About heating bed - when it is needed

For those that are wondering, you will only need the heating bed if you intend on using ABS rather than PLA.

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If you want to print in anything like ABS then a heated bed is required. If you are just wanting to print in PLA then I personally don't see the need for it although some people like to heat the bed for PLA only.

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Even with a heated bed ABS still tends to warp... PLA will work better with a heated bed, but it isn't requied.

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Originally Posted by Jo1212

Even with a heated bed ABS still tends to warp... PLA will work better with a heated bed, but it isn't requied.

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This is true, many time you have to combine a heated bed with a closed print chamber to reduce warping. ABE does not like cold drafts and rapid changes in temperature while printing. Even with the best conditions, large and very long prints are sometimes difficult with ABS.

Here is a 36 hour print with a Replicator 1 that had minimal lifting of one corner about 20 hours into the print.

Attachment 141Attachment 142

This will be my first printer. I see some heated beds on ebay for under $20, what is there a difference from the one from QU

Sometimes the cheaper ones do not heat evenly and you end up having hot and cool spots on the build plate. This is not a good thing if you are printing in ABS.

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Originally Posted by JohnA136

This is true, many time you have to combine a heated bed with a closed print chamber to reduce warping. ABE does not like cold drafts and rapid changes in temperature while printing. Even with the best conditions, large and very long prints are sometimes difficult with ABS.

Here is a 36 hour print with a Replicator 1 that had minimal lifting of one corner about 20 hours into the print.

Attachment 141Attachment 142

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Chelsea specified in one of her comments on the kickstarter that enclosing the one^ and two^ do not actually improve performance. She claims that due to the high specific heat of the build platform and the extremely level surface, the only thing necessary when printing in abs is using abs glue or something along those lines. I don't know if this is true, but if it is I'll be grabbing a heated bed upgrade kit before you can blink an eye. I'll just have to hear some other actual reviews of it by the early backers first.

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Originally Posted by Gonzo82nd

This will be my first printer. I see some heated beds on ebay for under $20, what is there a difference from the one from QU

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Keep in mind that in order to have a successful heated bed you need three things.
1. A large enough power supply (150W in this case, normal backers w/o the heated bed only get a 100W supply)
2. Some kind of heating element/pad
3. A new build platform to go over the heating element/pad

Also, keep in mind that anything you buy off of ebay may not be compatible or may not fit. While it may only be $20 for the heated bed, you still need to buy the power supply which would be another $15-$20. But for just $35 more you can get a legitimate power supply, good heating element, and what I presume to be a fantastic basalt build platform. Just my two cents :)

Ambient temperature will affect the print in more ways than just warping on the bed, but I guess that's what she replied to, and not anything else, in true qu-db manner...
The basalt bed will not be so influenced by ambient temperatures due to the mass that is heated up, that is true. On the other hand they havent addressed people now starting to see that their basalt bed are cracked. But that isn´t good pr and now hidden in a forum no longer linked from their homepage, due to customer complaints on it...
why is there a setting to only cool layers down over a minimum size you think? because you need the heat to bond small layers together. Printing the stupid Qu-bd vase on the other hand has nothing to do with this, or the pain child of all qu-bd products = retraction of filament...