Clean Air is Important

The Smelly Issue

3D printing is fun but several studies show (e.g. this one) , that especially fumes generated by melting ABS which contain a mixture of different chemicals, incl. styrene and ultrafine particles, aren’t the best for your health. That leads to the conclusion: Clean air is important, especially indoors.

So what to do?

Based on standard risk mitigation strategies, the best way to deal with a risk factor is to eliminate it:

You could not print ABS and switch to less “smelly” filaments like PLA but that isn’t really the solution, as ABS has properties which cannot easily be substituted by other filament types.

Print in an area nobody lives and works in? Yes, that would be a great solution, but for most non-professional 3D printing enthusiasts that’s also difficult to achieve.

The next best way is to mitigate the risk by dealing with its consequences, here the fumes: you can extract them from the printing chamber and pump them outside. This has unfortunately several issues: you need to have the infrastructure in place to do so (i.e. a hole in the wall or window) and removing air from the printing chamber, will lead to a temperature decrease, which (especially when printing ABS) isn’t what you want (you want to keep a steady, high temperature within your printing enclosure).

You may be wondering: where’s the issue: I keep all the fumes within the chamber and all is fine. Unfortunately your printing chamber will never be airtight and sooner or later you’ll need to open it, to remove whatever you were printing.

Here comes Nevermore (or any other in chamber filtration system)

The Nevermore project developed several air filtration systems which “recycle” and clean the air within your printing chamber instead of pushing it out.

This:

• reduces the amount of chemicals in the air (VOCs)
• reduces the number of particles in the air
• reduces the typical “ABS smell” in the room your printer is located
• keeps the chamber temperature constant, as no air is removed/replaced with external cold air

Nevermore offers a wide range of different air filtration system (Micro, Flex, Max, and the latest addition the StealthMax)

The Nevermore StealthMax

The Nevermore StealthMax is a in-chamber air filtration system which combines a large reservoir of activated carbon with Hepa air filters. This combination reduces at the same time VOCs (volatile organic chemicals) as well as particles from the air, which both affect your health in a negative way.

The Nevermore StealthMax is the improved version of the Nevermore Max, which is easier to assemble and smaller.

OneTwo3D is now offering a Nevermore StealthMax kit, which allows you to source all BOM parts needed in one go (except the 3D printed parts).