Hey Yvan, Thanks for letting me know. I see you have opted for the 120V AC heat bed. If you are going to run the bed off AC power using a SSR, wouldn't it be more worthwhile if you went the whole nine yards and got a 1000W heater? Seeing as you are not limited by the power supply, there doesn't seem to be any constraint on your power draw. @AVRkire We're waiting on you Let me know what you neeby RP Iron Man - General
Hey Couby, thanks for the info Now I will just wait for the others to post what they want. As for the integrated thermistor. I have never ordered a heat bed with an integrated thermistor for these reasons. First of all, if the thermistor is inside the heat bed, it will give you very inaccurate readings. The temperature within the silicone padding will be much higher than on top of your glass sby RP Iron Man - General
Very interesting idea! I second theodleif's comment: Has this been patented using sheets of metals? This seems like a much easier angle to approach 3d metal printing compared to the patented SLS process. Ericby RP Iron Man - General
Ok, I am looking to make the order for you guys ASAP but before I can order anything I am going to need some info from you guys. Yvan, Couby, and AVRkire: You guys are the only ones who responded so I will be making the order for the three of you. What exact specs will you want for your custom heat bed (note that you guys can all order bed with different specs). I need to know the Voltage, Power,by RP Iron Man - General
Yvan, I can get the heaters made with any voltage and any power rating. Based on Cameron's experience with a 360W heater, it looks like 400W would be perfect. Also, I imagine that Polycarbonate needs the highest bed temps seeing as it has a very high glass transition temp (about 150C). Ericby RP Iron Man - General
The QU-Bd Revolution 3d printer has dual x and y motors and claims to be able to print at 500mm/s, though I am not sure if this has been verified yet. I would think there would be issues as I have worked with an industrial gantry style CNC router with dual y motors and its y axis speed was severely limited. The motors would frequently get knocked out of alignment which is a real PITA Then againby RP Iron Man - General
jamesdanielv has the right idea. However, like I mentioned in our other thread I would bump up the power a bit more as I find that Prusa PCB heat beds have a hard time maintaining high temps during printing. I was going to order a few custom heaters for Yvan and a few others as the Qu-Bd store has been out of stock for quite a while and I think the Qu-Bd heaters are a little underpowered anywayby RP Iron Man - General
Hey Couby, ok that works. It also makes my life a bit easier It is valuable to spend time learning to do this kind of stuff yourself so this was probably the best way for you to do it. If anyone else is interested in a custom silicone rubber heater please let me know ASAP as I would like to make this order soon Ericby RP Iron Man - General
@AVRkire Great! 5 or 6 heat beds in total will make this order more reasonable @Couby Ok, I have looked more closely at the shipping fees and this is what I found. Basically when you are shipping internationally there tends to be a high flat rate and low fuel surcharge. If you were to order just the three heaters, the shipping cost would be about $90. However, the flat rate of $120 will coverby RP Iron Man - General
I would recommend using a 3.6Ohm wirewound resistor instead of a 40W heater cartridge. I have tested several heater cartridges from different Chinese suppliers and they were all poorly manufactured in one way or another Plain resistor heaters are cheaper and you don't have to worry about poor tolerances. Ericby RP Iron Man - General
@Couby It looks like 400W would be sufficient. I suppose I overestimated quite a bit Shipping three 12"x12" heaters plus two laser cut MDF sheets (for 1 bed mounting set up) to France would be about $120. I checked the Lulzbot drawing and I could definitely draw up a mounting system that incorporates the existing bearing/y belt mounting holes. It might take some time though... Also, I realizby RP Iron Man - General
So this is what you need a 12"x12" printer for Hey, Nylon parts are pretty strong so you could probably use them to build several components of a real functional version of this engine I wish you luck with this ambitious project! Ericby RP Iron Man - General
@Parabolic Yvan is right, we completely took over your thread Sorry about that. If you want I can get you a silicone rubber heater that is 13"x10" but I really don't know where you will find a PCB heater that size. @Yvan I checked out the design and it looks like it has some serious potential I can't really tell from the render but is the y-axis motor inside the chamber? It looks to me liby RP Iron Man - General
Hey Couby, check out the three most recent pics on my Flickr here (I tried attaching them but you can only upload files less than 600kb! ) These pictures are of my modified Prusa set-up and illustrate the heated bed mounting. I have implemented a 3 point leveling system that makes bed leveling soo much easier. I never understood the 4 point leveling system When you are adjusting 4 points in a pby RP Iron Man - General
Hey Couby, RepRap Discount designed the RUMBA board to be able to handle 24V. However, for some reason they did not change the original fuses that come with the RAMPS board The bed fuse is rated at 16V 11A... I got around this by simply replacing the bed fuse with a 32V 30A rated fuse from Digikey. These are expensive but they do the job. If you decide to order the heat beds from me I can shipby RP Iron Man - General
Hey Yvan, your 12"x12" Nylon printer sounds really interesting and I would really like to hear more about it What type of cartesian movement system are you using? Are you going to have a non-moving bed? 300mmx300mm bed would be quite heavy with a sheet of glass on top so the standard moving bed mendel design doesn't seem like the optimal set up as it may limit your acceleration/speed. As for thby RP Iron Man - General
I really like your idea! It is a great way to tap into the printing power of the community I think adding laser cutters and other manufacturing tools (CNC Lathes/Mills) would be a great idea. I think there is a lot of potential for a business that provides a platform for outsourcing rapid prototyping. Recently I have been working on an all metal hot end design, and I had to pay hundreds of dollaby RP Iron Man - General
Since I can get away with 200W for an 8"x8" heater, I would recommend 400W to 600W power for a 12"x12" heater at 24V so that the current draw is kept reasonable. The higher the power the better so get the maximum power heat pad that your PSU can handle. With a 200W 8"x8" heater, I can reach 140C+ (never tested the limit ) but I can only reasonably sustain 110C to 120C throughout the print. The beby RP Iron Man - General
Also, forgot to mention when you slice an STl using Slic3r in Repetier Host you get an estimate of the length and volume of filament required. I am not sure how accurate this is but it is good for a rough estimate. Ericby RP Iron Man - General
I find that I can reduce the infill to 25% before it starts to have a measurable effect on structural integrity using honeycomb infill. jbernardis' link explains the concept. In Slic3r, the infill density settings are under: Print Settings--> Infill --> Fill Density. Ericby RP Iron Man - General
If you replace the 11A PTC fuse on the RAMPS board with one rated at higher current, you can still manage to run the beds off 12V. This way you won't have to find a 24V Power supply. My silicone rubber heaters draw up to 17A without issues. Originally I tried a 350W heater but I had problems with the power solder joints oxidizing so I wouldn't recommend more than 20A. 24V is definitely the way toby RP Iron Man - General
I am also curious about what the other 93% is composed of. I imagine that it is just extra "bulk" (much like starch in PLA) and likely does not play a role in adhesion but simply dilutes the active chemicals to provide the desired amount of adhesion. That's just my guess. The Wiki article is not very informative but I am sure that this info can be found on the glue stick packaging. I bought my glby RP Iron Man - General
I am definitely with you on that, the difference between "welding" and "soldering" makes sense and seems to explains the difference in the adhesive qualities of each method. Currently, plain glue stick is more than enough for my ABS prints, but I am not sure how much success people are having with printing Nylon using this method. Assuming that the relation between adhesion strength and lye conby RP Iron Man - General
That's the problem. Their hot end was manufactured with the grinding process so they were doubtlessly limited in their design. Notice how their "chess piece" design has very thick walls. I presume that this is because they needed the part to be strong enough to withstand the force/vibrations involved in grinding the internal 6mm thread. The probelm is that these thick walls render the low thermalby RP Iron Man - Plastic Extruder Working Group
A while back I was trying to find lye to experiment with dissolving PLA but I couldn't find it anywhere. I live in Canada so I am not sure if the chemical is banned here but I looked at all the stores that were likely to carry it and I found nothing. Even if it isn't banned here, it is not common. If you were to order it over the internet, would you order it from out of the country? I imagine tby RP Iron Man - General
Why? Does it take too long to heat up? I am using 200W silicone rubber heat beds for my prusa i2s and they work great. They heat up way faster than the PCB heat bed and provide much more even heat. I mount them beneath a 4mm borosilicate sheet and I get excellent heat transfer. Ericby RP Iron Man - General
Great insight! I totally overlooked all that. As you mentioned, Sodium Hydroxide is caustic and used to dissolve PLA parts, so I imagine that the Glue stick method would work for PLA as well. However, I recall that people use NaOH to dissolve PLA support material from ABS prints, so presumably this chemical does not have much of an effect on ABS (?). Not sure. You're right though, it's probably tby RP Iron Man - General
I would use a silicone rubber heater as they provide very even heating and are easier to find in larger sizes. Ericby RP Iron Man - General
I also wondered about this. I looked on Wiki and I found This. It doesn't really clear things up though as the component substances do not seem to be found in ABS so I am not sure how to explain the adhesion Ericby RP Iron Man - General
Woodencase is right. Thermal shock is a huge issue with glass. However, I think it would be really cool to have a transparent hot end as it would enable us to actually visualize the transition from solid to molten plastic. The closest thing to a glass hot end is a Zirconia ceramic hot end. Zirconia is extremely strong, and has very low thermal conductivity so it is an ideal insulator. Unfortunatby RP Iron Man - Plastic Extruder Working Group