The Hell Ya Beller Fun with hot, pointy, sharp, and caustic stuff.

Mendel Heated Bed

I've been struggling for months to get my "Sells" Mendel working reliably.  The mechanicals have been solid for a long time, but I've had flaky problems with the electronics and extruder all along.

I finally broke down and replaced the Gen3 electronics with a RAMPS board and after working through some issues, it finally seems to be working.

I usually print in ABS so I also invested in a Prusa PCB heat bed from Ultimachine.  There isn't much information out there on mounting the thing and most of the pictures I saw had people mounting them on a piece of plywood.  This is probably perfectly safe but there's something that bothers me about mounting something designed to get hot on top of something flammable.

I had a piece of 12" smooth Hardiboard.  This is siding material made from cement infused fiber.  It's very flat, very hard and heat resistant.   As a test, I held the torch on a scrap for a while to see what the result would be.  It scorched the topside but barely penetrated at all.

It's a little heavier than I'd like, but the combination of the hardiboard and PCB is actually lighter than the old acrylic and removable MDF that I was using before.

The downside is this stuff is damn hard to cut and throws off a lot of dust.  I milled a couple pockets for the thermistor and the wires so the bed would lay flat.   I also cut a few notches to remove material and lighten it further.  It seems to be working well.