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Answered Bed heater

Discussion in 'General Questions' started by joea, Aug 28, 2021.

  1. joea

    joea Active Member

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    I have an early, much upgraded printer. Had some issues with prints detaching and warping on the bottom.

    In my searching one of the things mentioned is uneven bed heating. Always wondered about how this bed and heater look a bit "home made": held on with what looks to be metal "duct tape" and a good few inches smaller than sides of the bed. Never bothered to research it as "it seemed to be working fine".

    Now, not so sure. Are there visuals of the bed heater, as attached? Is the heater supposed to cover the entire bed area, or is "conduction" relied on?
     
  2. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Aluminum tape is normally the exterior cover for the heater to keep the heat directed up to the bed. It is a cheap 135w heater pad. The heater does not cover the entire printable surface area of the bed -- more like 2/3 of the bed area at most.

    See the videos from Marquis Johnson (in the sticky thread at / near top of list of threads in this forum). You can see how the bed heater is attached in one or more of those (the disassembly one would be my first guess).

    The heater is easy to replace (lots of 12v heater pads out there) but if you want more wattage you need to upgrade the 12vdc power supply in the printer because it is not large enough to power a much larger heater. You could maybe get by with 150w, but nothing larger. I have one that I swapped for an A/C powered bed heater (700w) and just used a 12vdc relay from the RAMPS bed heater output to drive the relay coil and the contacts connect the heater pad to the 115 AC... heats very quickly and holds well. Not suggesting you need to do that :) But you can replace it with another heater pad if you need it.

    I print very little that needs a lot of bed heat (most I print on unheated bed) but depending on your choice of materials you may.
     
  3. joea

    joea Active Member

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    I'm trying to get a handle on why my prints seem to have a warped "bottom" (bed side). I'll start another thread with a picture, if I cannot find the last one I posted on the same issue.
     
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  4. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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