Looking for some guidance on heated beds

Hello All,

I have owned a scaled up self-built kossel mini for a very long time (700mm tall, 360mm extrusions), and I've been slowly upgrading various features on it. I've had a 310mm round Borosilicate glass bed to print on, supported by FSRs. This has worked fine for me as I've printed exclusively PLA, but I'm ready to try some other materials and have been interested in printing some ABS again (My first printer was a Makerbot Cupcake, which printed all the parts for this machine)

I'm a bit overwhelmed by the options available for replacing the bed. There are kapton heaters, silicone heaters, and PCB heaters. Glass beds, Steel beds, and special surfaces to help stick, Some have magnets, some don't. If I use a PCB, I need a heat spreader. If I use FSRs, I have to protect them from heat. If I switch to inductive sensors I have to use a non-glass bed. The list of course, goes on and on.

Because of the size of my printer (which seemed like a great idea at the time) my surface needs to be about 280mm diameter (my current plate is oversized). I've thought about just using a square bed, but I have plans to try and enclose everything eventually.

Does anyone have a delta heated build plate they love? Or just recommendations?

I use a mains voltage silicone heater under a 300mm diameter 5mm thick aluminium plate. [miscsolutions.wordpress.com]

Don't use an inductive sensor, use some type of nozzle contact sensor.

---

Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Quote
sircastor
Hello All,

I have owned a scaled up self-built kossel mini for a very long time (700mm tall, 360mm extrusions), and I've been slowly upgrading various features on it. I've had a 310mm round Borosilicate glass bed to print on, supported by FSRs. This has worked fine for me as I've printed exclusively PLA, but I'm ready to try some other materials and have been interested in printing some ABS again (My first printer was a Makerbot Cupcake, which printed all the parts for this machine)

I'm a bit overwhelmed by the options available for replacing the bed. There are kapton heaters, silicone heaters, and PCB heaters. Glass beds, Steel beds, and special surfaces to help stick, Some have magnets, some don't. If I use a PCB, I need a heat spreader. If I use FSRs, I have to protect them from heat. If I switch to inductive sensors I have to use a non-glass bed. The list of course, goes on and on.

Because of the size of my printer (which seemed like a great idea at the time) my surface needs to be about 280mm diameter (my current plate is oversized). I've thought about just using a square bed, but I have plans to try and enclose everything eventually.

Does anyone have a delta heated build plate they love? Or just recommendations?

My printer is an HE3D K280 with 290 mm heated bed. It also uses a glass plate over the painted aluminum bed plate and the combination gives a 280 mm print diameter.
You can look at the parts (and order if you want) at [www.reprap.cn]

I have had very good luck using hair spray for bed adhesion with both PLA & ABS.

I also do all the bed level and calibration by hand.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/29/2021 02:55PM by wildone.

I use a 300mm diameter silicone heater from Keenova on mains (120AC) voltage. My bed is a bit thicker aluminum (MIC-6) than DC42s and it has a PrintBite pad on top. An enclosure is usually required to print ABS. I haven't needed a heater for the enclosure when printing ABS. The bed heater is sufficient.

A problem with magnets is that they loose their magnetism when heated beyond a certain temperature, which is why you can't use magnetic bed surfaces with high temperatures such as with ABS.

The curie temperature would only be an issue if you were using neodymium magnets. Samarium-cobalt magnets (which I use) have a curie temp of about 350 C, if I recall correctly.
If you're talking about the flexible magnet material, the curie temp is quite high but the substrate is only good to about 100 C which is what limits its use.