Custom made heat bed for Dremel Idea Builder

thingiverse

As the Dremel Idea Builder has no own heated bed my brother and myself decided to design our own custom made solution and publish its design so everybody interested can rebuild it by himself. Our main target for the design was to change as little as possible to the existing Dremel i.e. no tinkering with the electronics, mechanics and housing. The change to the printer itself may only be required if you want to use print bed temperatures above 60-70° C. as the standard print bed holder is made out of ABS and my be damaged by such high temperatures. If you want to use such high print bed temperatures, I've designed a custom made print bed holder which can be printed with high temp PLA (e.g. Multec HT-PLA, extrudr GreenTec PLA). The design of this print bed holder can be found here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1587208 Additionally I've designed my own Arduino based temperature controller as the fully assembled print bed PCB from China already includes 100k Ohm NTC thermistor and 500 Ohm resistor, for which combination I did not find an off the shelf temperature controller yet. If you find one - please leave a comment on this thing: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1608602 Post-Printing History My first prototype was created by my brother who has direct access to milling machinery equipment. In order to process the second prototype myself I've decided to get in contact with a local FabLab. The guys over there suggested to build the print bed housing out of laser cut POM (also known as Delrin) with 3mm thickness. The two SVG files are the result of that approach: => Printbedholder-printable-V3-all-M3-screws.svg - not for laser cutting but for better visibility only, e.g. for printing out on a normal printer => Printbedholder-lasercutter-V3-all-M3-screws.svg - for laser cutting I had the chance to laser cut the print bed holder. I tried it with 3mm MDF as well as 3mm POM (Delrin) plates. I did a fair share of testing, the design works as expected, heating up above 110° C. possible, but for higher temps >80° C. fairly slow. The aluminium foil, isolation material (2mm felt) and POM/MDF plate at the bottom reduce the heat tranferred towards the bottom by approx. 10° C. I.e. if the heat bed itself is heated up to 60° C. the bottom of the heat bed reaches approx. 50° C. - good to know when having to think about the heat resistance of the print bed holder. General setup Print bed housing: => 3 layers of 3mm thick laser cut POM or MDF (Printbedholder-lasercutter-V3-all-M3-screws.svg) => 12 2mm diameter spring pins with 8-9 mm length or 12 metall screws 2.9mm * 9mm for connecting the 3 layers of POM or MDF aluminium foil for heat reflection between POM/MDF and felt insulation (keep open spaces where the resistor and plug is connected at the PCB) 1-2mm thick insulation (e.g. felt) between print bed holder and PCB (keep open spaces where the resistor and plug is connected at the PCB) print bed PCB 3mm thick aluminium cover 10 x M3x8 counter-sunk screws for attaching the print bed to the holder I've created a better view of the general setup via Tinkercad: https://www.tinkercad.com/things/evLoup2Buhj/ Parts for assembly 1x 12V DC power supply that can provide at least 10A (the heat bed uses approx. 9 A during heating phase, thus the more ampere you have in spare, the better) 1x print bed with 150 x 230mm dimension for 12 VDC 1x aluminium cover 150 x 230mm (ideally already with drilled holes in the correct places) 1x cables to power the PCB and measure the temperature The following site sells a combination package of heatbed, aluminium cover and cabling:https://reprapchampion.com/collections/heated-beds/products/makerbot-designed-heater-board-t23x15-reprap-3d-printer-diy-flash-forge-creator (I'm not affiliated to the above site - if you find other places, please leave a comment) MIND: the above mentioned package was shipped to me with the cables attached to the plug in reverse order. The correct plug for the PCB seems to be the "VHR-5N" of Japan Solderless Terminals (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B011NELHPS/) 1x temperature controller (since I haven't found one prebuild in the Internet I've decided to build my own - http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1608602) To extend / connect the shipped cables from above you may require additional cables that can withstand 12V with up to 300V, e.g. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01A88PB6G/ (I once almost burned my working space during testing due to cables being too thin) Easy to use and safe connectors for cabling can be found in the series 221 of WAGO, e.g. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AF5M5NE/ or http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0107SYYGU/)