I’ve been wondering this ever since I tried my first print.
Is it possible or would it be possible to get a disposable sheet that you put on your print bed that follows the concept of parchment paper you use for cooking.
So you would basically put something down that has a thickness equal to somewhere between 2-3 mm layers and it would be made of something very soft and light with the concept that it doesn’t matter, If your bed’s not perfectly level or warped randomly somewhere or even what you’re printing with because print nozzle would actually be set up so that the first layer is being printed inside the sheet because it would be light enough that it wouldn’t restrict the filament being extruded but it would be dense enough still that it would take the first layer and bond it so that when the first layer was done, any remaining layers would then be printed on top of that layer and when the print was done this disposable sheet could be put into hot water to make it dissolve away and all you have to do is a little bit of fine sanding to make the bottom look a little bit more presentable.
The other concept I was thinking about was could there be a material in liquid form that you could pour on your build plate after you create a little bit of wall to keep it from spilling over so that as long as you have it set up as close to perfectly level gravity wise, you would be adding cured layer to your field plate. That should be perfectly smooth because still water When undisturbed is probably the smoothest thing that could exist so some kind of resin similar to the kind they preserve stuff in making it look like it’s floating inside glass once cured.
I’m sure these ideas, even if possible, are currently or probably in the near future would be considered too elaborate to be worthwhile but I don’t know.
Just with right now the price. I’m getting a 12x12-in plate machined to a perfect flatness when you provided it to them already. So flat that the human eye can’t tell the difference. So basically a very small amount of milling required still produce the quote from my local machinist greater than the price of my entire printer.
This topic is really only something that beginner would think of, probably when they are very scared to try and get nice first layers and have OCD about The nozzle crashing the bed.
I think your over thinking this. Most beds are not that flat IE: large thin machined plates, warp a little bit when produced and the sheared beds are made out of larger sheets of material and will NOT be flat. Glass on the other hand is generally very flat and will correct the base bed unless it is clamped so tight it is warped by the parent bed. You can get a plate ground to be flat, assuming the person doing the grinding knows what they are doing (a ground bed can be warped) and not all do. Pourable resins do exist, check a hobby store but I don’t think that they will be as flat as you want.
When I said machined flat I was more meaning buying a piece of stainless steel that was 1/4 in thick the size of my bed and then literally going to a machine shop to have it precision milled flat type of Cost of metal.
When I was in CAD cam I had to make this for an assignment. It could be whatever design you wanted but it had to be out of this size of plate.
So I had to make the g code for a CNC that pretty much had an identical movement system as the Ender 5, but it was capable of changing its own drill bits from a rotating mag.
The very top surface of this is part of the project requirement was to have a tolerance of 0.001 surface finish.
This plate is about 18 years old now and it doesn’t have as smooth a finish as it used to because this is the thing I use to test if things are flat for almost two decades now.
Maybe taking a 3 -year CAD course and then taking a one-year advanced modeling diploma after that for animation paired with my autism and OCD is just making my time with printers confusing since the tools I was trained on at school were like $400,000 CNC Mills and the 3D printer they had could spit out 250 g of plastic with a 1 mm nozzle in like 10 minutes.
When you get the price for that SS plate the sticker shock may cause you to have a heart attack, add on the cost to machine it and you are a dead man walking. Seriously!
Machining may not improve the flatness. It depends on how flat it is to begin with and if it is clamped down to allow for any curvature in the plate. It has to be firmly clamped down without any stress on the plate and a cut made and then flipped over and the other side is machined. Sometimes this has to be repeated because machining the metal will release stress and cause the plate to warp again. Plate in its stock condition is not necessarily as flat as one would wish for. You should tell the shop that flatness to a plain is important. All this costs more then just a quick mill job.
Yes you can possible get a resin that is flat but it may require a milled surface to start and very level for the pour.
Then to contend with warping. G10 can come warped but it sort of is along where you are thinking.
Mesh levelling is the attempt to solve this issue, it calculates the small imperfections out. Deltas offer a second solution. Fix the bed permanently and only move the tri axis, it is easier to maintain flat if it doesn’t move.
