Installing a new Calidum bed heater on a Solidoodle 4... So, Printit Industries introduced a new mica bed heater recently, called a Calidum and I had to get one. I ordered it on Monday, May 16th at about 10:15am. I had a confirmation of order email shortly there after, and a confirmation of shipping at 10:30am! The package arrived in Wednesday's mail - just 2 days after ordering! I honestly wish more companies would use USPS for shipping an ditch FedEx, but that is a whole different can of worms... back to the bed heater... I was amazed at how thin and light this Calidum heater is! I just had to put the calipers on it... The main body of this heater is less than 1mm thick! Obviously, where the wiring and thermistor are attached is thicker, but the main heater is really that thin. The bed comes pre-wired with both heater connection wires and thermistor already in place - no soldering or taping required on the bed itself. It also comes with 3M adhesive applied - all you have to do is peel the backing off, align it, and stick it on - no messy glues or tapes required. The only thing you will be required to do is add the connectors you need to attach to your controller board. So I pulled the build plate out of the printer - pretty straight forward operation - disconnect the existing wiring from the controller board, remove the leveling screw wingnuts and lift the whole works out. In the distant past, I had replaced the stock build plate with a thicker aluminum plate due to the stock plate being severely warped, but reused the silicone heater pad from the stock setup. To attach it I had used some Ultra Copper automotive gasket maker (high temp). I had also installed cork as an insulation material to help with heating - also from the auto parts store (gasket cork for making your own gaskets). All of that had to be removed from the aluminum build plate - a putty knife is a very useful tool for doing this... Cork removed... note the original silicone heat pad is smaller than the actual build plate... the outer edges were always a problem when trying to print larger items in ABS - not enough heat out there... Cork and silicone heat pad removed, just needs a bit of cleaning up to remove the residue of the Ultra Copper. A single edge razor and Goof Off took care of that nicely. Once the bed was free of all residues I gave it a quick once over with some 150 grit sandpaper to smooth out any nicks in the surface that may have been created by all the scraping. I also gave it a wipe with an alcohol pad to make sure the surface was clean and free of any oily residues... then lined up the new Calidum bed (before removing the adhesive backing) to get it exactly where I wanted it, and marked the corners to make re-alignment easier, pulled the adhesive backing off, lined the Calidum back up and laid it into position. A quick rub across the surface to make sure it stuck down well, and it is attached. Just that simple. I reinstalled the bed leveling screws and at this point it is ready to put back into the printer. Also of note: there are pre-drilled holes for the 3 point leveling systems like the Solidoodle uses, and the corners are cut diagonally for use with 4 point leveling systems - so either way, installation is going to be easy. After getting the bed back into the printer, it was a simple matter of routing the wiring back out to the controller board and making 2 simple connections. I use a Rumba controller board, so the heater connections were super easy - one wire to each of the 2 screw terminals for the bed heat and done (there is no specific polarity on this heater, so it makes no difference which wire goes to which terminal). The thermistor wiring needed a connector installed - not terribly difficult, but I found that the wire gauge used here was a bit large and I had to trim a few strands of the wire off to get the terminals crimped on solidly. (I have been in contact with Printit Industries and discussed the issue with them. They say they will be looking at using a smaller gauge wiring for the thermistors on the next production run to make life a tad easier.) OK - physical installation is complete! Now, depending on what type of thermistor your old heater used, making an adjustment and flashing firmware may be required. This heater uses the same type of thermistor as the E3D hotends use, and as such, requires table 5 in the firmware for accurate temperature reporting. My old silicone heater used table 1, so I had to make the required change and flash my firmware. Not a terribly difficult thing to do. Now - on to the heating comparisons! Just how much better is this new heater? (if at all?) Well... With the stock 150x150mm silicone heat pad, my extra thick aluminum plate (4.6mm thick vs the stock 3mm) and a 3mm thick piece of glass on top of that, my bed heat times to 100°C were a bit long... approximately 23 minutes from around 23-24°C... This is a screenshot of the temperature graph during heat up for the stock heat pad... Notice how it starts off pretty well, but then begins to flatten out at about 45°C... and continues to flatten until it finally gets to the set temperature. Now, here is a screenshot of the new heater temperature graph from the initial test run... Note the much steeper climb from start to finish - no flattening out, and the time was about 13 minutes - a savings of 10 minutes!
I have since reduced the initial heat up time to right at 10 minutes, shaving 3 more minutes of that initial heating time. Remember, I have a LOT of thermal mass to heat - about 7.5mm if thickness in total, and I still have no insulation under this heater - yet. The heat is very consistent across the surface (no more cold edges!) and after doing a bed PID tune, the temperature is VERY stable - no more up & down temp variations. It is so stable and so consistent that I am actually able to reduce the set temperature and still get excellent adhesion. I have had this Calidum heater in service for several days now, and overall, I am very happy with the purchase. In fact, I am thinking I will pick up another one for the second SD4 I have. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Time to go melt some plastic! Update - 12/2/17 Still in love with the Calidum bed heaters! It has been a year and a half, and NO problems what so ever with the Calidum. I did purchase a 2nd one about a month later for my second Solidoodle 4. Installation was even easier on that one since I replaced the entire stock bed & heater all in one go (didn't have to scrape the old one off, lol) - #2 is now almost identical to #1 in terms of how it is set up. Even with some serious thermal mass, they both heat up quickly, and maintain even heating throughout printing. I would definitely purchase the Calidum bed heater again. Hoping that they will come out with other sizes soon... I have a large format that could use one of these. Leave a Reply. |
AuthorA "Jack of all trades, master of none", I have dabbled in a lot of different things, but none have held my interest like these darn 3d printers do. Archives
May 2016
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