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>To reduce fire risks should something like this week's errors happen again, all of the company’s 3D printers will also be updated to continuously monitor the “

>To reduce fire risks should something like this week's errors happen again, all of the company’s 3D printers will also be updated to continuously monitor the “hotend and heatbed temperature,” alerting users when a fault is detected, and automatically turning off heater mechanisms. So their current product offering includes a heating element capable of starting a fire but no monitoring or cutoff?

amluto 3y ago
From the article, it sounds like there is a temperature sensor, but it’s not enabled in software.
KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
There are lots of hardware features that enable cutoff (such as thermal runaway detection) but that's irrelevant to situations in which the environment has not been prepared for printing. For example, your workshop may be well ventilated during the day and completely closed up at night. All the safety features in the world don't add up to a 100% safe usage experience for any piece of hardware. You don't want your printer doing this for the same reason you don't leave your table saw running when locking up for the night. Technically safe, but unadvisable.
- thfuran 3y ago
  >All the safety features in the world don't add up to a 100% safe usage experience for any piece of hardware Yes, obviously. But that doesn't mean you should omit basic safety features.
  - KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
    Which, they didn't. Per the aforementioned hardware safety features. Extremely broad and reliable rule of thumb: hardware safety features > software safety features
dawnerd 3y ago
They have a physical thermal fuse too that wasn’t mentioned.
thenickdude 3y ago
The temperature of the heating element is regulated, but there can't be thermal sensors on everything. The typical disaster on 3D printers is that the print detaches from the bed and sticks to the nozzle instead, which the printer doesn't notice, and so keeps extruding plastic into this obstruction, resulting in the nozzle being encased in a big blob of plastic. This isn't immediately a fire risk, because the hottest point will still be the nozzle which is temperature-regulated, but due to ongoing mechanical damage you start to risk things like the thermistor and heater wires being damaged, and that can cause havoc. Prusa recently introduced thermal modelling on their printers which detects heating anomalies like this, because the hotend becoming encased in plastic changes the rate of temperature leakage to the environment, and so the required heater power. The idea is that you can catch the issue at a very early stage.

amluto 3y ago

From the article, it sounds like there is a temperature sensor, but it’s not enabled in software.

KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago

There are lots of hardware features that enable cutoff (such as thermal runaway detection) but that's irrelevant to situations in which the environment has not been prepared for printing. For example, your workshop may be well ventilated during the day and completely closed up at night. All the safety features in the world don't add up to a 100% safe usage experience for any piece of hardware. You don't want your printer doing this for the same reason you don't leave your table saw running when locking up for the night. Technically safe, but unadvisable.

thfuran 3y ago
>All the safety features in the world don't add up to a 100% safe usage experience for any piece of hardware Yes, obviously. But that doesn't mean you should omit basic safety features.
- KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
  Which, they didn't. Per the aforementioned hardware safety features. Extremely broad and reliable rule of thumb: hardware safety features > software safety features

dawnerd 3y ago

They have a physical thermal fuse too that wasn’t mentioned.

thenickdude 3y ago

The temperature of the heating element is regulated, but there can't be thermal sensors on everything. The typical disaster on 3D printers is that the print detaches from the bed and sticks to the nozzle instead, which the printer doesn't notice, and so keeps extruding plastic into this obstruction, resulting in the nozzle being encased in a big blob of plastic. This isn't immediately a fire risk, because the hottest point will still be the nozzle which is temperature-regulated, but due to ongoing mechanical damage you start to risk things like the thermistor and heater wires being damaged, and that can cause havoc. Prusa recently introduced thermal modelling on their printers which detects heating anomalies like this, because the hotend becoming encased in plastic changes the rate of temperature leakage to the environment, and so the required heater power. The idea is that you can catch the issue at a very early stage.