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Hello,
I've read numerous threads on upgrading your ATX power supply to 24v from the 12v to get your bed hot really fast. I don't want to go through all that effort. Not to say that I'm the first to think of this, which I seriously doubt I am, but I thought I'd put together a fairly comprehensive analysis of how to heat it up faster with very little effort. Below is a graph showing the research I did using a control (no insulator), cardboard covered in aluminum, blue foam, and then blue foam covered in aluminum. The verdict is in and the blue foam covered in aluminum heats up the bed 21.5% faster than without it. I did each test twice, using precisely the same base temperature of 26.4c to 70c. This took me roughly 7 hours to do each of the tests twice, including bathing the glass in ice water to get it to cool down faster. I hope someone finds this research valuable. From now on, I'm using the blue foam insulator with aluminum because it really does make a difference!

Nice job on the testing. I've seen for the longest time people reference using towels to aid in heating quicker.

In my case and probably others, we switched to 24v power supplies to reach 100c+ in a few minuets. Not that anything I do is time critical, I just like to tinker.

Makes sense. I didn't test the towel. I'd be interested if someone wants to give that a whirl from 24.6c to 70c and see where that comes in at. It would take a lot of work to replace the 12v with the 24v and I am so busy printing stuff all the time I don't want to be down for a week or so to do it. But, this knocks a 5th of the time off the heat up period so that is a bonus. I think there are a few other things I can do to get another 5%-10% out of it, but I think that will be the limit

I bet setting a boiling kettle of water on the bed would cut the heatup time dramatically. Or is that considered cheating?

What about reflecting heat up from the bottom by insulating the heat pad itself? I am hesitant to put anything on during a print cycle and then forget to take it off. When I am printing I usually just start the bed heat manually while I am slicing or doing other prep stuff. It is the first thing I will turn on.

I would be much more interested in a non intrusive method.

Ah. I always warm up the bed and do a few extrusions first to prime the hotend. I guess it is how you approach it! I just take it off before I hit print. Saves me a minute and a half of warm up

If you're running a MAX or MAX v2, there's a thread over in the RM2 section of the extruder-specific forums you might wish to read...

http://forum.seemecnc.com/viewtopic.php ... 278#p86278

I ran the auto-tune drill on my new Max v2's bed and updated the PID profiles in the EEPROM... Shaved the bed heating time nearly in half.

This won't help those on the old ATX PSUs who can't maintain ABS temps on the bed and hot end simultaneously. It also doesn't get the high bed currents off the Rambo, which is a major point for the SSR conversion to me, having melted heat bed terminal on a Melzi twice. Good info for some, though.