Categories
3d printing

Hephestos 2 upgraded with heated bed

Adhesion problems and warping

I own a Hephestos 2 for over a year now and although I was pretty happy with it I very much wanted to upgrade the 3D printer with a heated bed. The reason for that was not so much the desire to use other material like ABS but I was hoping for better adhesion. Adhesion problems in the past led to warping and misprints. To counter this I used BuildTak en Pritt. This helped most of the time but it also led to a new problem. It was very hard to remove the model from the printbed. With the help of a vise to clamp the printbed and a special knife I was able to do it but it was far from ideal (to say the least).

A heated bed is the obvious solution to this problem. Warping is mainly caused by uneven cooling and therefore shrinking of the different areas of the print. The printbed counters this effect by keeping the whole printbed warm and thus warming the print evenly over it’s surface.

Printing a Benchy on the heated bed. Gone is the BuildTak.
Categories
3D modeling 3d printing

The BQ Hephestos2 (3D printer), nine months later

Introduction

It’s been nine months since I received and assembled my BQ Hephestos 2 printer and I think it’s time to share some of the experiences that I had with it. For those who don’t know the Hephesthos 2 it’s a 3D-printer that is based on the Prusa i3 design with a thick steel frame and almost all metal parts. It’s not cheap but it’s a well designed, high quality 3D-printer with a large printbed. It does have it’s shortcomings but more of that later.

Categories
3d printing

Assembling a Hephestos 2 printer

Introduction

While making my projects like the Darth Vader chest box 2.0 I use the local fablab a lot, especially the laser cutter and the 3D printer. It was a bit boring to wait for the 3D print to finish (laser cutting is typically much faster) with not much else to do at the fablab. I therefore decided to buy my own 3D printer. I choose for the BQ Hephestos 2, a sturdy Prusa i3 all metal printer that comes in a kit.