Need advice on new heated bed aluminium plate

mrehorstdmd

@wilriker SoM and UMMD's beds are 300x300mm. SoM uses 1/4" thick MIC6 and UMMD uses 8mm thick MIC6. Both have the same Keenovo 750W heater. SoM gets to 100C to print ABS in about 2 minutes (faster than the extruder gets to 240C!) and UMMD takes about 4.5 minutes to get to 100C.

I have never heard of anyone successfully printing directly on aluminum (not sure where @deckingman would get the idea that I would advocate that). I print on PEI. Most common materials love to stick to PEI. ABS prints with sharp corners sometimes lift a bit and I have found that a little glue stick stops that completely.

I glue the PEI to the bed plate with the same 468MP adhesive that is used on the heaters. One nice thing about gluing the print surface down is that there's nothing sticking up over the bed surface to crash the extruder nozzle into. It lets go after a couple years as it does on the heater.

I haven't checked to see whether the adhesive on UMMD's bed is letting go of the aluminum or the heater. When the PEI was lifting on SoM the adhesive stayed on the aluminum. Either way, I'll clean off the old adhesive before applying the high temperature silicone. Paint stripper and a scraper works.

Phaedrux

@wilriker said in Need advice on new heated bed aluminium plate:

I also thought of directly sticking the heater to the aluminium plate with HT silicone but for now I will start with the included 468MP.

Go straight for the high temp silicone. The 468MP sticker isn't adequate in the long run, and when you decide to remove it, it will be painful to get unstuck from the heater pad and using a razor to scrape it off the aluminum is one thing, but risks damaging the silicone. A 6$ tube of RTV silicone is the way to go.

For the print surface, go with a PEI sheet stuck with 468MP. PEI + PVA glue stick will stick and release anything.

wilriker

@phaedrux Thanks. Will probably go this way then. I thought the 468MP would already be attached to the header upon delivery but thinking about it they would not know how I want to attach it so they probably just put it separate into the package.

Another question that came to me today: is there any reason but to use very thin (0.5-1mm) float glass on top of the aluminium? My mirror is 3mm thick and insulates quite a bit but delivering nice looking first layer at the same time. I could reduce the insulation factor of glass by just using thinner one, couldn't I?

dc42

@wilriker said in Need advice on new heated bed aluminium plate:

Another question that came to me today: is there any reason but to use very thin (0.5-1mm) float glass on top of the aluminium? My mirror is 3mm thick and insulates quite a bit but delivering nice looking first layer at the same time. I could reduce the insulation factor of glass by just using thinner one, couldn't I?

IMO if you already have a flat aluminium bed, the main advantage of using a glass bed on top of it is so that you can remove it, either to put it in the fridge or freezer to help the print release from the bed, or so that you can put another glass bed on immediately and start a new print, or so that you can use different print surfaces on different glass plates (PEI, glue etc.) for different types of filament. A thin glass plate wouldn't be safe to handle like that.

mrehorstdmd

The heater will come with the adhesive already attached so you can just peel and stick the heater to the plate. It works fine for about 2 years of printing ABS at 100C, maybe longer if used at lower temperatures.

Very thin glass breaks more easily than thicker glass. Glass chips and ball bearings/human flesh are not good combos.

Over time a PEI surface will get scratched up (especially if your printer is at a makerspace!). One of the facts of FDM printing life is that no matter what the print surface is, the bottom of a print will always look different from the top and sides.

OBELIKS

2mm glass is the absolute minimum. I used it for a while and I had no problems. Except when a spool fell on it.

Ricky_Grade10

I know some of you are aware of these plates...

https://clever3d.de/epages/7a4290fc-7c7f-46cc-9b99-eadef22228e2.sf/seca129485ade/?ObjectPath=/Shops/7a4290fc-7c7f-46cc-9b99-eadef22228e2/Products/c3d-DDP-PEI-natur

Has anyone here used one of these plates before?

Im thinking about thinking of building a new printer and I think Im going to go corexy. I'd really like to use a bed like that so as not to deal with all the.. pardon my italian... bed adhesivion fuckery

fcwilt

Hi,

I am dealing with the same issue.

So where can one get a precision ground aluminum plate made to size?

Frederick

Ricky_Grade10

If your in the US, try these guys...

https://www.midweststeelsupply.com/store/castaluminumplateatp5

fcwilt

@ricky_grade10 said in Need advice on new heated bed aluminium plate:

If your in the US, try these guys...

https://www.midweststeelsupply.com/store/castaluminumplateatp5

Thank you VERY much. I've looked many times but never found them.

Frederick

Ricky_Grade10

@fcwilt Both my deltas, Orangie and Mr. Pink, use 1/4 inch tooling plate from them and both plates arrived quickly and have been awesome

fcwilt

@ricky_grade10 said in Need advice on new heated bed aluminium plate:

@fcwilt Both my deltas, Orangie and Mr. Pink, use 1/4 inch tooling plate from them and both plates arrived quickly and have been awesome

You name your printers? Funny.

mudcruzr

@fcwilt said in Need advice on new heated bed aluminium plate:

@ricky_grade10 said in Need advice on new heated bed aluminium plate:

@fcwilt Both my deltas, Orangie and Mr. Pink, use 1/4 inch tooling plate from them and both plates arrived quickly and have been awesome

You name your printers? Funny.

So do I, Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman, doesn't everyone?

Danal

Yep! "BFD" = Big Fast Delta. And if you think that's what the F really stands for...

mrehorstdmd

You know that cast aluminum tooling plate can be cut with a hack saw, jig saw, table saw, or miter saw. You don't have to order a specific size...

3dmntbighker

@fcwilt said in Need advice on new heated bed aluminium plate:

@ricky_grade10 said in Need advice on new heated bed aluminium plate:

If your in the US, try these guys...

https://www.midweststeelsupply.com/store/castaluminumplateatp5

Thank you VERY much. I've looked many times but never found them.

Frederick

I had a bitch of a time originally finding midwest too. I have a 300 x 300 on my coreXY. The Alcoa MIC6 seems to be a lot more expensive than the Vista ATP5 plate that they carry. And for this application who cares about Alcoa.

PlasticMetal

If you have the ability to cut it yourself, S & S Machine sells surplus tooling plate aluminum discs in various sizes. I ordered two a few years ago, and currently use one on my delta.

TLeTourneau

Jumping in on this. I'm thinking about moving to a cast aluminium plate, I'm stuck on what thickness to get. The plate would be 500x500mm (19.6875"2 square) and the options seem to be 1/4", 5/16", or 3/8". In that size the 1/4" and 3/8" are the same price and the 5/16" is $10 more. I'm just not sure which way to go. Any advice would be truly appreciated. My machine is a CoreXY with dual Z axis using single start T8 leadscrews that have a 2mm lead. On the plus side I live about 90 minutes away from Midwest Metal Supply.

Thanks,

Tom

crynool

Anyone experience with them?

https://www.metalsupermarkets.com/phoenix-southwest/

mrehorstdmd

@tletourneau When it comes to thickness, you're balancing rigidity against heat-up time. You can get an idea of heat-up time from this site: https://jscalc.io/calc/uS8JYjYISgIvzJ1x 1/4" plate may be a little thin for that size depending on how thin you want to print your first layer, or whether or not you're going to use mesh compensation.

A 500x500 plate will expand about 1mm when heated to 100C. Make sure the mounting system can deal with that- the mount is usually not heated, so the screw locations don't move by 1 mm. I have used a kinematic mount on 2 printers (so far) and it works well.