Quote Originally Posted by curious aardvark View Post
lol - it heats up.

Some plastics stick better to a warm/hot bed and come off better once it's cooled.
Some plastics will only stick to a hot bed.

Some will work with either hot or cold.
Basically a heated bed increases the number of materials you can use and in an enclosed printer like the dremel would mean you could print fairly easily with things like abs and nylons which prefer not only a hot bed but a heated enclosure as well.

Abs pretty much won't stick unless it's a hot bed - although geoff has recently proved otherwise.

But basically it's a very useful thing to have.
I have a video to prove you can print ABS in the right conditions on blue tape with no glue and get a small print out of it, at 208c on a cold bed - but, it was an accident and I only made the video to prove that even when you screw up good things can happen.

This was under the right circumstance tho, it was 28c ambient in the room and the place was a hotbox, whereas last night I could not print ABS properly at all, on even the most stupid settings. It got to 0 degrees ambient temp int he workshop overnight, so the print that had ABS slurry stuck really well to the heated bed - but because the room was so cold even the heated chamber could not keep it hot enough and I got a heap of layer splits.

I used to live in a much warmer place for most of my 3d printing life so far, now up in the country it gets so cold I now understand the problems you can have with it, I was just oblivious because in the city it never really got that cold.

So to anyone previously i've said "ABS is so easy to print with, Im not sure why everyone complains about it" ok ok ok.. I get it now. The last few days in this freezing weather have told me to try and convince clients to print in PLA!