Printing a shim to level your bed?

I saw a video on youtube where a milling machine levelled it's own bed by cutting it and thought this may be a good idea for cold bed printing. You print a small height shim for the size of your bed and then put a bit of glass or whatever you use to print on - on top of the shim.

The idea being that that as you print the shim the height differances would be levelled out by the act of the plastic not being squashed down on the high parts.

I think 3 to 5mm high would be enough to level out the high spots, just an idea?

A simple structure like the following sized for your bed would not use up much plastic

x----------x
|   \      /   |
|      x      |
|   /     \    |
x----------x

Its a shame it can't be used for heated bed printing - or can it?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/25/2012 09:28AM by hexitex.

that's an interesting idea. thanks for sharing :-)

that is a good idea, that one never came across my mind, i like it.

Thanks Chaps,

I think it would work, I've built a model that is very economical with plastic, I'll share it on thingiverse tonight (at work at the moment)

this would also help for a bed that has deformed with use too.

as promised, link to shim on thingiverse

Shim

Really interesting and cool idea.

Nice idea. I have some plans to modify my bed mountings. Once I've done that this would save me a lot of effort getting it level.

Thanks

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How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else. - R. Buckminster Fuller

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