Thanks for the insight on the glue used and its placement.
My GoodPlate from @Umuzoo is coming in tomorrow, I am very much looking forward to a level print bed.
One more question re the glue you used: is this just regular silicone glue or did you use anthing specific with required properties such as high heat resistance?
I want to avoid using brackets to hold the GoodPlate in place, both because I can’t be asked to source and print a filament like ASA and because I want to use the entire print-bed without possible collision issues with my X1CC’s lidar module.
Thanks for your feedback specifically to this question and many thanks to all you DIY geniuses. Great community.
I absolutely hate the idea of clips (no offense to anyone who came with it), that’s why I just tried first available option - ordinary neutral transparent sanitary silicone I got in my drawer.
Believe or not, it works. I tried to heat it up to 110 deg for 2 hours, no issues. Even now, when this solution has several few-hours prints of PETG/ASA on engineering plate, I can’t see any problem.
Sometimes it’s more convenient to just actually try to do things instead of trying to think them through for days.
So I torn down the bed entirely. It’s actually 3mm thick aluminum PCB. Without taking apart it looked thinner due to milled areas around the holes. Plastic base is actually not rigid at all and warps like banana with aluminum PCB/plate unscrewed. So it’s more like simply cover for electrical insulation. I doubt it can warp the bed itself as triangle frame is screwed directly to aluminum PCB. Also plate is not quite leveled with recesses in plastic base. Plate is recessed by about 0.3mm on average. Not to say plate is warped even when taken out.
Interesting. A second aluminum plate milled to clear the contours of the plastic base thats sandwiched between that top plate & the bottom frame might work.
Why not just new flat aluminium plate. It looks really simple to manufacture such aluminum plates at local workshops. Maybe even a bit thicker if this wouldn’t mess up with the z-axis speed.
I did a second measurement on 60 degree (heated for 15 minutes) and the results are better. Just 0.15 mm dip at the lowest point. Not very good for printing PLA with a cool plate.
Why would I?
Anyway, if it was necessary, I would use some thin steel wire (guitar string) and cut the silicone under the glass, then mechanically remove residues.
Without getting too deep in the weeds, it is a chunk of expensive (dimensionally stable) tooling plate milled to purpose and surfaced to a flatness of 0.001" This plate does not require modification to the existing bed, rather it sits on top of it (magnetically attracted to the stock bed so it doesn’t move about and does not require any sort of mechanical fastening to the OE bed). It features its own set of magnets, and location fixture, to secure the OE type steel sheets and not interfere with the OE machine function. Predictably, it will take a bit longer to come to temperature as there’s more mass to initially heat, but once at temperature it holds that temp very well (more tolerant of drafts) and ultimately reducing the turn around time to warm back up for reprints, in our production environment. Based on a quick scan with our IR gun, the aluminum correction bed heats evenly, though it consistently runs about 5 deg. C cooler than the OE bed. Obviously, you’ll have to give up a bit of Z height to utilize it. I’m doing quite a few more tests today to identify any other issues, as we have some more mill time opening up this week and I’d like to get a few more made up for the rest of my machines. I’ll let you know how it goes. Based on some supply side issues with the material, mill availability, and of course end user interest - I’d be happy to have a go at doing a larger run for more general consumption. If this forum allows, PM me, if you would like to be kept updated on the progress or have interest in maybe getting in on a limited run of these - perhaps to deliver at the end of the month.
Can you show some pics of the magnetic mount and the oe style sheet mount ? How you deal with the calibration dots for the lidar calibration on the right side of the heatbed ?
That sucks, but is exactly what I thought would happen. One of our machines was so bad that it was returned (and a refund issued accordingly), the other 3 have beds that are not perfect, but were at least usable for small parts and larger items that were not engineering applications.
This is very interesting! So then it would also be possible to carefully bend the entire print bed so that the curvature in the X direction disappears. Has anyone tried this or would test it with an already defective print bed?
Is it possible to peel off the soft magnet in one piece and glue it back on without destroying it? Is a certain temperature needed for removal or special tools? I would also like to try this.
No it holds really strong on aluminum plate. But it’s possible to remove aluminum plate with magnet rubber still attached. You’d need to make 7 holes above the screws which hold aluminum plate to the plastic base and unscrew them. Also you need to separate magnet rubber on perimeter from plastic base. On the picture you can see two recesses where you can insert some sort of spatula to start prying magnet rubber without damaging it. Be wary to not bend it too much. Heat will help but it makes magnet rubber crumbly, so it’s better to not use heat if you can do the job without it. There are also 3 slots with large screws inserted which hold it to the triangle steel frame. But you don’t need to remove those.
I would guess this would probably defeat the purpose of machining a new bed (as attaching it to a new bed would add another possible warping point).
Does anyone know what material the magnetic rubber is? I can laser cut new stuff to the correct size, I’d just need to find it in the correct thickness.
I think buying thin aluminum sheet, like 0.8mm thick, make full size 256x256 plate out of it, and glue it to heater PCB on 2 component silicone. Then maybe flatten its surface by covering it with silicone and putting on some flat surface like glass covered with release agent. When it hardens, apply self adhesive magnet rubber sheet. The main concern is if it will still warp when hot. I think to do some warp testing of bare heater plate by powering it from autotransformer.
