Solidoodle Wiki

I am also Kickstarter supporter in the Makibox A6 Project. The Makibox project started about a year ago with several goals to help the 3d printing community revolutionize the printers design and software interface; based on the complaints from all the other low end 3d printer owners/users. Make it kit style for ease of shipping, but with minimal assembly required, allow users to use ABS Pellets, so not to have to depend on expensive filament, do this in a fashion that would allow the price tag to be below $300 Bucks, and make everything, 'all' open technology. They plan on shipping Phase I (the printer, using spooled filament) by the end of the year, and Phase II (the in-line filament extruder, as an add-on) by the end of the 1 quarter of 2013…

Makibox made it's first prints a couple of weeks ago. As I watched the video, I saw something amazing; they were printing directly on a SS Bed (no glass, no kapton, no hair spray), and the extruded material stuck to the stainless without a problem, every time; and when cooled it back down to about 75°C, the part either popped right off by itself, or just took a little nudge. I was impressed!

Ordered a couple flavors of SS material in 1mm thickness ((1) week ago from a US supplier, and it hasn't even been shipped as of yet; maybe it was a 'Bad Supplier' choice. Also ordered some 3" wide, two sided Kapton Tape; it has been shipped, confirmed expected delivery is 1 to 3 weeks (about normal; it's coming out of China)…

I am planning using, the Double Sided Kapton Tape to stick the new SS Plate to my SD2's existing bed. My thoughts are that this will close any thickness of air gaps, and help with quicker heat transfer (this modification only looses me my existing installed Kapton Tape (And; I have a spare piece, in case we need to go back to the existing SD2 design))…

Off to a great start :-( ; 1st the (2) Sided Adhesive Kapton tape arrived, and it has no adhesive, either side; and the 1mm thick SS plates arrived, they were sheered to size and that made them not totally flat. Figuring that I could flatten the plates within .001", so I started the project by removing my existing Kapton from the bed, then is when I found that the new Kapton didn't have adhesive. I had put my spare piece of SD2 Kapton tape on the bed and put a hold on this project untill I get the replacement tape from my supplier…

Correct tape arrived and I install my plate on the SD2's bed. With first attempts, I could not get anything to stick to the bed, roughed up the bed a little with 400 wet/dry, still not sticking well, tried Hair Spray and Bingo…

Next step is to have the plate surface sand blasted, and see if we can do away with the Hair Spray…

~ Some Results starting to take place! ~

I will be writing this is bits and pieces, as a [Tab] really has content that you can hang your hat on, I will [Wipe] it's contents and make it factual…

5/25/13 Update
Have completed this experiment; my conclusion is that with the old style bed heater it is not possible to control the heat any better. I have been trying to get my hands on one of the new aluminum frames and new bed heating systems since they were announced months back; email to support has not help get me these replacement parts, nor has everything needed, showed up in the store so far; so this project will stay on hold till they do… Enjoy the day, Kendall