Topic: Aluminum Sheet Print Bed
Hello everyone, I'm a relatively new Solidoodler here. I just first wanted to say thanks to everyone for contributing so many great ideas for augmenting the Solidoodle.
I have been using a glass bed / hairspray for the last week or so. It has great adhesion, but recently I had some issues with gouging and cracking (gouging meaning chunks ripped out of the glass surface when I pried a part off). So I wanted to look for an alternative that was more durable (tempered and borosilicate glass are other alternatives too but I do not have them on hand).
Seeing as the hairspray seems to be mainly responsible for the adhesive quality of the glass bed (since frosting doesn't work apparently from what I've read), I figured, why not just try a metal surface?
I picked up some 5x7" aluminum flashing sheets from Home Depot to use as swappable sheets. I sprayed "Salon Grafix" hairspray thoroughly on a sheet and clamped it with alligator clamps to the bed, but I found that the sheet warped grossly when heated.
To fix the warping issue, I laminated four of them together with superglue. This time, there was no heat-induced warping, just a tiny bit in the middle from the clamps pushing the sides down more. It is maybe about 100 microns or so.
The results were very surprising. I tried a half-scale Yoda Bust a couple times and got a great result each time. I noticed that the adhesion of the base was as good or better than when I used glass, and there was less lifting at the connection of the brim to the part.
The picture below is a 0.3mm Slic3r/RH print of the 0.5 scale yoda bust on an aluminum plate. This is a somewhat modified and unoptimized profile (evidenced by his chin-beard and eyebrow) but there was no de-lamination of the base, which is the key element here.
Overall, I found that the aluminum super-bed has some important benefits:
-Fast cooling and heating
-No possibility of fracture or cracking
-Cheap compared to high quality glasses
-Extremely strong adhesion when hot
-Almost no adhesion when warm or cool - very easy to remove parts
-Better thermal conductivity than glass
The ideal approach of course for implementing this is to just buy thicker aluminum (rather than laminating them together), and that way you can snip or slice the sheet to the exact size of your print bed. Obviously the flashing I used is not optimally sized. I just wanted to try it out first.
Maybe other people have done something like this before, but I didn't see anything after searching. Also, I can't say that two positive trials means it's great, but I think it is worth some further investigation.
Anyway, good luck, and happy printing!