The clips on my ender 3 v2 are honestly garbage. I always have them get caught on the nozzle when I’m working on leveling the print bed. I also had one come off mid print yesterday. Does anyone have a better solution to keep the bed seated on the printer? I was considering designing my own corner pieces to keep the bed centered, but I’m running the hero me gen 5 on my printer and the nozzle hangs off 9mm when homed. When the print starts, it would drag over the edge if I had corner pieces.
My ender 3 pro came with a magnetic bed, I am using a spring steel sheet with PEI build surface. No need for clips. The v2 comes with a glass bed I think so this doesn’t really help unless you want to get a new spring steel build plate kit that comes with a magnetic sheet.
I wouldn’t be apposed to it, I’ll have to do some research and see how it performs. What are your thoughts on it? Think it might be better than glass to print on?
The PEI on the spring steel sheet has been gaining me smooth as glass finish on the part stuck to the bed and when the print is finished I just remove the spring steel sheet and flex it a bit and my print pops off.
Occasionally my first layer doesn’t stick so I just wash the PEI surface with warm soap and water and then I’m good to go. I don’t use isopropyl alcohol at all, just was it every 10-15 prints and I have no problems with prints not sticking.
Im using both right now the magnetic and glass on the Ender 3 Pro if anything it seems the mag plate PLA stick to it very well sometime too well so for big prints close to the edge i use it but I find the glass bed a bit more level. I did order a steel plate so i’ll Have to see how it perform since it had a few good review.
I like hearing that the PEI has better adhesion, occasionally on small prints they let go and just mess everything up. I use a raft nearly every print to get things going, I have a print going right now and it’s a larger one and the larger the print, the larger the raft and the more filament I waste. Trying to minimize it, so I turned my raft settings down in cura to 5mm instead of 15. Will have to look into this a bunch more after work!
Another vote here spring steel. I’ve used Creality’s magnet bed (waste of money), the glass bed worked fine, then I changed to their flex steel with PEI and I’ve never looked back. My Ender 3 is a real work horse.
There is also the Wham Bam flex system. The magnet is a lot stronger and it comes with their PEX sheet (thicker type of PEI). Bought it for my Ender 2.
I know I should not make this suggestion but I’m going to do it anyway, Yes it does make your printable space smaller however it increases your success rate.
Setup Nozzle offsets on your printer slicer. this way it will prevent the nozzle (and the BLtouch) from going all the way to the edge of the bed. I have a parameter (10mm) set up all the way around most of my machines for just this reason, I can use my clips with no fear of them being knocked off.
It honestly acts as a safety zone for my nozzle and really the heat doesn’t usually get all the way out there anyway.
Good call! I’ll have to look into this later, but this is probably what I will have to do in the mean time. I don’t have a BLTouch, so not worrying about that just yet. The only snag will be in homing with the hero me, but I’m looking at possibly enabling safe homing so when a print begins it won’t have any chance of grabbing the bed when the print first starts.