Heated Bed Frustration

[Mike B]

Hello all,

I have spent the past 16 days working on building my Rostock Max V2. Unfortunately the heated bed that came with the kit had cracks at the countersunk mounting holes and I waited until after Memorial Day to contact SeeMeCnc since they were out anyways. I worked on completing the build without the bed and finally received a new bed this morning. The old bed was Rev2 and the one I got today is Rev5. Everything seemed great except for the fact that the countersunk holes are shifted one position over from where they should be. This issue makes me chose between rotating the bed 30 degrees from center and having to modify the snowflake to allow clearance for the LED's or I can take the risk of countersinking the correct holes and not having to modify the snowflake and not have to explain to everyone that I show this awesome machine to why it looks weird.. Also I checked with 6 hardware stores in town an none sell a 90 degree countersink bit as John suggested I use, 82 degree is all I can find. So I would have to order that and delay for another few days..

Also, I am a bit OCD and it would drive me crazy to see it shifted, but it makes me nervous to countersink it myself..

What would you do??

I could take a drive up there and see if they will switch it out for me too..

[nitewatchman]

Mike,

I agree that living withthe bed rotated would make me nuts or nuttier in a few hours.

Is it possible to redrill the Melamine Top of the Rostock. This would seem to be the least risk. I think that a care ful layout using the hot bed itself would assure the correct locatiuon of the holes. You could install it using the existing holes without the snowflake to establish center and marl the Melamine top with a pencil. Then remove and rotate 1/2 hole space using the centering marks and redrill.

Real PITA but if you are like nme I would rather do something than wait.

nitewatchamn

[Mike B]

Nitewatchman,

Thanks for the reply and that is a great idea. I did as suggested and laid the bed out in position and marked the holes that would need drilled. I check it impact it would have underneath the top deck and the newly drilled holes would interfere a bit. Basically would be drilling right into the support behind the LCD bracket. A great idea and I would have gone for that but I am now thinking to try to countersink these once I get a bit in hand.

Has anyone wired up a Rev5 bed yet? It is different even from Rev3, I don't have instructions for how it's done. Any help with that would be great!

Mike

[Captain Starfish]

If
- there are no PCB tracks anywhere near the "correct" holes.
- SeeMeCNC will allow you to countersink and still hold the warranty.
- you have a countersink and a drill press or a countersink with an alignment block for hand-held drilling

then I'd countersink the correct holes and be done with it.

[Mike B]

Thanks for the info Captain. I have neither a countersink bit, drill press, or alignment block. I am thinking it would be easier and cheaper to take it to a local machine shop to get this done. I doubt I would ever need countersink bit again..

[Captain Starfish]

Under twenty bucks from your local hardware dude, with a plastic block built into it that will set it flat and limit how deep you go.

[nitewatchman]

Mike,

Where in the world do you stays?

I would be glad to help, assist, do it for you, etc. but I am in Birmingham, Alabama.

nitewatchman

[bvandiepenbos]

man that stinks.
SeeMe really dropped the ball there!
I would recommend countersinking the correct holes or have them replace it.
Don't try drilling the base.
or just live with the rotated bed and tell people it is lined up with the power switch on purpose

[Mike B]

Under twenty bucks from your local hardware dude, with a plastic block built into it that will set it flat and limit how deep you go.

Captain, I checked Menards, Home Depot, Ace, and Von Tobel hardware stores for 90 degree countersink bits none carry it. Online they are $20 with shipping and another $20 for alignment block seems like I could take it to machine shop and get it done for less than $40..


Nitewatchman, appreciate the offer to help but I am all the way up in Indiana! I'll get this squared away on Monday and hopefully post some pics of my first print next week!

[Brian]

Can anyone explain why there are 12 holes in the bed and 6 on the snowflake? If they just make the 6 proper holes in the bed there would be no way for the person making the countersinks to mess up and get the wrong ones.

[Mike B]

Yeah, that's a good question.. why 12 holes anyway?

[Captain Starfish]

Under twenty bucks from your local hardware dude, with a plastic block built into it that will set it flat and limit how deep you go.

Captain, I checked Menards, Home Depot, Ace, and Von Tobel hardware stores for 90 degree countersink bits none carry it. Online they are $20 with shipping and another $20 for alignment block seems like I could take it to machine shop and get it done for less than $40..

Wow. Sorry, Mike, for leading you up the garden path. Amazingly enough it would appear that some things might be cheaper in Australia after all! But not labour - most engineering shops I know around here would lug you $120 for an hour's labour for the ten minutes it took to find the tool and countersink those holes.

[Mike B]

Captain,
You were more right than you knew. The machine shops in town wanted $55-$80 to countersink the holes, that was shocking to me. I finally found a bit on Amazon that would do it for $14 with free shipping. My dad has a drill press, so two days from now it should be done.

I was recently at a conference and heard that what we pay our workers here $8-$10 an hour to do (home care aide) they get paid the US equivalent of $50 an hour in Australia! Not sure if that's true but it is info I got from an Aussie..

[Captain Starfish]

Sounds about right, Mike.

Especially in Western Australia where we're going through a mining, oil and gas boom at the moment. Even though our currency is about on par with the US at the moment, a truck driver can make $140,000 pa. We have janitors on $90,000 for some of the rig work. My young daughter's a casual checkout chick at the local camping shop (cut that section out of Walmart and make a separate shop of it, you get the idea) and I think she's on $24 an hour - this is basic wage stuff.

Sound good? Well, it's all happy times right up until the point where you have to buy anything. If you a pint of beer in Perth at $12 you hang onto that pub because it's cheap. A run down mid-80s 3 x 1 house 20km out of the CBD will cost over half a million bucks. And so on. It's expensive living here just now with no end in sight.

FWIW machine shops are there to make a living. By the time you set up, do the job, pack away, clean up the workstation, go do the paperwork, have someone else sort out the tax on the paperwork (and everything else), pay the pro rata insurance/rent/etc costs for the job etc it works out as a couple of hours plus running costs. In that context $55-80 is about right, cheap even. Trick is to find someone who has the toys in their shed and treat them nicely - mates present these little jobs to me occasionally and I say "no thanks" to offers of beer etc, just nice to be able to help and have another excuse for shed time.

[Mike B]

Captain,

That gives me a whole new view of life down under,I had no idea it was so damn expensive! Of course I guess everything is relative with wages like that.

I ended up getting the 90 degree 1/4 inch countersink from Amazon Supply. I carefully used my hand drill and the countersinks came out perfectly.

I did learn a valuable lesson in the process though. Having and operating a 3d printer is going to require me to have a little more confidence in myself and not be afraid to tweak, customize, or modify things when needed. It was a simple thing that was stressing me out and once I had the tool it was a 2 minute job. I am glad I learned that early on! Hopefully soon I will be contributing to the forum and not just seeking answers, but I appreciate the help from EVERYONE!

[Eaglezsoar]

Captain,

That gives me a whole new view of life down under,I had no idea it was so damn expensive! Of course I guess everything is relative with wages like that.

I ended up getting the 90 degree 1/4 inch countersink from Amazon Supply. I carefully used my hand drill and the countersinks came out perfectly.

I did learn a valuable lesson in the process though. Having and operating a 3d printer is going to require me to have a little more confidence in myself and not be afraid to tweak, customize, or modify things when needed. It was a simple thing that was stressing me out and once I had the tool it was a 2 minute job. I am glad I learned that early on! Hopefully soon I will be contributing to the forum and not just seeking answers, but I appreciate the help from EVERYONE!

Great attitude, glad that you are seeing the light!