Adding a 24V safety relay for the heaters, any thoughts?
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Putting interlocks and checks on the coil side of the relay is the approach I used on a test system I built for a previous employer. It can reduce "diagnostic coverage" which is how much the system can be checked for correct opperation, but some of that can be covered with procedure. We're not needing a high performance level of the interlock compared to industrial systems such as robot cells where the probability of injury is far higher.
Risk of contact welding is significantly dropped by the use of suitably rated fuses to limit the current to well within the specification of the relay. Picking the relay to match the load is an obvious step amd thankfully inductive poad is minimal. Yes relays can fail shut but it isn't their common failure mode and relays are far more tollerant to transient spikes than MOSFETS.
Guided contact relays are expensive, but if the contacts on one pole weld shut the whole relay stays in the active position. You can use spare normally closed contacts to create a latch with a push button which effectively checks the relay each time you start the system.
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Meltable heater fuses are common in all commercial products, why not use one for the bed? Normally they don't allow too much current to pass as they are intended to be used on mains so the heaters that run on mains can have the main heater wire just wired trough fuse, and if you are running a DC heater then it's required to either pass the main mains powering the printer trough this fuse or find thermal fuse with higher current capacity. You can easily find 10 and 15 Amp ones, that should be enough even for most DC powered beds.
e.g. Thermal Fuse 10A 250V 120˚C
or something like this https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/cantherm/SDF-DF144S/317-1135-ND/1014764
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@Danal said in Adding a 24V safety relay for the heaters, any thoughts?:
(1) Trusting firmware for safety, if not designed from the very beginning around total shutdown driven by a hardware watchdog (charge pump, etc), is not safe.
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To be clear: Relays are useless, and possibly worse than useless, by given a false sense that they accomplish something.In case of my 3D printer there is such a thing as 'good and unintrusive enough'. Quick incomplete analysis:
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Bed heater stuck on full heat probably won't cause disaster; it is made out of aluminium, ceramic mat as insulation, silicone heater, supported on PTFE bushings and stainless steel screws. No real danger until the autoignition temperature of the plastic on top is reached and it is quite unlikely that the temperature rises that far given the limited power density of the heater.
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Nozzle heaters stuck on full heat are worse, but only if they are buried in plastic. If they are free in the air, they bubble and boil plastic out, the last bits of plastic exit the nozzle in a fierce gaseous jet, and the silicone sock might turn dark brown and fall apart. But as long as the cooling loop keeps running no life threatening situation develops.
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Motors are unlikely to burn, electronics are flame retardant enough and far away enough of flammable materials. Unlikely to cause a fire there.
Considering the above, being able to cope with a single point of failure and doing so preferrably before permanent damage is done is sufficient for me. This is something well within the capabilities of a mechanical relay and regular firmware. The remaining issue is that the Duet CPU currently is a single point of failure; if the processor decides to hang after the heaters and PS are turned ON there is no second mechanism left to act on that.
Regarding the AFO fireballs and similar solutions: I was about to buy a couple of them. But I asked two independant persons with a lot of knowledge and experience with firefighting before I did so. One had actually tested these fireballs, the other had no personal experience with them but knew what I was talking about. Both said independantly of each other 'Do not bother with them unless you really have to. It is better than nothing, but their their effectiveness is too low. If you want actual protection instead of a good feeling, use a sprinkler instead. Way cheaper also'.
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@DaBit said in Adding a 24V safety relay for the heaters, any thoughts?:
use a sprinkler instead. Way cheaper also
Could you expand on that? It would seem a sprinkler requires a water supply, and it is hard to see how that is cheaper.
Delta / Kossel printer fanatic
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@DaBit said in Adding a 24V safety relay for the heaters, any thoughts?:
..................... It is better than nothing, but their their effectiveness is too low. If you want actual protection instead of a good feeling, use a sprinkler instead. '.
Better still, use a clean agent fire extinguisher as I mentioned above - much kinder to the electronics than water (or foam).
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But nasty to people I guess? add ventilation or oxygen alam or no big deal?
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@bearer Not sure about that TBH. I don't think they are desperately harmful - at lease there are no warning stickers to that effect. It is necessary to use a size which is appropriate to the volume of space in which it is enclosed but I think that's more to do with ability to put out a fire if the extinguisher was too small. The only thing I can add is to quote from the site that I linked too above which states "Typical applications include Boats, Computer Rooms, Clean rooms, switch rooms and telecomms, Data Storage Areas and art storage rooms."
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.........bit more information here - https://blog.koorsen.com/a-comparison-of-the-three-most-common-fire-suppression-clean-agents-inert-novec-1230-and-fm-200 which indicates that clean agent systems are not a health risk in themselves - at least that's my take on it.
@zapta - apologies for going off at a tangent in your thread.
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@deckingman i did have a read and couldn't say for sure which gas it is and if it was lighter or heavier than the oxygen its meant to displace, in any case displaced oxygen isn't a good thing for people. how dangerous it is depends a little on how it behaves in the event of a leak. it listed nitrogen but not sure if thats just a part of it or the whole thing.
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@bearer Yes, not sure either. But I guess faced with a room full of smoke, the best advice would be to "leg it", regardless of what the atmosphere contained in addition to the smoke and other noxious combustion products.
In my own situation, the extinguisher is fitted to a fairly well sealed, enclosed "booth" which itself is inside my garage. So in the worse case scenario, I'd open the garage roller door to give plenty of ventilation before opening up the "booth" (after the fire has been extinguished of course). My main reason for fitting it was that the booth itself is made from MDF and painted, so nice and flamable -
@deckingman no, the worst case scenario is a leak or otherwise unintended discharge without a delay to allow evacuation of personnel; maybe a garage is less of an issue but given nitrogen actually kills people in industrial settings where the danger should be known I'd hesitate to recommend something like that for use in residential settings without much clearer warnings or monitoring.
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@bearer That's true - hadn't thought about errant leakages.
Edit. But try as I might, I can't find any evidence that clean agent fire extinguishers are hazardous to health (unless you act really stupidly). My searches keep coming with sites such as this https://resources.impactfireservices.com/are-fire-suppression-systems-harmful-to-humans
TL:DR quote "These systems are generally people-safe and approved for normally-occupied rooms when designed within appropriate criteria."
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@deckingman Maybe its better if you ask the manufacturer what the appropriate design criteria is; the US is or is looking into using nitrogen for their capital punishment - which I doubt they'd do if it didn't have some adverse health effects.
Maybe they have added a scent or colour to the gas, idk. But inert gasses are dangerous, even a common CO2 extinguisher can take care of both you and the fire if you use it in a small basement without some thought to your own safety.
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@DaBit said in Adding a 24V safety relay for the heaters, any thoughts?:
given the limited power density of the heater
I have 750W, 1000W and 2500W silicone heaters here on some aluminium beds ... never tested how far they can go but they get up to 100C in seconds, I would never allow them to run without meltable fuse for security. Running low power beds that would settle at max power around 100-150C is safe but I don't run those and more and more printers are made/upgraded with high power beds.
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@bearer I appreciate your concern but extensive searches on my part don't return any causes for me to be concerned on my part. These readily available clean agent extinguishers replace Halon which is now banned in the UK for health reasons. In the worse case scenario, I'm reasonably confident that my extinguisher will put out any fire, without itself damaging the Duet boards as other system might do. At the same time, because the cylinder size is matched to the enclosure volume, I do not believe that it poses any significant health risk should it discharge inappropriately. Now I really do think that we ought not to hijack @zapta's thread any more than we have done already.
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@deckingman, I find it interesting. Alternative ways to achieve same goal.
Edit: I would think that with electrical fire it's important to disconnect power otherwise it will keep igniting. Is it so?
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@zapta Quite possibly. That's why I have a smoke alarm too. That would probably go off before any fire really got hold enough to trigger the automatic extinguisher. Realistically, my printer probably has more layers of protection against fire than any of the appliances in my house - including our built in electric ovens. Prior to moving it to it's new home which is fitted with an automatic fire extinguisher, it resided in a spare bedroom without any fire extinguisher but I still slept peacefully at night.
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@zapta said in Adding a 24V safety relay for the heaters, any thoughts?:
I would think that with electrical fire it's important to disconnect power otherwise it will keep igniting. Is it so?
that would probably vary quite a lot, but I'd guess more often than not, "no" as fuses would trip, flammable materials get burned up and if the fault required some logic state to start odds are that would be dead in the water.
however getting the power cut would certainly be a good thing
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@bearer most off the shelf fire alarms have a way to tie into other fire alarms so if one is triggered they all beep. Trying to find decent documentation on that is difficult though.
There are probably off the shelf systems for industrial environments that kill power on fire detection.
With UPS, the cut obviously has to be on the protected side of the batteries!
All that said the probability of a fire starting in a well designed system with thermal fuses, well protected wiring, redundant thermistors, heater interlock, etc is minimal and a fire proof cabinate design isn't without its challenges and risks strength to resist sudden increase in pressure and where and how that pressure is vented for the first two.
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Anybody got a Whirlpool, Hotpoint, Indesit or Credit tumble dryer? Come on, own up - there are 5.3 million of you out there with these defective appliances. Here in the UK there are on average 60 fires a week caused by faulty appliances - mostly tumble dryers and washing machines. And of course, the recent Grenfell disaster was caused by a defective fridge/freezer. The moral of this story? Don't set the washing machine, dishwasher or tumble drier going, then go off to work or go shopping. (A bit more difficult to do with a fridge freezer though.............)
