Remixed Silicone Heat Bed Mounting Kit for 8 inch (200mm) bed

thingiverse

When I was looking to upgrade my Prusa's MK2B PCB heatbed, I came across a forum post from "lawsy", a forum moderator from http://www.soliforum.com. Here's the post: http://www.soliforum.com/topic/1819/heated-bed-upgrade-guide-with-picscomparisonsstls/. Shortly after posting his heat bed upgrade project, he kindly shared the .stl design files on Thingiverse: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:64607 After researching silicone beds, I realized that I wanted to go the same route. I loved lawsy's design, but it was designed for a 150mm silicone heat pad, and I use a 8" or 200mm bed. So, I took the original files and resized them to fit my 200mm heater. While I was at it, I made some changes to suit my needs. Rather than use the 3D-printed clips that lawsy used to hold the glass down, I wanted to use the same binder clips that I had been using with my old bed. So, I modified the file with small cutouts that are just big enough to allow 4 clips on each end of the bed. I wanted something pretty sturdy and solid, so I wanted to mount it all on the aluminum plate that I had previously used as my actual print surface. And then I wanted the whole thing to use the same 3-point leveling system that I was using before. To that end, I needed more than just one screw on each bed piece to hold it down. So, I added holes for more screws. Since I re-sized the entire stl file, the recessed part of the bed designed to accommodate the larger "hump" where the wires come out was too larger. So, I modified it to specifically fit my silicone heat pad, which is a 300W version that I purchased off of Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/200x200mm-Silicone-Rubber-Heater-Printer/dp/B00I50G3IK/ref=sr_1_2?s=industrial&ie=UTF8&qid=1442817872&sr=1-2&keywords=200x200mm+12V+Silicone+Rubber+Heater+for+3D+Printer+Heated+Beds from Quintessential Universal Building Device, Inc (aka, QU-BD, the same company that made the bed that lawsy used). The original design was fairly thick, and since I was adding a 3mm aluminum plate underneath it, I wanted to minimize the vertical thickness. So, I simply made the mounts as thin as I could. With an upgraded 30A/350W power supply, this heat bed is significantly more powerful than the original. I print mostly in ABS. With ABS, I like to print on a 85-90 degrees Celsius surface using extra hold hair spray on borosilicate glass. With the old heater, it took... no joke.... 20-30 minutes to reach 85-90. I timed the new heater and to get to 90 degrees took 3 minutes and 18 seconds!! This is a lot of time saved sitting around waiting for the bed to heat up so you can start printing. All credit for this design should go to lawsy. It's a great design and I really appreciate him posting the files for everyone to share! Instructions Printed using Cura slicer in ABS. Using 0.4mm nozzle, I used 0.8mm top and bottom as well as 0.8mm sides/walls and 15% infill. I found that any more infill that that and the edges of the print would peel up. I believe that my print speed was around 30-40 mm/s. This slow speed was also chosen to help prevent edge warp/peel.