To my fellow geeks in the 3d printing community,
I just want to give a review of the Fleks3d print bed as seen on Kickstarter. I want to start off by saying, if you haven’t seen Fleks3d on Kickstarter I would go look it up RIGHT NOW.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fleks3d/fleks3d-makes-your-3d-printer-better?ref=discovery
First, THANK YOU Peter Ragonetti and Viktor Jondal at Fleks3d for sending me their product to test before the release!
After seeing Fleks3d on Instagram I was curious if it actually worked as great as you see in all their .gifs and post and I am here to say IT DOES! I have been beating the bed to death on my Makerbot 2x the last 2 weeks and it still works great! After the first print I began to worry though that this was one of those one time use only types of build plates because the filament stuck so well to the plate that it left marks similar to what you see on at Stratasys build plate. After a few more prints without a problem I decided to use very light sand paper and go over the entire plate as stated in the instructions to see if the bed still worked great and I still haven’t had a problem with the adhesion.
Can’t print ABS because you don’t have a heated bed? Prints will not stick to your print bed? Tired of playing with tape and glue sticks? YOUR SOLUTION IS HERE! I had previously bought some Brassfil that I could not get to stick to my bed no matter the settings and I was ready to throw it away, with the Fleks3d bed it stuck first try with NO HEAT! I am yet to find a filament that refuses to stick to the bed! Fleks3d even lets you print ABS WITH ZERO HEAT! Yes my bed was set to degrees as instructed. Fleks3d says to print with as little heat as possible because the heat can warp the plate.
When I first received the plate I was slightly worried about how flexible this plate actually was and if prints would pop off as easily as they show. With my first print, Marvin of course, I found the build plate was slightly hard to bend and was very stiff but after torturing it and bending it all around I found it began to loosen up a little and I saw my prints start to pop right of when I flexed the bed.
One thing I do want to warn you about is calibrating your printer with the fleks3d bed on. I use a Makerbot 2x and I had to do a very slight and simple modification because the build plate would not go down far enough when I loosen the knobs on the bottom side of the plate. What I had to do was take a small piece of bass wood that was the same thickness as the build plate, ¼”, and place it on the back piece that triggers the endstop so the endstop would be trigger a quarter of an inch earlier. This is an easy modification and one could easily print a small bracket to trigger the endstop earlier.
This is a great project and I would definitely back it if you haven’t already! From $12-35 you can get a bed size from micro to 20”x20” and even round plates for delta printers. You have till Friday, December 11, 2015 to back the project! Check out the other press this is getting on the Kickstarter page Press
I JUST WANT TO SAY FLEKS3D IS NOT PAYING ME TO DO THIS. THIS IS MY REAL OPINION.
