I received the Wham Bam System the other day. Before it came, I had watch of the youtube video here and a read over the instructions on the website.
One of the recommendations is to remove the glass bed or build surface that is currently installed to the printer. I can understand the logic in this, as surfaces like glass aren’t very good conductors of heat. Therefore, to install another build platform on top would reduce the effectiveness of the heated bed.
After mulling it over, I decided that the heated bed had to come off. To achieve this, you need to heat it up to at least 90 degrees Celsius. The adhesive holding it down is then soft enough for you to be able to use a combination of spatulas and flat bladed screw drivers to gently prize it off.
What remains is a very thin heated bed. During the removal of the ultrabase, it is virtually impossible to not bend or misshape it. You could try and bend it back into shape, but the first knock or fast probe would bend it out of shape all over again.
I took the decision to bond a 4mm aluminium plate to the top of the bed. I got the plate laser cut by a nearby company who have done work for me in the past, but any laser cutting company who deal with aluminium should be able to do it for you. There is a company on ebay in the UK who will laser cut a 380mm piece of 4mm aluminium for £29 (including postage). I used JB Weld to attach the heated bed to the aluminium with great success.
Following the instructions, I then installed the heated bed.
I then installed the bed to my printer.
I’ve done a bit of printing with it so far, but I’m still tweaking my cura profile to match it. One thing to remember when printing PLA is that you need to halve your standard first layer. My first layer is now 0.1mm but I’ve still seen a little bit of lift (I am not using a brim anymore). Another note as well, I was also seeing temperatures on the build plate 5 degrees lower than what was being reported by the printer (maybe due to not soaking the aluminium plate long enough, I don’t know), but I now print with a heat bed temperature of 75 degrees. Wham Bam state you should print with a temperature 10 degrees higher than you did before.
My mesh height map is not fantastic, but I am hoping that the duet will deal with that.
I’ll add another post about using the Wham Bam Flexible System once I’ve done some more printing.
Yes I’ve got pretty much similar mesh map w WhamBam on another printer.
Hi Jay
How do you adjust your zprobe hight higher than it is on stock. Because I can see a Problem if I use the wham bam kit then I think the probe will crash into the bed when autolevel.
The only possible adjustment would be the dive height if it’s set very low
Hi. I have this kit as well, but I haven’t installed it yet. I don’t want to remove the Ultrabase, but I also want to be able to go back to stock if I don’t like the system. I’ve been trying to find a way to have a new aluminum bed made with an integrated 4mm build plate. Knowing that you have to increase the temperature anyway, would you still have removed the Ultrabase, or just attached the magnet to it and be done?
In late November I installed the Wham Bam kit on top of the glass plate (I’m done with UltraBase after pulling glass chips from two different printers). I decided to go on top of the glass because I figured that the stock aluminum base would warp too much.
It DOES take a while to heat up and cool down, but I just pre-heat the bed 5-7 degrees above my starting point and check the temps out to the edge with a Fluke IR thermometer. I installed a 140mm Noctua high volume fan on the underside of my plywood work surface (under a suitably large hole) which I can turn on if I need faster cooling.
I use the PEI surface (not the PEX) for PLA/PLA+ and it is brilliant. I’ve printed over 100 modified Prusa face shield head bands — long, thin, minimal contact parts that are a poster child for lift. I had some problems in the beginning, but now I just lightly sand the entire surface with 1200 grit sand paper and wipe the residue away with a damp paper towel before every job. At about 9 1/2 hours per pair of head bands, the printer has been busy.