Cetus 3D Printer cover with pdf plan.

Outside with Printer installed

Inside, thermometer left, cable cutout top, peep hole and plug left

View through the peep hole with thermometer and printer.

Filament Side of Cover

Hi, If you are reading this and don't have a Cetus 3d printer, then you might want to  waste your time somewhere else.  But if you do, then this may be of interest.  The Cetus printer comes without a cover and also does not operate well in cold temperatures.  But if you put an insulating cover over it, the heat from the motors and extruder is kept in, and it can operate well in room temperatures of about 5 degrees C.  

There was a recent contest Cetus ran for the design of a cover, but I can't find the link for that, but anyway here is my effort.  This is a functional cover.  It doesn't put the printer on display as clear covers do, just does the job of holding its heat in and should not be too hard to build.  Here is the web folder containing the pdf plan.

The enclosure is designed with all the corrugations horizontal, and that should help with the heat transfer from the from enclosure: hot air can travel up the corrugations if they are vertical.  Here is a link to the material I used, I got mine from Bunnings. An alternative material would be heavy cardboard, and a recycled bike box (often given away free from bike shops here in Australia, just ask) would be ideal and plenty large enough.

The plan, download it from here

There is an opportunity for Cetus to help there users out here.  If the packaging the printer came in were made for reuse as all or part of a printer cover, or even if they printed a template for a cover on the packaging, it would help users get more out of the printer.  A few years ago I raised a patent for "useful packaging for cycles" which is accessible via the download spec. link here.  Exactly the same principles could apply for the Cetus packaging.

As far as the printer goes, it has worked very well for me.  I'm a mechanical engineer who is finishing a masters degree in industrial design , and since getting the Cetus a few months ago, I have been developing designs on it to help me get into phd studies.  Some of the designs are summarised here and you can follow the link to get to stl files for printing.  Look forward to your feedback on the printer cover design.

Regards  Steve Nurse