Many thanks to @Umuzoo for his great work, I’ve been using it for around two weeks and didn’t have any Problems, no sensor or homing errors and I could finally print straight first layers.
That is until I started noticing the problems returning a few days ago…
So I took a look at the flatness again and am greeted by this:
get a glass bed from TronXY, stick a cool plate sans sticker underneath it with high temp silicone glue. Use vision miner for bed adhesion. I forget the name of the user who did this but this is my default right now and man it is glorious! So simple and elegant! And frankly nothing beats printing on glass bed itself.
Well I answered my own question about ticket times. Got a response within a day of posting. Took just under two weeks. They’ve offered me a bed but said I was “close” to spec. Sure…
Don’t know what I’ll get out of the lottery, but for now I just shimmed the plate with steel 0.003" to 0.01" shims and laid a pattern to match the bow. Also using a thicker build plate.
Perfect? Nope. No more prints with the middle 1mm lower than the sides? Yes. So far no issues.
I’ve been using a glass plate for a few weeks now and am very happy with the results. I didn’t even bother gluing it to the heatbed. I just use four simple low-profile clamps printed in ABS to hold it in place. That allows me to put the plate in my freezer for easy part removal and easy cleanup. While one plate is cooling, I put another one on the heatbed, clamp it down, and keep printing.
And glass is not glass. You can buy cheap windows glass, or super duper safety glass. I always recommend a mirror. With a mirror, you can be sure that surface is flat. Otherwise the mirror image would be distorted
I avoided cheap window glass and selected 3mm thickness borosilicate float glass, which is equally as flat as mirror glass and had the durability and thermal properties that I was looking for. Thankfully several manufacturers are making it available in standard bed sizes and at reasonable prices (about $35 per plate). If you can find a place selling custom-cut 3mm plates, it will cost you a lot more to go that route. Custom-cut mirror glass should be pretty inexpensive.
Between mirror glass and borosilicate, I’m glad we have options.
In Bambu Lab standard bed sizes or for other manufacturers? I had to have my 3mm borosilicate glass custom cut since nobody seemed to be selling the correct size.
Well I’ve been told that my bed is within tolerance so I’m my own with this one. I suspect its because the leveling routine doesn’t actually probe close to the edge where mine is the worst, the middle area where it probes is pretty good.
Its a shame they dont sell the heated bed in the store yet, I’d be tempted to avoid having a bodge.
Buyer beware, still very much a problem not solved by Bambu Lab.
My plates are 254 x 254 mm. So, a little smaller than the actual bed size of 256 x 256, but I’m willing to give up 1 mm all the way around to save a lot of money and time. There’s at least one manufacturer selling 255 x 255 mm plates, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a 256 x 256 plate shows up soon.
Mine are custom cut to 257 x 257 (for my P1Ps) from Ooznest. I got them cut a little smaller than the bed so they’d have just a little bit of wiggle room inside of the plastic frame.
258 x 258 might be the ideal size. Then again, it probably also depends on the accuracy of the cuts.
The first one was visibly warped, but not as much as some folks here. A bubble formed between the magnetic sticker and the aluminum plate, so I got it swapped by support.
Second heatbed, still a lil bit warped. I feel like it’s 10% better, but I swapped out the old one because the buble was making first layers a nightmare.
