The PrintBox is more than just a 3D printer enclosure—it’s a step toward safer, smarter printing. With advanced air filtration and real-time monitoring, it ensures your health and the quality of your prints are never compromised. I have attached to this article some useful links for you to read more about what we talked in this article. We’ll post another article soon explaining how we decided to sell the enclosure and why. Stay tuned
How we got here
Jan 2, 2025 – By Fabrizio
Preamble
As you’re discovering this project, you might be wondering who are we? By day we are a group of Aerospace engineers pursuing a bachelor at TU Delft, but by night we are makers that have been in the 3d printing space since 2016. We saw this community change and adapt over the years and we decided to contribute to it. At the same time, one of our partners is the owner of the Aliexpress store Blurolls.
How It All Started:
As 3D printing enthusiasts, we noticed the impact of emissions on our health and workspace. Printing with materials like ABS and PLA releases fumes and ultrafine particles that can linger in the air, potentially causing respiratory issues. Despite the growing popularity of 3D printing, there weren’t enough solutions addressing air quality concerns in a practical, affordable way.
In addition to air quality, temperature fluctuations and dust interference often led to poor print results. We wanted to create an enclosure that not only protected users but also optimized the printing process. So when starting the design of the enclosure we put forward some design goals:
- Reduce Environmental Factors: Drafts, dust, and fluctuating temperatures often caused warping and failed prints.
- Reduce Noise and Clutter: The constant hum of the printer and the tangle of cables disrupted both focus and workspace organization.
- Improve & Monitor Air Quality: Fumes and particulates generated during printing raised health and safety concerns, especially in enclosed spaces.
- Fire detection and suppression: 3d printers are great machines, but sometimes accidents happen and they might catch on fire. We wanted to be able to detect this and eventually suppress it.
- Make Something Modular and Open Source: Some solutions on the market where really niche to a printer, others sacrificed build quality for ease of production, and most importantly they were expensive!
- Give additional features that improve the 3d printing experience: Having an enclosure gave us the possibility of adding more features that could be useful, including temperature sensors, led rgb lighting, filament weight sensing etc…
At the moment i think we got close enough to all of these design goals to launch the enclosure and let the users enjoy it!
The Design Phylosophy
Health & Safety First
We believe that every maker deserves a safe environment to create. That’s why air quality and monitoring were at the forefront of our design process. By integrating smart sensors and advanced filtration, we’ve created an enclosure that protects you without compromising performance.
Community driven Innovation
Throughout the development process, we collaborated with 3D printing enthusiasts to refine the enclosure. Their feedback ensured the final product addressed real-world challenges effectively.
Building the Community
We’re proud to offer an open-source project that invites collaboration and customization. Makers can access our detailed documentation, assembly guides, and STL / STEP files to personalize their enclosures or contribute to the design.
Conclusion
Links / References
- Open Source Initiative (OSI) – Learn about the principles and benefits of open-source development.
- GitHub – Explore open-source projects, including PrintBox’s repository (if hosted here).
- Prusa Knowledge Base – In-depth tutorials and guides on 3D printing.
- Bambu Lab – Resources on high-quality, automated 3D printing.
- Introduction to Air Quality Monitoring – Learn about the importance of air quality sensors.
- How Air Quality Sensors Work – Technical insights into sensors commonly used in monitoring systems.