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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.

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Just a short post to say that I have now received the Wham Bam System and I am already itching to get it installed.

A couple of things to note. I had to pay import duty of £37.58 (which included £12 processing fee). Bit of a bummer but was expected.

Secondly, I am currently trying to decide how I want to mount this. My options are mount directly on top of the ultrabase glass, mount directly to the heated bed (which is super thin) or remove the glass, mount an aluminium disc to the heated bed and then mount the Wham Bam system to this.

If anyone has any thoughts on this, that would be great!