Enclosure will protect printer from dust and it will also keep the ambient temperature more stable. Dont make it hermetic sealed, better add few holes on the front and few on the back for example. I have a low rpm fan with dust filter because I mostly print PLA and in long prints (12h+) temperature can go a bit too high if there is no airflow at all. Keep in mind that enclosure should be removed sometimes for mintainance, removable sides is what you should look for.

You can leave filament on the printer, but if you dont use it for a long time it could get wet and then you have to dry it. Keep the rest of the spools in plastic sealed box or bag and put some silica gel inside.

Full calibration should be done once, but fine tuning when you face some issues or when you change to different brand or filament type. It depends how well the printer is assembled and how experienced you are, it can take only 5 min every few months, but begginers can spend days sometimes.

Extra tips: clean your rails and wheels whenever you can (once a month at least) for dusty garage. Get a kitchen sponge, drill a hole in it and guide filament trough the hole to remove any dust before extruder.

Welcome to the most fun hoby and happy printing!

1. Keeping dust and debris out of it while not in use is a good idea. However, if you are printing in low temperature materials such as PLA, TPU, and probably also PETG you should not run your printer in an enclosed box. The heated bed plus the waste heat generated by the hot end, etc. in a sealed environment can eventually become enough to soften the filament while it’s still in the feed path, which will cause problems. Your PLA prints will also get saggy and noodly if the air temperature inside the box remains elevated above the material’s glass transition temperature for any significant length of time. (The peanut gallery can argue in the comments just how high the temperature needs to be, but it’s better to just not risk it.)

1a. This is not applicable to high temperature materials such as ABS, polycarbonate, or nylon/PA. For these materials you will probably need to run the printer in an enclosure to maintain a stable air temperature, but you probably won’t be messing with these materials soon… or ever.

2. When not in use you should store your filament in an airtight box, by preference with some manner of desiccant in there with it. Silica gel is what most people use. The reason being, all polymers are hygroscopic – that is, they absorb moisture from the air – and moisture in your filament will alter its physical properties making it more brittle and less flexible. “Wet” PLA tends to snap without provocation… including in the middle of a print job. Also, moisture in your filament will be boiled off inside the printer’s hotend and essentially cause the extruded material to froth and foam which will produce lousy print quality or even outright print failures eventually.

2a. It’s also a good idea to invest in a heated filament dryer, or jerry rig your own. This will allow you to drive moisture out of spools of filament that have absorbed moderate amounts of moisture to revive it, and is outright necessary for some super hygroscopic materials such as, again, nylon.

3. Any time you change the nozzle, do anything that might alter the thickness of the build plate (adding kapton tape to it, for instance), change out the build plate for a different one, mess with your belt tension, undo any of the hardware that mounts the hot end/gantry or anything attached to it such as a z offset sensor (if you have one), crash your nozzle into the bed due to manual operation error or g-code fuckup, or if you notice any first layer adhesion problems or any other mystery print quality issues that don’t appear to have any other cause.

I store filament in a tight sealing, food grade, bucket with a rechargeable silica gel device, and a cheap hygrometer. The round spools fit well in the round bucket. The silica gel device can be plugged in for a few hours to dry the gel for reuse. Last time I checked the bucket was around 10% humidity in a house around 45%.

I will not reiterate the great things others have said but I’ve used old windows to create an enclosure for my printer and it definitely helps with the prints. Also since you’re a new user and have an Ender 3, I would recommend you to take a look at thingiverse.com and printables.com - if not already done - for great tweaks to protect your printer but also to find great things to print.

For your printer, you may be interested in cable guides, filament guide, spool roller, fan duct, bed lock (they will keep your bed in place so you will not have to deal with bed tramming anymore before your bed leveling sessions)…

Finally, although a little bit off topic, if you get bored to walk to your printer to watch the prints and would like to add some level of safety in case anything goes wrong I would highly recommend considering octoprint.

About #1, it’s also very likely that your enclosure will not contain the full movement of the printer or will get too hot for the electronics and the lubrication.

But as people said, if you manage to build a good temperature control, printing with an enclosure is much better.

I will store it in my garage, in a shelve among other things. It is quite dusty, so I’m thinking of building a plexiglass hermetic box to keep it while powered off. Would it be a problem to keep it closed also while printing? This would change the type of box I’ll build, because there is not much space and I’m trying to save the most of it

This is a normal thing to do, actually. most printers benefit greatly from being printed in an enclosure.

How do I store the filament? I (currently) have only one filament (black PLA), so I see no need to remove it from the printer each time, but leaving it “connected” (I don’t know how to say it) will not allow me to store it in a different way the printer is stored. Do I need to store it in special ways or can I leave it connected? (And bonus question, what is the correct word to say it?)

It depends on a lot of things. For PLA, I’ve found ziplocks + the moisture packs they come with to be sufficient protection. If you want a dedicated filament storage, a large rubermaid (or whatever) bin with loose silica gel is going to do just fine as well.

There are also plenty of STL versions for silica gel “containers” that fit in the hub of a spool.

For other filaments, it depends greatly on the type of plastic. PETG needs to be kept dry. You can dry any filament in a food dehydrator if it doesn’t get too hot. (PLA, don’t go above 55. 45 is better… and keep it slower. 45c it might take 4-6 hours.) PETG can be dried happily at 55c, in the same amount of time. Or, if you don’t mind playing the waiting game, you can stuff it in the bin with silica gel… and just let the gel do it’s thing. (the one linked above can be recharged in an oven or food dehydrator. I’d recomend getting something cheap explicitly for drying filament and recharging the gel at the same time. I use a presto food dehydrator… and I got some extra trays (which promptly removed the mesh from every-other tray, so I can stack multiple reels.) The presto goes down to 90F or 32C,

If I don’t move the printer, how often should I calibrate it?

Define “calibration”… eventually you’ll learn what needs to be checked and how often. Generally, i check belts and for anything obviously wrong every fresh session of printing. but I’m not going to be tweaking it everytime. it’s just a good habit to check your printer over every so often.

I use UBL and mesh bed leveling, and find I can go about 2 weeks of constant printing before I need to pull a new mesh. IIRC, the ender 3’s don’t come with a bed probe; so you’re going to be manually leveling your bed; which should happen every new session or so. You can reduce it some by getting silicone bed supports (instead of the springs.).

Things like esteps / mm, are only calibrated if I change something that would affect it (For example, a new extruder, or a change to the mechanical belts, or a new stepper driver/motor.) Or if I’m chasing something being waaayyyy off.

You are asking the right questions.

1. If you mostly print PLA, it is better to keep your printer entirely unenclosed. PLA loves cooling. I kept my printer in a fairly dusty room and wiped it down from time to time and it still works. You will need to wipe the bed with a damp cloth before every print though, so that adhesion isn’t affected. If keeping it open is not an option, something with a removable door is a nice compromise.

2. It depends on how humid your area is. PLA doesn’t absorb water very quickly, so it should be fine to be kept in the same enclosure as the printer. Just keep an eye on it, if you get stringing or your print quality starts degrading, you may need to dry it. That can be achieved with a food dehydrator.

3. Due to it being a motion system with stepper motors, there are obviously vibrations and direction changes, which loosen things over time. I would recalibrate the bed every 5-10 prints or so, just to be safe. Other wear components like the v-wheels and the hotend should be checked every 50-100 print hours in my experience. Take this info with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.

If you want more info on 3d printing, there are some very good YouTubers:

CNCKitchen

Made with layers

Maker’s Muse

Modbot

Teaching Tech

BV3D

Those are the ones off the top of my head, I hope someone can add more if I forgot someone.