Heated bed question

Hi all,
I have sucessfully (so far) built a Prusa i3 from scratch. About 4 months of picking away at it. Printed my first parts this past weekend.
2 basic questions: it seem that it takes a very long for the bed to heat up. over 25min to get up to 120 deg C. I have 16awg wires going to the bed. Thermister poking up through the little hole.
What should I be looking for to troubleshoot this?

also: using Pronterface and Slic3r. When I'm printing a part, is there a way to see the g-code execute line by line? another part of the question: after I generate the g-code with slic3r how can i get a look at entirety of the code.( i.e. what can I use to open up the file to see the individual line of code?)

Thanks to all who post here, I have learned a lot by just browsing through the many posts.
Cheers,
Peter

Quote
PedroB
Hi all,
I have sucessfully (so far) built a Prusa i3 from scratch. About 4 months of picking away at it. Printed my first parts this past weekend.
2 basic questions: it seem that it takes a very long for the bed to heat up. over 25min to get up to 120 deg C. I have 16awg wires going to the bed. Thermister poking up through the little hole.
What should I be looking for to troubleshoot this?

also: using Pronterface and Slic3r. When I'm printing a part, is there a way to see the g-code execute line by line? another part of the question: after I generate the g-code with slic3r how can i get a look at entirety of the code.( i.e. what can I use to open up the file to see the individual line of code?)

Thanks to all who post here, I have learned a lot by just browsing through the many posts.
Cheers,
Peter

The file is readable using any text editor. Or, if you are in Pronterface, after you "Load File", you can click on Tools, then Edit...

It's slow to heat because the heat is constantly being dissipated, you need a complete enclosure to trap the heat inside. I have a delta printer, so it's probably impossible to print ABS unless I have an enclosure.

The heated bed shouldn't be heated to 120C... That's hot enough to boil water! I get excellent adhesion with PLA on clean glass at 55C.

There's a menu item in Pronterface that will scroll G-code in the info area... Just need to select debug.

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-David

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+1 with PLA bed temperature is 0-70°C and for ABS 90-100°C. It's not necessary to raise temperature to 120°C which is the maximum a MK2B heatbed can stand. Even at 110°C you can have issues with the micro thermistor or wiring. Heating a bed to 100°C takes me 8mn under 12v. Some people use an external 24v PSU to raise temperature faster. I don't think you can divide the time by two anyways. Think about thermal insulation between the PCB and the Y carriage. It's possible with mineral whool or a simple piece of corrugated cardboard and an aluminium paper sheet, see google. A piece of corrugated carboard with slippy paper directly on the bed when heating can save some time too. I do this during the first heating of the day,

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Collective intelligence emerges when a group of people work together effectively. Prusa i3 Folger (A lot of the parts are wrong, boring !)