1st time printing ABS - heated bed not reaching 110ºC gets to 105-107ºC -

I recently got a Hictop 3DP11 Prusa i3 kit and i'm trying to print in ABS for the first time but the heated bed is not going up to 110ºC, the highest it goes is 108ºC after 40 mins of heating...sometimes it goes down to 107 or 106ºC. What could be going on here? Is the power supply they've given just inadequate? It's rated 12v DC/20a output.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/01/2016 01:44PM by printingandprinting.

you need to insulate under the heated bed, or you just trying to heat up the room

I see, what sort of insulation?

I used a cork placemat cut to shape and held onto the bottom of the bed with bulldog clips. I also lay another one on top of the bed while it is heating up - not necessary to reach 110C but it does speed it up.

wool based felt also works quite nicely.

Has to be wool though, not acrylic, polyester, rayon etc as that melts

Does styrofoam work?

Not Styrofoam because (from Wikipedia): polystyrene is in a solid (glassy) state at room temperature but flows if heated above about 100 °C, its glass transition temperature.

Most people tend to use cork or even cardboard. Not toxic if they char... Note that you don't need to go over about 106.

Other than insulating the other option would be to increase the voltage somewhat, but do insulate first to see if that's all that's needed.

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My printer: Raptosaur - Large Format Delta - [www.paulwanamaker.wordpress.com]
Can you answer questions about Calibration, Printing issues, Mechanics? Write it up and improve the Wiki!

Thanks for the suggestions.

Isn't the melting point of styrofoam ~ 240 °C?

Yes, melting point, but that isn't the same as glass transition temperature. Polystyrene (which styrofoam is made of) starts to get soft at 100C.
See here.

If you want a higher temp foam then you could use Polyisocyanurate foam board (PIR) which can be bought at large home improvement stores for cheap.
[en.wikipedia.org]

If your bed overheated I don't know what kind of fumes that might make, but it doesn't break down till above 200C.

Hope that helps.

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My printer: Raptosaur - Large Format Delta - [www.paulwanamaker.wordpress.com]
Can you answer questions about Calibration, Printing issues, Mechanics? Write it up and improve the Wiki!

I've seen the results of someone using Polystyrene... it was a mess.. think hot melted marshmallow everywhere... It was not good.

The reason it takes almost forever to get close to your target temperature is simply that there is not enough power going into the heater. Insulating the underside of the platform will help a little, but you'll still be waiting forever for the bed to heat up to print temperature. If it takes a long time to get the bed up to temperature the PID controller will have a hard time regulating the temperature. Right now you're operating at the limit of the heater's performance. That's never a good place to be operating anything. You want to have some margin. What you really need to do is increase the voltage to the heater or use a heater rated for higher power at the voltage you're using. That may require changing the heater or the power supply or both.

Some power supplies have adjustable output voltage. If yours does you can crank the voltage up a couple volts and your problem may be solved, but be careful not to exceed the power rating of the power supply or the voltage rating of your controller board or whatever else is connected to that supply.

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

Quote
the_digital_dentist
The reason it takes almost forever to get close to your target temperature is simply that there is not enough power going into the heater. Insulating the underside of the platform will help a little, but you'll still be waiting forever for the bed to heat up to print temperature. If it takes a long time to get the bed up to temperature the PID controller will have a hard time regulating the temperature. Right now you're operating at the limit of the heater's performance. That's never a good place to be operating anything. You want to have some margin. What you really need to do is increase the voltage to the heater or use a heater rated for higher power at the voltage you're using. That may require changing the heater or the power supply or both.

Some power supplies have adjustable output voltage. If yours does you can crank the voltage up a couple volts and your problem may be solved, but be careful not to exceed the power rating of the power supply or the voltage rating of your controller board or whatever else is connected to that supply.

Ah, I see. The power supply I've got is rated for 12v/20A; no 24v, unfortunately. It's the power supply that came with this kit printer - Hictop 3DP11. So do you think I should invest in a higher output current 12v supply or a 12v & 24v supply? I'm using the MKS Base v1.4 board, off hand I'm guessing the only thing I could run at 24v would be the bed.

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/02/2016 09:37AM by printingandprinting.

It is always worth checking the voltage you're actually getting at the heatbed - are you actually getting 12v? Bad connectors, loose joints, cables too thin can all add a little bit of resistance to the circuit, and at 11A will mean that you lose a lot of power.

Also: In theory, your power supply should be good enough - but it's very rare for a power supply to achieve its advertised rating, especially if it originated in China!

If you add up the power requirements, at 12v each component will be taking the following current, roughly speaking:

Heated bed - about 11A or so
Hot-end (25W?) - just over 2A
Motors - may require a couple of Amps at times (varies according to what's happening at the time of measuring)
Electronics - about 1A, maybe less

This doesn't add up to anywhere near 20A, but a while ago I tried running one of my printers on a 203W XBox power supply - theoretically 17A - and that used to trip when the motors started running. So, if your power supply isn't capable of the advertised 20A then you may be running close to the limit. I now run it on a 30A 24v power supply (I converted the whole machine to 24v) and it's always got enough power!

Try checking your voltages though, before you commit to spending more money.

12V is 12V. It doesn't matter if it comes from a 20A supply or a 300A supply. If the voltage is the same, the heater will deliver the same amount of heat. You need to increase voltage by a few volts or get a higher powered 12V heater. If you get a higher powered heater you may also need a higher power rated power supply, and you may have to check the current limit of the controller circuit board and the MOSFET that is used to switch power to the heater.

The power supply you are using is rated for 240W (12V x 20A= 240 W). The heater is rated for much less than that, though there's no spec on the amazon page saying exactly what it is. Based on my experience with my printer (about 300mm x 300mm bed size, 450W heater, 105C in about 5 minutes), I would say you need about 250W to get your bed up to print temperature in about 5 minutes. Neither the heater nor the power supply are adequately rated to do that.

There's something else you should be aware of. You're intending to print with ABS, so you're trying to push the bed temperature up to 105-110C. That will get the first layer to stick just fine if the bed has the right surface covering, but it won't prevent parts from warping and delaminating. If you want to print ABS without those problems, the printer needs to be enclosed and the temperature inside the enclosure needs to be 45-50C. If you don't enclose the printer and get the temperature up, your prints will fail. Here's an illustration of what happens with and without an enclosure- guess which part was printed in an enclosed printer with a warm build chamber:



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/02/2016 06:54PM by the_digital_dentist.

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

Quote
the_digital_dentist
12V is 12V. It doesn't matter if it comes from a 20A supply or a 300A supply. If the voltage is the same, the heater will deliver the same amount of heat. You need to increase voltage by a few volts or get a higher powered 12V heater. If you get a higher powered heater you may also need a higher power rated power supply, and you may have to check the current limit of the controller circuit board and the MOSFET that is used to switch power to the heater.

The power supply you are using is rated for 240W (12V x 20A= 240 W). The heater is rated for much less than that, though there's no spec on the amazon page saying exactly what it is. Based on my experience with my printer (about 300mm x 300mm bed size, 450W heater, 105C in about 5 minutes), I would say you need about 250W to get your bed up to print temperature in a reasonable amount the same time. Neither the heater nor the power supply are adequately rated to do that.

There's something else you should be aware of. You're intending to print with ABS, so you're trying to push the bed temperature up to 105-110C. That will get the first layer to stick just fine if the bed has the right surface covering, but it won't prevent parts from warping and delaminating. If you want to print ABS without those problems, the printer needs to be enclosed and the temperature inside the enclosure needs to be 45-50C. If you don't enclose the printer and get the temperature up, your prints will fail. Here's an illustration of what happens with and without an enclosure- guess which part was printed in an enclosed printer with a warm build chamber:

FTZPHJDIAAWNPOU.LARGE.jpg

Wow what a deceptive company Hictop is, their kit has been nothing but empty promises and terrible documentation. Their tech support is also non-existent. Do you think I could print PET-G without an enclosed printer? I hear it's comparable to ABS prints in a lot of ways minus the fumes.

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/02/2016 02:24PM by printingandprinting.

I have no experience with PETG so I can't tell you anything about it.

I think there is a LOT of deception out there, not just HicTop. When you see a printer ad that says a machine is designed to print PLA and ABS, if it isn't enclosed (and very few are), you won't be able to print anything but very small parts using ABS. Based on posts I've seen in these forums and on G+, it seems many printers come with underpowered heaters and power supplies that won't get the bed up to the 105C or so required to print ABS.

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

This is a problem with most cheap printer kits. The PCB bed heaters they use are either not adequate or barely adequate to reach around 105C for ABS printing. Even if the PSU has a voltage adjustment and some spare power capacity, the cheap Arduino/RAMPS electronics that these kits use can't be safely run at more than 12V if the kit includes an LCD.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Quote
the_digital_dentist
12V is 12V. It doesn't matter if it comes from a 20A supply or a 300A supply.

Perhaps you're missing my point - or perhaps I didn't explain myself very well - I was wondering if the power supply was failing to supply 12v at the full load, or whether some electrical shortcoming was stopping the full 12v reaching the heatbed.

If I was in the OP's shoes, I'd do the following:

1. Put a multimeter across the power supply when everything is on - heatbed, hot end, the lot. If the meter shows 12v the the power supply is good enough, if the voltage has dropped then the supply is inadequate.
2. If the supply is good, I would put the meter across the terminals of the heatbed and try to reach 110C. It should show something very close to 12v, but if it doesn't then there's some problem between the power supply and the heatbed.
3. If there's 12v at the heatbed, then I would try insulation underneath - as many have already done. I have 2 layers of 2mm cork under my aluminium Mk3 heatbed, with another aluminium plate under that to keep it all together. Any heat-resistant insulation would do.
4. To help things along I would also put a sheet of corrugated cardboard on top of the bed while it's heating up.

Steps 3 & 4 have already been suggested previously; with these I can get my heatbed up to 110C in about 10 minutes or so. This isn't as quick as a more powerful heater would do it, but I'm in no great hurry.

As for PETG - I have no experience with it, but I have done some research and plan to buy a reel fairly soon. The main benefit seems to be that the heatbed only needs to be at around 50 - 60C, which will solve at least one of the OP's problems. The only down-side of PETG is availability and cost, in the UK anyway. There are very few stockists compared to PLA and ABS.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/03/2016 05:01AM by David J.

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David J

Quote
the_digital_dentist
12V is 12V. It doesn't matter if it comes from a 20A supply or a 300A supply.

Perhaps you're missing my point - or perhaps I didn't explain myself very well - I was wondering if the power supply was failing to supply 12v at the full load, or whether some electrical shortcoming was stopping the full 12v reaching the heatbed.

If I was in the OP's shoes, I'd do the following:

1. Put a multimeter across the power supply when everything is on - heatbed, hot end, the lot. If the meter shows 12v the the power supply is good enough, if the voltage has dropped then the supply is inadequate.
2. If the supply is good, I would put the meter across the terminals of the heatbed and try to reach 110C. It should show something very close to 12v, but if it doesn't then there's some problem between the power supply and the heatbed.
3. If there's 12v at the heatbed, then I would try insulation underneath - as many have already done. I have 2 layers of 2mm cork under my aluminium Mk3 heatbed, with another aluminium plate under that to keep it all together. Any heat-resistant insulation would do.
4. To help things along I would also put a sheet of corrugated cardboard on top of the bed while it's heating up.

Steps 3 & 4 have already been suggested previously; with these I can get my heatbed up to 110C in about 10 minutes or so. This isn't as quick as a more powerful heater would do it, but I'm in no great hurry.

As for PETG - I have no experience with it, but I have done some research and plan to buy a reel fairly soon. The main benefit seems to be that the heatbed only needs to be at around 50 - 60C, which will solve at least one of the OP's problems. The only down-side of PETG is availability and cost, in the UK anyway. There are very few stockists compared to PLA and ABS.

If you want PETG in the UK at a reasonable price then RepRapWorld in Holland do the ESUN Petg at 19 Euros per kilo Plus VAT works out at around £16.5 per kG plus the carriage. They are a very reputable company and they dispatch very quickly stuff normally arrives within the Week from time of order.

Doug

Quote
dougal1957
If you want PETG in the UK at a reasonable price then RepRapWorld in Holland do the ESUN Petg at 19 Euros per kilo Plus VAT works out at around £16.5 per kG plus the carriage. They are a very reputable company and they dispatch very quickly stuff normally arrives within the Week from time of order.

Doug

Thanks Doug - I'll take a look.

David

PETG is a lot more difficult to print with than ABS. It's grand stuff when it works - strong and pretty, but it's difficult to find the sweet spot between poor layer adhesion and a melty mess. It also strings like crazy. I've not had any problems with ABS in the open yet, but I haven't tried any tall prints. My plan is to add an enclosure and print more ABS, since it's cheap, reasonably strong, machinable and easy to print. I like nylon too, but I have to print it a lot slower, and it's expensive. Not sure if I will keep using pla. It's main advantage seems to be print speed. I guess useful for roughing out ideas.

That's not my experience at all. I never did solve the stringing problems with ABS, but my very first print with PETG was nearly perfect. Using transparent PETG from Rigidink.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Well, I've just ordered 50 metres of transparent PETG to play with, to see if I like it.

Quote
dc42
That's not my experience at all. I never did solve the stringing problems with ABS, but my very first print with PETG was nearly perfect. Using transparent PETG from Rigidink.

That's interesting, perhaps I'm just way off the mark with my settings. I'm using natural/transparent petg from filaments.ca. I'll keep trying for sure, as the stuff is impressively strong. If I don't make any progress I'll start a new thread and seek advice

Quote
David J

Quote
the_digital_dentist
12V is 12V. It doesn't matter if it comes from a 20A supply or a 300A supply.

1. Put a multimeter across the power supply when everything is on - heatbed, hot end, the lot. If the meter shows 12v the the power supply is good enough, if the voltage has dropped then the supply is inadequate.
2. If the supply is good, I would put the meter across the terminals of the heatbed and try to reach 110C. It should show something very close to 12v, but if it doesn't then there's some problem between the power supply and the heatbed.
3. If there's 12v at the heatbed, then I would try insulation underneath - as many have already done. I have 2 layers of 2mm cork under my aluminium Mk3 heatbed, with another aluminium plate under that to keep it all together. Any heat-resistant insulation would do.
4. To help things along I would also put a sheet of corrugated cardboard on top of the bed while it's heating up.

#1 - Yes, the voltage drops slightly when the bed heats up and even more when a print begins. There's a potentiometer on far right of the power supply for adjusting the output voltage, would it help to raise the output voltage slightly? Do you know where I can find the maximum safe input voltage for my board (MKS Base v1.4)? Max output voltage I'm able to get from this PSU while not under a load (by adjusting the pot on the PSU) is 15v DC. I haven't yet connected it to the printer @15v for fear of frying the MKS Base v1.4.
#2 - Yes, it's close to 12v

What power supply should I order to replace this? My kit came with a 12v/20A, 110/220v input PSU with screw terminals.

Here's my board & bed:



Edited 12 time(s). Last edit at 01/07/2016 04:40PM by printingandprinting.

If you're getting roughly 12v at the heatbed then your problems are with the heatbed itself. These Mk2 & Mk3 beds can barely reach 110C unless you help them along - a decent layer of insulation underneath will make a significant difference, as would some cardboard on top while it's heating up.

The only way you'll get to 110C quickly is to change the heatbed - others can advise, but usually it's a metal plate with a stick-on element underneath. The trouble is, these take more power so you will need to make changes in other places to provide that power.

If you don't want to spend a lot more money I would recommend trying the insulation first! Also - do you really need to go up to 110C? I successfully print ABS at a bed temp of 100C, which I can reach easily at any time I want, using a bed identical to yours (but insulated).

Have you insulated under the bed yet, as discussed earlier in this thread? Cork sheet is readily available on eBay, or you can use triple-skin corrugated cardboard.

I think a combination of insulating under the bed and turning your power supply up to 14V will get you the temperature you are looking for. Looks like the MKS BASE can take up to 24V from what I found on the web. The capacitors on the board in your photo are 35V ones, which confirms this, and its 5V regulator is a switching one, so no risk of overheating it as there would be on RAMPS. If your machine is single extrusion, the 240W rating of your existing PSU should be just enough, given that your bed heater isn't very powerful. If you ever replace the PSU, get a 12V 25A one.

Your 12V fans probably have a maximum voltage of 13.6V, so if you go above that, it's best to put a couple of silicon diodes in series with each one to reduce the voltage by about 2V.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/08/2016 12:20AM by dc42.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Is it just the way the photo came out, or is the wire connected to pads 2 and 3 on the heat bed a much smaller gauge than that connected to pad 1? The heat bed is the single biggest current draw in the system, so it's worth having some fairly heavy gauge wire for that run.

I think it's the photo - I've used cable like that in the past, a pair of wires in red and black. When you pull them apart it leaves a bit of red on the black sleeving. My cable is the stuff used in solar panel insulation, good for 25A or so and I don't think that this is much thinner.

Nowadays I use the silicone-sleeved stuff that's made for electric R/C aircraft - not expensive, flexible, heat-resistant and good for high Amperage.

Ah, you're right. I completely missed the black when I first looked at the photo. Good tip on the R/C wiring - I should get some of that!