[ELECTRON] Proposed new club + Arduino meet up

[Blair Thompson]

As I understand it Clive. For glass the qualities that makes the 
difference are:

  * It presents a nice flat surface for the plastic to adhere to.
  * It does not warp when heated
  * Its pretty light when compared to steel or 6mm thick machine aluminium
  * Its surface hard to damage when removing parts
  * Its cheap (£5 per 20cm^2)

The high insulation is actually one of it's downsides.  It takes longer 
to heat up than aluminium, and as it does not conduct heat so well, it 
must be heated evenly for both the quality of the print and to prevent 
the glass cracking.  Some people put heater/thin alu/glass as a 
combination.

On 23/01/2012 18:51, Clive Mitchell wrote:
> I think glass is often used because it's a good balance between laying
> down the first plastic and then separating the finished object
> afterwards.  It's also a good insulator, so that allows the heating
> element to be placed in direct contact.
>
> The PCB based heating plate looks neat.  By specifying a standard
> copper thickness and fine tuning the track width and length they seem
> to have come up with a very simple and consistent heating plate.
>
> On 23 January 2012 17:45, Kieran Wyse<kieranwyse at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> It is very likely we are going to make a heated bed( please forgive my
>> stupidity if this is not the top and bottom plates). Brian has suggested he
>> may be able to get hold of some metal sheet but for best results, I have
>> read, that a glass plate on top is good.
>>
>> I don't think a decision has been made but it is likely we will go the
>> thermistor route copper wire for the heat bed. If you had some lying around
>> it would force us to make a decision:)
>
>

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