to the bed, or just using a pease of aluminium foil from the kitchen (with the sheiniest side to the bed) ;)

I had been using some insulation that I bought off aliexpress, and that was OK but after about 6 months it had become dry and brittle. I was looking for an alternative right about the time ths video came out, and so I used the foam that came in one of the printer boxes. I tested that it was fire-proof before fitting and it was good, so I attached to the bottom of the bed. That's been working well for a few months now, but a few days ago I removed the bed and found that the foam had completely melted where it came into contact with the heater-pad. I print a lot of ABS (bed temp: 100C, enclosure: 60C) so it has been subjected to a lot of abuse. I realise that there is probably a large variation in the pieces of foam that come in printer boxes, and some may well be able to withstand the high temps that my printer is subjected to, but I just wanted to share my experience so that others who are contemplating this can check for themselves. So now I'm off to find a sheet of cork and see if that works.

Great video thank you :)

We use a red fire rated foam from a spray can to block fire hazard during frame construction in a home. Wondering if a layer of that would work.

The aluminised-foam stuff you can get for use with cars should be good. It’s what Creality use on the inside section of their large beds. I bought some pre-made Ender-3 sized pieces from AliExpress and they seem to work well. I haven’t yet got around to making a full underside for my Ender 5 Plus from a larger piece of this material.

In this case a mention of the tricked out voron called the DoomCube is warranted. The doomcube is essentially a voron with a double pane insulated enclosure (and a bunch more rigidity mods)

I wonder how easy it would be to do this on the CR-10 Smart. It has a rigid, non-adjustable bed mounted to the tracks with 16 screws.

I bought some ceramic fiber insulation paper for my AC bed heater a few weeks back. but looking at the negligible results, not sure it's worth the effort taking things apart.

I saw the other day an insulation pad that was a silver foil on the outside and not sure what sticking to the bed side. or maybe the sound deadener and heat barrier they use on car floors, Something like Dynamat ??

You could try adding a fan inside the Ender 5 enclosure to generate some airflow that helps evenly spread out the heat generated from the heater units. It should help even more than reflective tape, based on what i found out when building a drybox with active heating. Naturally make sure it doesn't make print pop off the bed while printing by blowing air directly on top

You should test the application of thermal compound between the Heater PCB and the print surface, that way the heat transfer can potentially be a lot more even. Also, you should slap some Low-E window films on the acrylic panels of the printer enclosure.

I tried melamine sponge as insulator. It worked fine, but I messed up installing it. Now i'm using 10-15 layers of glass cloth wrapped with kapton tape. Even if heatbed is at 110 deg C, I can easely touch it's bottom.

Nice t-shirt!

Silicone mats like the ones used in laminating machines come in different sizes and thicknesses and are rated for 300C.

I thought about using a survival blanket, but since you got some aluminium tape, how about adding some of that on the back of the foam to imitate the standard product ? Thanks for the tests o/

yo I brought an ender 3 a few months ago and I am experiencing the blank screen of death. Is there anything I could try to fix it?

I don't really use any kind of special insulation, since my printers don't use DC-powered PCB-type heaters anymore but mains-powered silicone heaters. It simply does the job. In the past, though, I tried cork sheets as insulation, as well as packaging foam. Surprinsingly, it didn't make much of a difference.

I use aerogel for my Mk3s, seems to work well.

Would adding a reflective surface to the top during warming aid in speed? Thinking it might help keep heat in the plate and would just involve placing a piece of reflectex on the bed during warming and removing to print. Can you test this also?

Where did you find the 3D Model of the Ender 3? A link would be great.

Could you make a video about ptc ceramic air heater

DId you try insulated + encapsulated? I doubt there would be anything different much there, but I'm curious lol.

Use the thermal camera on the insulated side to see what material minimises heat lost the most

The PTC heaters are self regulating... so the temperature is the temperature. It will heat up faster and maybe print better but the temperature of the enclosure is fixed.

What about the reflective tape on the side of the foam closest to the bed

I was thinking about using some aerogel insulation that I have around the house.

You compared FLIR image gradients with no scale (min-max values). How can you make that comparison? Or did you have a fixed scale?

Thanks for the video. What about a silicon mat for insulation? Some vendors have a silicone sock for the print head to help keep it clean and to help insulate it. Does that silicone sock make much of a difference for energy efficiency?

I'll probably go for a acoustic mat. In addition to the fact that they are self-adhesive, they have certificates for non-flammability and non-dusting. The only downside is that they usually come in thicknesses from 1 cm.

Anyone else use high temp gasket seal tape from their bbq smoker? I have a bunch of it laying around the house and put two and two together a few months ago. It works really well 🙂