Also in the box of bits from the US was my MIC6 build plate that i got from a US supplier because chasing suppliers here in Aus was a pain in the butt: “oh you want 6061 plate”…
Anyway tonight i had an hour or so free after coming home from a meeting and decided to see if a plan that i have had in the back of my head would come to fruition.
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/37991-2/20160421-232002-iPhone.JPG[/IMG]
The recommended heater for the VORON is a stick on silicone rubber heater mat in AC voltages, which is then fed through an AC SSR to be controlled by the RAMPS. Now i dont mind AC stuff, but mixing AC and DC on a 3d printer just annoyed me slightly. Plus the silicone heater mats dont tend to work particularly well unless you spend a motza on them. I had this MK3 heated bed lying around as it had a damaged ear from shipping and so couldnt be leveled properly on my Prusa.
So i decided i would try using a standard MK3 heated bed as the heater for the VORON. Thats the standard 230mm MIC6 bed underneath with four tapped M3 holes in it to mount the bed to. Also planning on using either a sheet of 3M mounting tape (same as the PEI stuff) to add adhesion, or a thin smear of silver thermal adhesive to remove some of the stress from the bolts and also to increase thermal conduction.
There is a bolt missing from the damaged corner of the bed, but I’m planning on cutting the broken piece of metal out and attaching the bed to that corner as well using a wider custom washer.
Will see how it goes. But hoping it will be a viable alternative. Also if the threads fail in the aluminium plate i was thinking of drilling through and using neatly countersunk M3 taper head bolts under the PEI to bolt the heated bed on. Its also touch and go for the spring mounts, but should be able to squeeze them in. For a bigger bed size it would be a cake walk.