The question I’m sure was on everyone’s mind: can you combine PEI and glass beds?

[solarbird]

Yes! You can. And there are some benefits. Read on.

This is a combined/expanded version of a couple of other posts I’ve made here, rewritten for /r/3dPrinting. It’s a good summary so I’m posting it here, too.

I’ve been wanting to try a PEI bed plate for a while but I haven’t wanted either a big semi-permanent magnet on my heating plate or to lose the ability to print to glass if I want to. I was also worried about bed heat evenness (for good reason in my case) and flatness (which for me is probably fine but isn’t for everyone without glass).

Then I realised I could buy a cheap non-coated/plain glass plate for like $8 and try combining the two.

First, I wanted to be able to keep using standard glass plate clips. Sure, I could buy screwdown clips but, well, why? And they take up more space anyway. I want as much of the plate available as I can get.

So I stuck the adhesive magnetic layer onto the glass as squarely as I could. I missed a little bit, so had to trim it back from the edges of the glass some places, because once that stuff is down, it’s not moving.

Then – still using my old glass bed – I made and printed a small trimming jig to help me cut the magnetic layer back from the edges very pricely. This was to make just enough room for the glass bed clips. You can use it with any standard xacto #11 blade knife.

It’s a jig! Like a Jeb!, but very slightly more interesting!

Once trimmed and the residue is cleared off, you can just clip it to your heating plate just like any other glass plate, since it’s all the same height:

I don’t actually need this many clips I was just trying shit

One of the nice things about PEI plates being magnetic is that they’re generally on steel, which means the small amount of overhang – where you usually wouldn’t be printing since this is where the clips live on a glass plate – is still available for printing. The clips on my bed plate fit right under the plate and it’s flat all the way out. (I can’t know this is true for all clips, of course. You might have to file some clips down a little.)

Anyway, then you pop the PEI plate right down onto the magnet as usual and now you have a PEI print bed with the flatness and thermal mass of glass. With underside insulation (applied everywhere except the temperature sensor, that’s important), the amount of time it takes to heat the bed to actual readiness is still faster than factory on glass. (Disclosure: I didn’t get out the laser thermometer to verify, but… these plates don’t have any thermal mass, and the magnetic layer is specifically engineered to be heat conductive, so.)

edge to edge PEI, clips neatly tucked away

With this hybrid bed, I was able to get perfectly flat large-flat-bottom objects at lower bed and filament temperatures, even with high-stress models like this from my work-in-progress wall-mount project storage system. So if you’re printing objects like these which might be structurally simple but still have high demands for print flatness, this bed design might be for you. And it only costs $8 or $9 more than a regular PEI bed plate – or nothing more if you have a worn-out glass plate sitting around somewhere.

absolutely no lift anywhere, even with a high-speed Filament Friday profile

Anyway, now I have a PEI plate and I can still use glass and so far it’s pretty dang great. And if you’ve read this far, now you know how to make one too. ^_^

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.