Enclosures and overheating

I keep my printer in a cooler area, which gives me serious delamination issues when trying to print in ABS. As far as I can tell, the best solution is to enclose the printer to keep the heat in. My thought would be a pretty simple box enclosure made from MDF with some acrylic windows.

Would I need to worry about overheating the electronics or motors on longer prints? I was thinking about possibly venting the enclosure, but that would create a draft in the enclosure and result in further ABS problems. Has anyone tried a homemade enclosure and had success?

 

So long as the internal temperature does not go above ~40C (maybe 50C at most) you should be okay. Once you reach a certain point, two things can start happening. The steppers in the enclosure can overheat and/or enough heat can trickle down to the arduino and cause components on that to overheat.

If the chamber ever overheating became an issue you could rig up a fan and vent to blow off some of the heat. Kind of like how these temperature controllers work for BBQ.

http://pitmasteriq.com/products/automatic-temperature-control.html

 

My enclosure design does not cover the bottom so it's able to pull in cool air to cool the electronics. Never had heat issues.

The stepper motors are safe till 80C when the magnets begin to demagnetize. But it's hard to get that hot without external heating.