What to do with my Rapman 3.1???

So i bought a Rapman 3.1 a few weeks ago with a heck of a lot of filament. The resolution is great, but I absolutely hate the raft that Axon automatically puts on the print. It also does not have a heated bed and all the filament I have is ABS.

Now I am not sure what exactly I should do with it. Would switching it over to RAMPS 1.4 and adding a heated bed be pretty straight forward? Or would it be more worth while to break it up and build a completely separate printer?

Adding a heatbed would be much easier then building a new one, but maybe try to see if you can exchange the abs for PLA?

I added a heated bed to my Rapman by replacing one acrylic piece with MDF and putting aluminium plate on top with power resistors for heaters. Some time I might experiment with other types. I think there is a way to control the bed via the firmware, I haven't used the BFB electronics for a long time though. It is simple enough to have an external monitor for the heatbed I guess.

It is possible to "deraft" the Gcode via a post-processor, a guy called Chylld wrote one, I may have a copy somewhere.

As mentioned I ditched the BFB electronics and replaced with a more RepRap style setup, but I think I have yet to achieve the same quality of print I had with the BFB electronics and software. Trying to get the right combination of slicer settings, firmware settings etc is pretty tricky.

I got it off craigslist so I can't exchange the filament. Plus its all loose.

I ordered a ramps kit just as a back up. I think setting up an external temperature monitor would be the easiest.

Also, since it is a single extruder and the board can support dual extruders, would it be possible to hook the heated bed up to the second extruder input and monitor/set the temp via the second extruder settings?

gmh39 Wrote:
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> Also, since it is a single extruder and the
> board can support dual extruders, would it be
> possible to hook the heated bed up to the second
> extruder input and monitor/set the temp via the
> second extruder settings?

As I recall, I think that is the way people do it, you would need to run an external mosfet to control the higher current for the heatbed, and it needs an external supply as well.

You would need to find a thermistor compatible with BFB firmware as well, they used a 200k I think, the RepRap ones are generally 100k.

If you have a RAMPS though, that could be used to control the heatbed independently, then you could probably use a off the shelf RepRap heatbed.

ok cool. the previous owner installed a heated bed with a reprap PCB and aluminum build plate, but it takes forever to heat up and I am having trouble measuring the temp.

Since I would prefer to stick with the BFB electronics, is there any particular place on the bed I should put the 200k thermistor? I am not sure if there is enough space in the center for it, so would the end of the bed provide similar results?

Would this temperature controller work for regulating the heated bed temp?