Simple, stupid question. Unwired RRP MonoMendel heat bed - will I burn down my house?

Some backstory: I purchased a RRP Mono Mendel kit about a year and a half ago. I ended up having to put my project on hold after being laid off from my job. I've since returned to working on it, new job and income in wallet, but I've hit a snag.

I don't have some of the tools that the build calls for. Specifically, it calls for a 3mm drill to make the power cabling holes larger on the heat bed. I successfully wired up my thermositor with my very amateurish soldering skills, but I don't have the drill to make the holes on my heat bed large enough to fit the wires. It's funny. The docs say you "may" need to drill. Couldn't they just said "you'll need a damn drill, no matter your luck or blessings".

I honestly only wanted to print PLA to begin with and only got the RRP Mendel since it had a large print bed for an otherwise good price, but now that I've sunk so much time and money into this printer, it's quickly becoming a burden to finish.

The actual question: can I progress on my build by simply not wiring the bed? I'm from a computing background, but have little electrical knowledge, so I'm worried I'll smoke out my cat if something isn't wired. I also don't want to drive to the nearest Microcenter (it's an hour drive) to pick up more heat shrink that I've already wasted on my thermositor.

You're welcome to giggle at me, but I'm at my wit's end here. I just want to print something.

Hi,

I built a RRP Mendel about 10 months ago. I don't remember having to drill out any holes for heat bed cabling. Just been through the build instructions to refresh my memory and can't see anything there either so I'm not sure what your issue is. Anyway, when you get to the section about wiring, simply don't connect the heat bed wires to the 12v terminals on the Duet. That'll mean there is never any power to the heater so you won't burn the house down. A heated bed isn't strictly necessary for PLA and many people use blue painters tape or similar instead of a heated bed..

Do you really not have a 1/8" drill (or even a file) either? You're just making clearance for the wire to go through. The exact dimension is not all that critical. They probably had some PCB suppliers who put a large enough hole in the boards to begin with or some wiring suppliers who had thinner insulation, thus the "might."

As for running it without the heat-bed plugged in, it should be fine, especially if you don't wire in the bed thermistor either. Any erroneously-passed command to heat the bed should error out without a thermistor signal. You would still want to slice with a bed temp of 0.

Deckingman, the term MonoMendel suggests the previous generation of RRP Mendel, with a Melzi board and considerably more "assembly required" when it came to the wiring, but the rest of your post remains correct.

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IMBoring25


Deckingman, the term MonoMendel suggests the previous generation of RRP Mendel, with a Melzi board and considerably more "assembly required" when it came to the wiring, but the rest of your post remains correct.

Ah, thanks for the correction - thought it had to be something like that.