Warning: my 3D printer started smoking after I left it running overnight in my garage

I left my Ender 3 printing a 12 hour part last Tuesday and woke up to a burning smell. The thermistor wire had melted against the heater block. Lucky I had a smoke detector out there. Now I never run prints longer than 6 hours unless I'm home. Has anyone else had a close call with overnight prints?

3 comments

3 Comments

miles_sanchez9d ago

Honestly man, I had almost the exact same thing happen with my Ender 3 last year. The thermistor wire chafed against the heater block and melted itself into a nasty short. I caught it because I was working late and smelled it from the next room. Now I never run anything over 8 hours unattended, and I swapped out the stock hotend for a full metal one with better wire routing. Tbh a lot of these fires are from cheap connectors or wires rubbing where they shouldn't. If you're gonna do overnight prints, at least put it on a concrete slab away from anything flammable and get a smart plug with thermal cutoff. Ngl I still do long prints sometimes but I check on it every few hours through my phone camera.

riley_west9d ago

Man, people act like every printer is a time bomb. I've left mine running overnight tons of times and never had a problem. Maybe I just got lucky, but feels like half the stuff people freak out about is just bad luck with a specific machine.

patricia3179d ago

Wait what, caught it from smelling it in the next room? That gives me the chills man. I never even thought about wires chafing inside the printer, always figured if something went wrong it'd be like a power surge or the motor jamming up. Totally agree on the cheap connector thing though, I've seen those white plugs on Amazon burn up in photos and it scares me. You're braver than me running any print over 8 hours, I still won't sleep through one even with a camera pointed at it.