Bed heating accelerator - with proof

With everyone complaining about bed heating times, I'm shocked that nobody has commented on this.  Are you heating faster than this already with a different method that I'm not aware of?

I like this a lot sir, I will have to try it!

That's fast.. about the same time it takes the extruder to come up to temp!
Are you using a glass bed?  If so, and you have no cracking, that's impressive and I might consider it.
How far away do you hold it?

I tend to use my hot air SMT rework station for everything including heatshrink, so I could repurpose the hot air gun for this XD

It's unlikely to be as powerful. A heatgun is typically 1000 W at least, and your hotair station is almost certainly not above 200 watts. 

That said, you would want some sort of diffuser, and it could help. You can make a cone of alu foil in front of the hot air gun maybe, and a fan on the exit. I'm not sure

QU-BD silicone bed performance is exceptional with about 3 minute heating time. Not a straightforward mod however.

My solution before this was to leave the heater on all day for the bed on days when I was using it.

If any of you remember I'd love to see times from 50C to 95C so we can see if there's a big difference between methods.  I know some of the redesigned beds are much faster but I'm not likely to ever go that route.  Also I don't like the thought of the heat gun blasting in there.  Wire fatigue, wood distortion even bed distortion I would be concerned about long term. 

If anyone has the bags from cornhole or whatever you call it locally try microwaving them and setting them on top of the bed.  I don't have the game or I'd try it.  I always thought that would be a great solution but haven't tested it.

3 minutes 29 seconds for 1200 watt heatgun, nozzle just outside enclosed cage through the doorway and waving left to right moderately.  I didn't turn on the gun until the temp reached 50.  See the attached Heat Gun.jpg

I'm usually just reheating the bed so it takes much less time.  A full heat up from 20c is not much more time.

I also have a 8x8 silicone mat from QU-BD on my CNC.  It takes 10 minutes to get up to temp from 20c and that is without the heat gun.  I'm sure the 6x6 would heat up faster so that might be a good alternative since you don't have to hold a 600 degree Farenheight gun and worry about where you put it down.  I've already melted the wires of the gun by putting it down wrong.

Interested to see the unscientific results of this compilation.

Also, how do I run PID Autotune on the heat bed, you can see it wobble in the graph.  Do I just swap connections and run the M303?  I think it is the same Thermistor settings in Firmware.

TheBogueRat

p.s. Don't laugh at my enclosure, it works great!

Using a block of styrofoam, it took me 9 minutes to go from 27C to 95C. 

I don't really recommend ordinary styrofoam at this point due to its combustibility, but I need something rigid and non-sticky to work with the automatic retraction mechanism I'm currently building. 

Dow makes an orange fireblock version of it foam-in-a-can product, so I'm thinking I might spray some between two soapy sheets of glass to mold my own fire resistant bed cover.  Might work.

using a towel / face cloth, 50 deg - 95 deg - 8 minutes 17 seconds

The best way to accelerate bed heating for me was still to just switch to glass+hair spray.  You can print at 70C instead of 90C+ and you don't need to wait for prints to cooldown before starting another print as you just switch out to another piece of glass.

I just finished my auto-retracting bed cover:

http://www.soliforum.com/post/12339/#p12339

Using 1/4" cork glued onto 1/4" MDF, 50degC -> 95degC in 9 minutes flat.   Cork is supposed to ignite at 300-320 degC, so it seems safe for this application.