I’ve seen a couple of reviews on the Creality Enclosure, but honestly I’m glad I didn’t see them before buying two. The reviews weren’t very good, and suggested that the enclosure was a bad idea. I have used an enclosure for my heavily modified Wanhao i3+ that I bought off of a friend, who used the Ikea Lack end table setup for building the enclosure. He printed a lot of ABS using this setup, and I have had good luck printing in the enclosure. So I have been a fan of enclosures for a while. I had planned on building or buying some sort of enclosure for my Tenlog TL-D3 Pro printers for a while. There are a lot of advantages to enclosures which reduce warping, reduce sound transmission (a little), and allow a lot more control over VOC’s, particulates, and other byproducts that come from 3D printing, which we probably don’t want to be breathing.
I have been printing primarily with PLA and PETG, which are more benign than things like ABS and HIPS, which off-gas some chemicals you don’t want to breathe. But they still have some small particulates that float around, so ideally those would be controlled, and potentially filtered. But, what drove me to make these purchases, was that when reprinting prints that I was successful with this summer, I started having print failures when printing during the winter. As it turns out, printing in my hot garage during the summer, verses printing in my basement during the winter, had enough of a temperature differential that the PETG was warping, causing layer shifts when the printer head hit parts that were warping, and several of my prints failed, or had warping and artifacts that were not acceptable. This temperature differential allowed the parts to shrink and warp, pulling at least part of the print off of the bed.
So, I looked into what I could build verses what was out there, and honestly what made the most sense to me, was the Large Creality Enclosure, which is designed for the CR-10, and actually fits the Tenlog TL-D3 Pro. In fact, it was the only enclosure I found that would fit it, however, Warm.fit now makes an enclosure specifically designed for the TL-D3 Pro.
Setup is quick, but it is large enough that it won’t fit through standard interior doors of a house, so I had to partially disassemble it to move it from one room to the other. It has an aluminum frame, with plastic connectors, and a well built enclosure, with slightly confusing instructions, but I just figured out how to assemble it without instructions, as they weren’t overly helpful. Assembly is pretty quick.
With test prints, printing PETG at 240 degrees, with a bed temperature of 90 degrees worked well. Internal temperature of the enclosure was about 30C, which was not so hot that it caused any problems with any internal plastic parts because it is way below the glass transition point for even PLA. It’s also not so hot I am really concerned about the electronics overheating.
It does a really good job of insulating. My thermal camera shows the outside of the enclosure at between 26-30 degrees (80-85 F) in a 24 degree (75 F) room. So it still radiates a little heat, especially around the zipper and access ports, but really it keeps most of the heat in, thanks to the reflective fabric on the inside. It does reduce sound some, but doesn’t sound proof it as advertised. It is completely sealed though, even having a draw string and sock around the cord access port. When I open it after a print, there is a smell, which may be the enclosure, or could be concentrated PETG particulates. I plan to print a HEPA and Charcoal air filter that I can put inside to help filter out particulates while it is printing.
In my experience, the enclosure works as expected. It’s not super cheap, but for a large printer like the TL-D3 Pro or CR-10, I don’t think an Ikea Lack enclosure will work size wise, and by the time you buy plexiglass, and side panels, and print all of the parts, I think the Creality Enclosure will be comparable in cost, but will require far less time and work, and has greater portability.
One problem that putting it into an enclosure presents, however, is that it cuts out any light, except that which comes in from the front window, so an internal light becomes a necessity. So I designed and printed a 2020 mount to 1/4” 20 stud, and then mounted one of my MiniCine Lights, which works great for lighting up my printer bed.
Since the enclosure works for my application, reduced or eliminated warping, reduced sound, and controlled particulates, at this point, I would recommend the enclosure.
Disclosure: Creality did not provide these enclosures to me, I paid for them myself.
