1/4" Plexiglass Carriage Plate?
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Hey all, I am in the process of upgrading my old DaVinci 1.0 printer from back in the day which will include replacing the heated bed with a better/larger bed. In order to do so, I will need to laser a custom carriage plate to house the new bed. My question is, can I use 1/4" plexiglass as material for said carriage plate? I would think that with proper insulation between the heated bed and the carriage plate I should be fine and free from any warp concern, but wanted to get popular opinion before I wasted any time on design. For clarification, my intention would be to do it like this from top down:
Glass
Heated bed
3mm cork board
1/4" Plexi Carriage Plate (maybe even 3/8")Appreciate your thoughts!
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@PixelGl1tch Plexiglass carriage plate aside, what do you mean by "Glass" then "Heated Bed"? Is the "Heated Bed" itself an aluminium plate with heater attached? Or did you mean that it will be a heater attached directly to the glass (which is seriously bad idea for so many reasons)?
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Sorry, its an aluminium plate with a heater attached. This is the one I currently have in mind...
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071V7DVGB/ref=ox_sc_act_title_7?smid=A36KNDPALTN82Y&psc=1
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@PixelGl1tch OK. Well it's not the way that I would do it. Why not use a thickish piece of aliminium tooling plate which will be flat and negate any need for mesh bed flatness compensation. Then you could prabably make a simple frame out of aluminium extrusion to support it, rather than getting anything laser cut.
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Mostly because I have a laser cutter and 3/8" acrylic sitting right next to my 3d printer, and would be rather easy/convenient for me to do myself if it is a sustainable solution.
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Was going to do something similar to this build, except the bottom plate would be acrylic.
http://www.soliforum.com/topic/17680/davinci-10a-bed-replacment/
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Since you are asking for opinions from the masses, my vote goes definitely to the "don't do it" side.
The plate that you are suggesting to replace with plexi (if I understand you correctly) is what supports the build plate. It should be as stiff as possible and plexi just isn't. This doesn't even take any sort of heat distortion into account. It doesn't have to melt but what if it likes to just warp a bit here and there.
Do it right and do it once! I hate having to redo things because the original build was done to a price line (inexpensive factory built printer) -
Exactly why I asked, appreciate your response and agree whole heartedly that I definitely will not want to re-do it, I'll scratch the plexi idea.
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A quick sort-of related note - I use a piezo z sensor. When it does a reading it presses onto the glass plate that is on top of the build plate. Sometimes the pressure is a bit too much and you can see deflection of the build plate and/or the printhead carriage. This is most annoying and I thought I would fix it's little wagon. The bed was spring mounted to the sub frame as a lot of printers are these days and I thought that if I removed the springs, the issue would go away. Well, imagine my surprise when I found out the build sub frame was flexing. I was not a happy camper but at this time I am not bothered enough to replace the aluminum sub frame withe a heavier plate. I am also concerned with the additional mass as the build plate is moved by the y axis.
My next printer will only move the build plate in the Z direction so I can make the whole setup stronger.
