Warped Onyx beds

[backspinnn]

I just put together my first Rostock v2 and encountered major issues calibrating due to a seriously warped Onyx bed. No amount of loosening, heating, and fiddling could flatten my warped bed. The borosilicate plate conformed to my warped bed. Seemecnc sent me a new bed today and it is more potato-chipped than the first bed. I am thinking of glueing the bed to the wooden support underneath with VHB tape or some sort of epoxy with weights on the bed surface to get it flat. Has anyone else had flatness issues with the beds and conquered them with un-conventional fixes?

[bot]

Was it warped before heating or only after heating? Sounds weird. What is the ambient temperature of the room you're in?

[backspinnn]

The bed is warped before and after heating. Loosening the screws and heating the bed did not help with flattening it. Both Onyx boards I have received are heavily domed in the center.

[briankb]

Perhaps it is some issue during transport. If they send another one, try a different carrier -- USPS instead of UPS/FedEx or visa versa. Maybe it is getting hot/cold enough to cause the warping during shipping.

[backspinnn]

The shipping/packaging looked fine. They are probably warped from the traces shrinking. Maybe they had a bad batch of boards and I got two from the same lot. They are both visibly warped when you put them on a flat surface.

[aj1973]

When you say visibly warped, can you give me an idea as to how much it was warped?

I've struggled with trying to get my print surface leveled for months. I've tried all sorts of things, but it seems like when I get all of the calibration points perfect, there are still high and low spots on the print surface. If I take the glass off and turn my heated bed surface down, on top of the glass, I see about 1mm of space between the edge of the glass, and the heated plate, most of the way around. Clearly the center is slightly higher than the edges.

I tried many things to overcome this. I tried using springs under the heated plate to compensate, but it wasn't enough. I tried just using three of the clips so that the glass could be more level...and that was really bad. See linked video. https://vid.me/ZaSD It was actually worse than what you can see since it only captures a frame every 30 seconds.

So I'm wondering if this amount of warping is similar to that which you encountered.

[backspinnn]

My first Onyx bed was warped by at least .050 from center to edge. The replacement Onyx was about just a little better than the first. I have zero confidence that seemecnc even QA's the beds before they ship them. Both of the beds I received were so badly warped that just placing them on a flat surface would have easily ID'd them as defective. I have found that if I print a thick raft, I can overcome some of the warping related issues. If seemecnc promises to offers a quality product, they should at least check the critical dimension parts they are shipping for flatness. I am not happy that we spent more than $2k on the Rostock Max V2 +upgrades, and the 1st and 2nd beds are too warped for any reliable print quality. It is BS to advertise .1mm resolution, if they ship beds warped by 1.27mm.

[Stevolution]

My new bed is warped to. High in the centre by about 1.2mm.
I take it the only way over this is a replacement heat bed then.

[DaveDesigns]

My new bed is warped to. High in the centre by about 1.2mm.
I take it the only way over this is a replacement heat bed then.

Same here for me, I'll put up a picture when I get home. Like someone said previously in the thread, it could be a bad batch. I've just got to the part of the build where you have to level the towers to the bed, and it's almost impossible.

[RobertM]

I've been struggling with calibration myself and notice the PCB bed was 'domed' as described here. I thought that was natural and something we could adjust for in calibration (not perfectly), but it's not turning out to be easy to calibrate.

[ccavanaugh]

I have a slight warp in my old Rev 1 bed, but it's easily overcome after clamping the glass plate to it as it's much stiffer than the bed itself. I always mark the orientation of the glass plate to clamp in the same location and level/square everything to it.

The day job requires designing of mechanical assemblies to house PCBs with switches and LCDs, etc. The board manufacturers will not ensure perfectly flat boards without very high cost of sorting and scrap costs. I simply design the product to flatten the board at assembly to ensure a good fit when buttons heights and LCDs are critical.

The only flat heated bed I've ever encountered was a Helios that Panucatt makes.

Many binder clips are your friend. I just barely snug the bed screws to allow horizontal movement with thermal changes. All calibrations and checks for square are performed with a heat spreader and glass plates securely clamped to the bed heated to a comfortable 50C. TrickLaser makes a very reasonably priced heat spreader if you don't want to make your own.

[notarat]

After waiting nearly 2 years to build my V2 kit I completed it last Thursday. I have 4 other printers so I never felt the need to assemble this one. Now that I have completed it I discovered I, too, have a badly warped Onyx. There's a dome at least 1.2mm in the center when cold and it gets even worse when heated.

What options are there in the aftermarket to get a new heated bed?