Hi Cetus people. I have used an Up! Plus2 until id died. Now I am considering a Cetus. My question is: how well does it print with ABS? As well as the other Tiertime/ Pp3dp /Afinia/ Up machines? I really rely on this material. Other printers on my shortlist are Up! Mini2, Prusa i3 Mk3 and Craftbot Plus. (I live in Europe so no makergear or Lulzbot).
Please advise.
best regards, Maarten Visser,
Netherlands
I have no problem printing ABS, I put the entire machine in a cabinet and have the heated bed option. I do prefer to print PETG over ABS and it prints nice on my Cetus
Thanks for the tip, I ordered a roll od Petg.
regards, Maarten
<p>I’m making my first attempts at PLA on my Cetus3D MKII today. I too have the headed bed option. Even still, the first layer curled up half way through completion. I’m trying now to do it with the fan unplugged. I might also have to put an external power supply on the heated bed because I am fairly certain it is not getting as hot because the extruder is requiring more current draw from the system.</p>
<p>No luck. At least with the Cetus software. Curling is inevitable. Going to try making it work in S3D tonight or tomorrow. If that doesn’t work, I guess an external bed power supply is a requirement.</p>
<p>Anyone have the electrical spec’s for supping external power to heated bed. What is max current allowed. I applied 28 volts and it took over 40 minutes to reach 100c. Which I under stand is recommended temp for printing ABS. This time laps is unacceptable to me. I can supply more voltage to speed the heat up time, but want to know the maximum’s first. </p>
Any news on the external power for the heat bed?
I’ve finally had success printing ABS on the Cetus MKII. It took both blue painters tape and an ABS slurry to make it work. The blue painters tape is simply just to preserve my heated build plate. It can probably be done with just the slurry. No heat was used. I will probably make the standard build plate my ABS slurry bitch from now on and just swap build plates when I need to use PLA.
Volts don’t make heat, current does. If it’s not getting up to heat fast enough, make sure you’re not limiting your current supply somehow. I wish I could answer your question but like you, I’m left in the dark to the specs on anything branded Cetus. There is an extensive YouTube video about this build plate. Its old, long, and I don’t remember him mentioning anything about what supply voltage he used. He uses a different version than what’s sold today.
I did a little digging on this. The chip on the backside of the heated build plate is a KSD-01F D 120C Bimetal Temperature Control Switch Thermostat 250V 1.5A. In the US our standard outlet voltage is 120V AC. The resistance across the legs of the heater is 9 ohms. That means that if I were to plug this heater directly into my wall outlet (which I should mention is unsafe without some form of overcurrent protection) it will draw 13 1/3 amps, which is pretty high. It should get up to temp rather quickly. I should add that the temp is regulated by the chip. Anything over 120C and it will open the circuit.
I might instead put 24VDC on it and it’ll draw only 2.6A. I’m just not sure how long it’ll take to get up to temp at that low current.
I’ll post my findings. In response to your post, the biggest thing to remember is that between the two contacts is some resistance, and that resistance is what generates the heat. You can put AC or DC volts on it. You just need to be aware of the current you’re going to draw by applying voltage to it. Also, even though it’s not intuitive by any stretch, it seems as though the external heater power supply is meant to work in tandem with the internal heater power supply. There is NO continuity between the ribbon cable and the external power supply contacts, which means that the traces are isolated from each other.
So before I did anything, I realized that there is a resistor and LED and that means that IT IS NOT MEANT TO BE DRIVEN BY A/C VOLTAGE! With that in mind and out of the way, I happen to have a 24VDC power supply sitting around my office. I put that in place and for whatever reason it only draws 5-6mA (mostly 6), but it does actually heat up. The polarity does not matter, unless you want the LED to function as it should. That said, the positive DC voltage belongs on the terminals furthest from the LED\Resistor.
My electronics skills are rusty so anyone can happily correct me. The resistor is a 4.7K Ohm resistor. I’m putting 24V on it, so I should see ~5mA just for the LED’s. That’s especially weird because this thing is actually heating up, I should see more than just 6mA.
Either way, at 24V, the build plate after only a couple minutes gets too hot to hold on to - which should answer most of the questions out there. It’ll heat up to 120C (at the IC), and the IC will take care of switching the load on and off to keep it at that temp.
There wasn’t much brains put into this design. I love the traces being embedded into the aluminum build plate, but needing two power sources to get extra hot temps is annoying, and because both heats run pretty much all the time (the externally powered heats actually do, the internally powered heats will unless you check the sleep option in the advanced print options), it’s a huge waste of electricity to not switch it.
I think what I might end up doing is removing the ribbon cable (internally powered heaters) from the system. I’ll use the embedded switch to close 24VDC circuit, and feed both heater circuits with the same power. Maybe I’ll use the ribbon cable power to switch my 24VDC power supply on and off.
Itll look something like this:
The four diodes in the center is a bridge rectifier (converts AC to DC) which essentially represents my 24VDC power supply.
FYI the heated build plate gets up to about 67C with ambient at 26C. With 24VDC on the external supply, temps got to ~100C. There were fluctuations between 95C and 107C degrees, but it was mostly steady at 100C
So, 24VDC on the heat bed will get the heat bed up to 100C on it’s own without the internal power. Just not sure on time.
I took the headbed option from Tinyfab and it works great. You can use intern and external power and it gives you the option for a high and low power heating. there is also a controller with temperature adjustment available. I can highly recommend the tinyfab stuff even I never tried the cetus plate.
I dodn´t try ABS until today but PC which is a little bit more complicated to print and got good results.
<p>First of all. one ABS is not the same like the other. </p><p>if you print ABS or shrinking materials then don´t use the fan. Unplug it but be careful it can result in jamming the nozzle and other parts surrounded. Best solution is to put it into a cabin where no cooler air can c0me to. It your material is warping or curling there could be several issues causing it.</p><p>Check for a good surface. I tried several build surfaces and in my opinion there is not that much difference. The stock cetus plate with the hotglue surface is one of the best I´ve tried so far.</p><p>as the topic changes a little bit inside this thread I can tell you that it takes on my printer maybe 5 minutes to heat up the bed to 100°C from ambient 23C. It is true that the tinyfab build plate only heats up to a few 60 degrees if powered by the cetus board.</p><p>I use an external power supply for it.</p><p> </p>