David Smith's (Jetpad) Build

[jetpad]

I got sick of the bed taking forever to heat up. This morning, it was a little cooler in the house and I couldn't get the bed up to 80C no matter how long I waited. So I scavenged another part from my Shapeoko CNC kit that I haven't put together yet. I took its 24 volt power supply and I'm now using it to power the bed. It really made a dramatic difference in the prints. The bed stays hot the whole time while I'm printing and there is much less of a problem with the ABS not sticking to the platform or curling up on the edges. Before, I couldn't get it to heat up to 80C and now the bed will heat up to 90C faster than the hot-end gets to its temperature. Also, I think the quality of the prints is much better but I may just be deceiving myself. I think that the bed was using up so much power that it was taking it away from the stepper motors and causing some of the imperfections in the prints. I've got the bed power supply plugged into a Kill-a-watt meter and it is using about 430 watts just by itself when the bed cranks up to 100%.