]]>Another idea that is working well for me
Great idea!
]]>Another suggestion I've seen, but not tried is a square cut from a welding blanket.
I'm told this works very well.
]]>Oven Hot Pad
Safe and will get shoved aside if forgotten.
I think this is the best idea. I came to the same conclusion last night. I figure I can tie it to the bottom rail and flip it onto the bed with the bed fully lowered (and safely away from the extruder). When the bed raises to print the pad should automatically be pulled off, though I'll have to double check to see if the bed has enough z-movement to do that.
]]>]]>One of the things I find most frustrating is waiting for the print bed to come up to temperature when starting a print. Today, in frustration, I ended up putting a block of styrofoam on the bed while it warmed, and I guesstimate that this speeded up the process at least 4x. The foam didn't stick to the kapton, so I'm tempted to do this every time.
It occurred to me I could automate this process by having the start code wait for the bed to come up to temperature, then have it push the foam off the bed prior to printing.
Of course, the foam might melt if it touched the extruder head unless some kind of guard were added around it, or the foam might rotate and jam against the printer frame. So the second idea was to attach the block to the top front bar of the frame with a spring loaded hinge, and have the start gcode lower the bed to allow the foam to swing free.
Is this crazy? Anybody do something similar? What is the melting point of styrofoam anyway?
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