How to Make Mini Room Heater With 3d Printed Parts and Powered by Battery

Hello readers, In this instructables i will show you how to make this small yet functional mini room heater at your home that too using 3d printed parts.

Instead of calling it as a mini room heater i think calling it as mini air heater is much more appropriate!

Anyways let me quickly explain you the working of this heater and also the reason behind building this project.

This works the similar way like the heaters available on the stores, Coil is heated using the electricity and the fan blows away the heat thereby circulating the heat to the air/room.

The major problems of this heaters are they consume too much power and are big in size this makes it challenging to carry these heaters outdoors.

I have made a lot of research on this and came up with multiple designs and finally was able to create a small yet functional model of heater that will fit in your pocket.

The heater that i have build can be carried on hand and is powered by rechargeable battery and can run for long time, imagine you are a camping spot and feel too cold in your tent, If you got this you are safe!

This heater is powered by a 6v DC fan or PC cooler fan and delivers good amount of airflow.

In the above images i have stopped the fan just to show the coils getting red hot and the same heat will be transferred to the air and this will make you feel the heat!

This is just the creamlayer of the project that we are going to build now, All the necessary information to build this is given in the below steps.

Also like usual i have included a video tutorial of the same project given in the end steps of this instructables make sure to check that out

Nichrome wire(15 to 20cms) from here

Thick copper wire(pure)

DC fan/CPU fan

Lithium ion battery

Switch

Battery holder

Wire Cutter

Hot glue

Super glue

3D printer

Tinkercad Application (if you want to edit the model)

PLA filament

Computer to slice the model

I had a few blueprints of the design that i wanted to make and i made a full and final model using the Tinkercad application.

I have given the file below and you are free to customize the model according to your requirements.

After you have the STL ready send it to slicer and in my case i used the cura slicer, I have also added the settings that i will be using to print the model.

There is no need of using any rafts or supports at the time of slicing because i have designed in such a way that there is no need of all those.

Now feed the design to the 3d printer, Use the PLA filament of your color and print the model, The print time is under 2 hours considering the model and the settings.

I wanted the print to be multicolor so i printed the model in two separate sections and later joined it, You can use multicolor printer or in other way print the whole model in same color.

Yellow and black was the color which i used to print and you can see the same.

This is the important part of this project this is because heating coil is the part that will heat up the air and it needs to work without any issues.

To begin with unwind the nichrome wire and take a small tube(you can use refill from old pen for this purpose)

Wind/Roll the wire across this tube as close and tight as you can, and hold on it for few seconds.

Pull out the ring shaped object(coil) from the tube and now we have the coil ready to be installed.

To effectively disspate the heat that is generated from this coil we cant use ordinary wire, Here comes the role of copper wires and now we will head over to building that.

I have used thick copper wire to connect the coil, I will start by peeling of the skin of the copper cable first.

Use the wire cutter for this purpose and repeat the same process for the other wire too and now we have the cables ready and this has now to be inserted into the 3d printed frame.

I have missed in ṭhe 3d file to make a hole so i had to make it manually, You cam do that too this was done on purpose since the wire thickness that you are using might differ than the one I'm using.

Inserting the wire was little bit of hectic task but anyways i did it and it will look something like this as shown in the last but one image of this step.

Now you can connect the nichrome coils between these copper wires, Make sure that the copper wires are connected to the coils well if not it might damage the wires.

Now the heating element part is ready and now we can test the coil for working.

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To ensure if the coil is getting heated up connect to battery source(I'm using 3 lithium ion batteries), After you connect the wires to the power source within no time the coil gets heated up and this will confirm all the circuit is working fine and we cab head over to further steps.

Now add the second half of the frame, This is very easy insert the wire inside the slots on the frame and to join these i will use few drops of super glue.

Allow it to dry completely and now we can add PC fan to this.

Im using 40x40mm fan and it works under 12v, I will connect this wires directly with the wires of the coil.

Make sure that this fan is fully sealed to the backpart of the frame and no air leaks are present.

The blower in our project is the CPU cooler fan, It is a brushless type of fan and it as a very good air blowing rate considering these factors i have opted for this.

I have elevated the height of this heater using a small piece of 3d printed box(this is an optional step) and i have used hot glue to couple these up.

This will finish the building part and now only one thing is left and that is the testing part!

Using this is very easy like the way you build it!

Just kidding on the second part! Yeah i know for some the building was easy and for many it wasn't especially if you are not a hobbyist builder.

To make this heater work the first checklist is fully charging the batteries, the batteries that we are using is 18650 batteries also called as lithium ion batteries.

These batteries are known for their long backup time, Just put the batteries to the holder and press on the switch, In no time the Fan starts to spin and the how air can be felt in under 5 seconds.

There are many questions that you guys are having in your mind and let me address on behalf of you

Most might think since we are using 3d printed parts will the heat of the coil melt the frame? The answer is no because the CPU fan continuously blows the air to the coil and hence the temperature from the coil dissipates quickly to the air.

Secondly the Copper wires that hold the heating coils are placed far away from the 3d printed frame and chances are very low to zero the heat from wires passes to the frame.

I have stopped the fan to show how fast the coil heats up, This is portable and you can carry this to your next camping!

When the coil is being heated for the first time it will change its shape to some extent do not worry this is because of the heat.

Well i hope you liked this project, Still any questions? consider watching the video below and if your question is unanswered you can drop it in the comments box. Thanks

Missing out something? Then this video is for you it has all the building steps which you might need to watch if you think if you have missed something here.

Dont forget to watch the coil heating video that is the favorite part who might ask does this thing really heats up.

That is all for now, If you still have any questions you have the comments box below.

Thank you for your time and i hope you will build this project soon and post it in i made it section.