Applications and Implications

The final project developed during Fab Academy is called FAB Encloser, an intelligent filament drying and storage chamber designed for FDM 3D printing materials.

The system combines environmental monitoring, temperature control, remote supervision, and safety functions inside a compact enclosure. The objective is to maintain filament in optimal conditions before and during printing processes.

Many thermoplastic materials such as PLA, PETG, Nylon, TPU, and ABS absorb moisture from the environment. This humidity can negatively affect print quality, causing bubbling, poor layer adhesion, inconsistent extrusion, and dimensional inaccuracies.

FAB Encloser was designed to solve this problem by providing a controlled environment where temperature and humidity can be monitored and regulated automatically.

The system is intended for a wide variety of users involved in additive manufacturing and digital fabrication.

• Fab Academy students.
• Makers and hobbyists.
• Educational institutions.
• Research laboratories.
• Professional prototyping workshops.
• Small-scale manufacturing businesses.
• 3D printing service providers.

Any user working with hygroscopic materials can benefit from maintaining filament under controlled environmental conditions.

FAB Encloser can be used in multiple scenarios where filament quality is critical.

Filament Drying

The primary application is the removal of absorbed moisture from thermoplastic filaments before printing.

Long-Term Storage

The enclosure provides a controlled environment that helps preserve filament properties during long storage periods.

Print Preparation

Users can prepare materials before starting a print, ensuring better extrusion consistency and reducing printing defects.

Remote Monitoring

Through the Raspberry Pi 5 and custom interface, environmental conditions can be monitored remotely from a computer.

Educational Tool

The project can also be used as a teaching platform to demonstrate embedded systems, sensors, user interfaces, IoT concepts, and digital fabrication workflows.

Several commercial filament dryers already exist; however, most of them provide limited functionality and little flexibility.

FAB Encloser introduces several additional capabilities:

• Custom fabricated enclosure.
• Real-time temperature monitoring.
• Real-time humidity monitoring.
• Automatic heater control.
• Automatic ventilation control.
• Integrated OLED display.
• Live camera monitoring.
• Remote control interface.
• Emergency stop function.
• Open-source hardware and software.

These characteristics transform the project from a simple filament dryer into a complete environmental management system.

One of the indirect benefits of FAB Encloser is the reduction of material waste generated by failed prints.

Moist filament often causes printing defects that require parts to be discarded and reprinted. By improving filament quality, the system contributes to reducing unnecessary plastic consumption.

The enclosure was also designed using durable materials such as galvanized steel and acrylic, increasing its service life and reducing replacement frequency.

Although the system successfully achieves its main objectives, some limitations remain.

• Temperature uniformity can still be improved.
• Humidity control is currently based on ventilation only.
• The system is designed for a limited chamber volume.
• Energy consumption depends on operating temperature.
• The interface currently runs on a local network.

These limitations provide opportunities for future iterations and continued development.

Several enhancements could be incorporated into future versions of the project.

• Cloud connectivity.
• Mobile application support.
• Automatic humidity regulation.
• Multiple temperature profiles.
• Machine learning-based prediction of drying time.
• Energy consumption monitoring.
• Automatic filament identification.
• Integration with 3D printers.

These improvements would transform FAB Encloser into a complete smart filament management ecosystem.

The Applications and Implications assignment requires answering a set of guiding questions about the final project. Each question is addressed below, with links to the relevant sections of the final project page.

What will it do?

PrintVault Pro is a temperature-controlled 3D printer enclosure that keeps the chamber at the right temperature for each material using closed-loop heating, while a camera and a YOLO AI model watch the print in real time and detect "spaghetti" failures within seconds, sending alerts to a desktop app and to the user's phone. See Project overview and Solution.

Who has done what beforehand?

Commercial heated enclosures and filament dryers already exist (for example Bambu Lab and Creality enclosures, and brands such as PolyDryer or SUNLU filament dryers), and open print-failure detection projects exist too, most notably The Spaghetti Detective / Obico, an open-source AI print-monitoring system. PrintVault Pro differs by combining both ideas — closed-loop chamber heating and edge AI failure detection — in a single, custom-fabricated, fully local (no-cloud) device. See AI print monitoring.

What sources will you use?

The project draws on Ultralytics YOLO documentation for the detection model, the Adafruit SHT31 and SH110X libraries for the sensor and display, the Bleak and ESP32 BLE documentation for the communication layer, the PyQt6 and qasync documentation for the desktop app, material datasheets and manufacturer guidance for the chamber temperatures (glass transition of ABS, PC, etc.), and the Fab Academy class material for the fabrication and electronics processes.

What will you design?

I designed the sheet-metal chassis, the laser-cut acrylic doors, the 3D-printed ABS hinges, handles and electronics cases, the custom KiCad PCB integrating the XIAO ESP32-S3 and the MOSFET driver stages, the embedded firmware, the Raspberry Pi gateway software, and the PyQt6 desktop interface. See How it was made and Mechanical design.

What materials and components will be used?

The main components are a Raspberry Pi 5, a Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32-S3, a CSI camera, an SHT31 sensor, an SH1106 OLED, a 100 W 12 V PTC heater, a 12 V fan, a 12 V LED strip, three logic-level MOSFETs, a custom PCB, sheet metal, acrylic and 3D-printed ABS parts. The full list is in the Bill of Materials.

Where will they come from?

Electronic modules (Raspberry Pi 5, XIAO ESP32-S3, camera, SHT31, OLED, MOSFETs, PTC heater, fan) are sourced from electronics distributors and the maker market; the sheet metal and acrylic are sourced locally and cut/bent at the FabLab; the 3D-printed parts and the custom PCB are produced in-house at the FabLab.

How much will they cost?

The estimated prototype cost is around $238 USD, broken down by component in the Estimated Cost table above and consistent with the Bill of Materials on the final project page.

What parts and systems will be made?

Made in-house: the bent sheet-metal chassis, the laser-cut acrylic doors, the 3D-printed ABS hinges, handles, PCB case and Raspberry Pi case, the custom PCB, the XIAO firmware, the Pi gateway service, and the desktop application. Bought as components: the Pi, the XIAO, the camera, the sensor, the OLED, the heater, the fan and the power supply.

What processes will be used?

Sheet-metal cutting and bending, laser cutting, 3D printing (FDM in ABS), PCB design and in-house production, electronics assembly and soldering, embedded programming (C++/Arduino), Python application and gateway programming, BLE/WiFi networking, and AI model training and edge inference.

What questions need to be answered?

Can the chamber reach and hold each material's setpoint within the ±2 °C hysteresis band? Does the safety logic (over-temperature cutoff, sensor watchdog, connection-loss policy) reliably keep the heater safe? Is the YOLO model accurate enough — with few false positives — to be trusted to alert on real failures? Does the system recover automatically after a power cycle or a dropped connection?

How will it be evaluated?

Through the testing described in Testing & validation: verifying the thermal loop holds the setpoint and that the 65 °C hard cutoff fires; disconnecting the sensor to confirm the watchdog cuts the heater within 5 s; provoking real spaghetti failures to confirm the 3-second confirmation suppresses false alerts; and power-cycling each device to confirm automatic recovery.