What kind of ventilation in an enclosure for ABS

Hello

I want to print ABS on my ender5 pro that is in an ikea lack enclosure. What kind of ventilation do l need being that there is no window nearby .
Will an air scrubber be sufficient or do l just need ventilation with fan and filter.
Picture of scrubber off of thingiverse.
Any help would be appreciated

It is worth caution ABS can be nasty. The best is outside vented. I am leery of diy filtration there is no certainty. There are units available that will do what they claim as they are tested and regulated. The purchased units are going to typically run a few hundred $$ to thousands. I know its more than the printer in many cases.

You need a low particle size mechanical filter mixed with a carbon system. What you have posted is likely better than nothing but not much IMO. The enclosure ideally would be air tight (reasonably sealed) and have inlet and exhaust that is filtered.

Perhaps something more like this:

Remember the carbon needs regular changing so the cost is on going.

The better solution to all of the above is to use an alternative. Petg being the most obvious. ABS excels at impact and heat resistance, so does nylon, poly carbonate as well.

There are many materials and each has things they are suited for or not. If you explain what properties you want ABS for they MIGHT be an alternative that is less toxic.

I print a bit of ASA (just as toxic) only in the summer and I relocate the printer so it can be vented outside, I have a friend that prints in a styrenes in a shed during the summer.

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might be helpful

Just looked at the printing material properties table and l think l will leave ABS alone for now. I do print with petg and lm kind of liking nylon.
What do you think l need to know about nylon.
Is it safe to print like petg? I have an enclosure do l need ventilation or circulation of air I side enclosure?
Any info would be greatly appreciated.

No. Nylon has different hazards.

Loosely there are two types of hazards emisions and nanoparticles. Emissions could be irritants, carcinogenic, bad for you. This is why the filter you linked is maybe an issue can it clean and handle fumes? Maybe or not at all.

Nanoparticles are micro bits of plastic, they can enter the lungs and never leave, That is also bad news. They can be filtered out with good quality filtration.

Some filaments have one ) PLA- nanoparticles, many both ( ABS) Nylon has Caprolactam emissions that are an irritant, and generally not good for you perhaps less toxic than ABS.

Generally speaking melting plastics are not going to be healthy. there isn’t good scientific data, it takes a long time to start and complete testing. Lots of guessing not too much hard data.

(remember this group sells products it is blurry lines)

How dangerous this all is is a big question mark, what the long term effects are as well. I have worked with Chemicals for almost 30 years. What my call is, what you don’t know will kill you. Chemicals are the most dangerous when the hazards are unknown and what the long term effects and how they enter the body are unknown. The amount of uncertanty and speculation is a huge red flag.

We all need to make choices of what is or is not safe. I would advocate as much as reasonable. I tend to print questionable filaments when I can use a enclosure with a dryer vent and line fan out the window. Other wise I have a carbon hepa 3d printed filter thing on during printing. I don’t have a big industrial unit at home there is one at my work. I don’t think my diy is effective (I have a base of comparison) but it is better than nothing.

I am not a doctor not chemical engineer. I am just doing and making the best educated guesses I can for myself.

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We sell some very cool BOFA filters at reasonable prices that work well with ABS: Fume Extractors - 3D Printing Canada

In my personal opinion, having any 3d printer in a room that can’t be outside vented is non-optimal. I have very sensitive lungs but I’ll notice even when printing PLA. For ABS, I try to stay out of the room the printer’s in for a couple hours after the print finishes, to let my vent fan do its thing. (Since I’m also letting the printer cool slowly to ambient to minimise warping, this doesn’t really add any time to the task.)

Anyway, it seems clear that anything that melts plastic is going to have side effects that you don’t want to breathe. My advice - being, of course, very ignorant of your personal set-up - is to try and find some way of venting the printer room to the outdoors.

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Indeed, ABS is very toxic when printed, and you were right to say that it is important not to be exposed to its toxic emissions. Reducing your exposure time to nanoparticle emissions during printing is crucial to protect your health. We recently conducted a study on this subject by testing nanoparticles emissions depending on the filaments used, if you are interested you can find it here: https://www.alveo3d.com/en/study-harmful-emissions-3d-printing/