By
Press January 09, 2018
DIY Prototypes Guides
In the following article we will install an Anycubic Ultrabase to a Creality CR-10 Mini clone. The heated bed that this 3D printer has by default it is a regular/bad quality heated bed. In this case, if we want to use it, we must use tape or lacquers to prevent the pieces from warping or sticking off. The heating is irregular and in some cases the base is not completely flat which will make the pieces to detach or bend as the filament cools. That’s why we decided to use a better heated bed of considerable better quality, with the only disadvantage that we have lost a few square centimeters of the printing area.
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Materials list
The purchases list of the components that we will need before carrying out this DIY tutorial will be mainly composed of screws, springs, washers, nuts and power connectors for our heated bed. All these easily available on large hardware stores.
As we discussed earlier, all the materials for this tutorial can be be easily found in non-specialized stores. In our case and for Spain, we have obtained the materials in the following large hardware stores, the springs and concave washers we have bought them in the Leroy Merlin, the general hardware (M4 screws, self-locking nuts, butterflies, washers in general) we can get it at a good price in the Bricomart, the 6-pin connector we have bought it in Conectrol (Madrid) but we have ordered any 6-pin connector available on which we could use any other.
We will need:
- One (1) Anycubic Ultrabase heated bed.
- Four (4) springs of 2cm high (We have bought some longer ones and we have cut them to the necessary lenght).
- Four (4) linear plates “connectors” for furniture with 4 holes.
- Four (4) M4 self-locking nuts.
- Four (4) M4 flat head screws 4cm long.
- Eight (8) concave washers.
- One (1) 6-pin connector for the electrical connection of the heated bed.
- One (1) roll of duck tape.
Building it up
The first thing we will do is present and weld the 6-pin connector both in the heated bed and in the output of the controller of the CR-10 Mini. It is of vital importance that the cables of the connector that we are going to use coincide in the same order as they were previously, that is, that the positive coincides with the positive of the heated bed and the negative in the same way, The probe to measure the temperature of the heated bed has no polarity.
From the control unit of the CR-10 you can see that the connector that comes out to the heated bed has 6 cables (2 red, 2 black and 2 yellow). In this case, as much as the negatives as the positives leave from the same port of the power supply or MOSFET, so forth, we will only use 1 for each of them (positive and negative) and leave the other 2 without connecting. Both the Creality CR-10 Mini and the Anycubic Ultrabase work with 12V so we will not have any voltage problems.
We can see different views of the 6-pin connector, in this case the connector that leaves the control unit from the CR-10 Mini, 6 cables come out (right image) and only 4 go to the heated bed (right and center image). The connection of the thermal sensor does not have polarity, however for the heated bed we must respect the polarity (it is not necessary) by convention of the wiring, since it is indicated in the legend of the heated bed.
Next, we will screw as you can see in the image, the 4 holes plate, the M4 screws, the self-locking nuts M4, and the original screws of the Anycubic Ultrabase. The final result can be seen in the image on the left.
It is important to emphasize that the orientation of the connector plates must follow the orientation shown in the image, otherwise they will not coincide with the holes of the base of the CR-10 Mini with the screws of the Ultrabase. It's a good thing in general, since we'll have two holes available in the back of the heated bed to adapt maybe a set of LED lights or some other accessory such as a webcam that we want to adapt in that part. In future articles we will adapt a protector for the cable of the heated bed to one of these screws.
We can see 3 views on how to assemble the plates in the heated bed, in this If the original screw of the Anycubic Ultrabase has been trimmed so that it does not bother.
Once the base is bolted we will proceed to present the springs next to the concave washer.
In this case we must install all the springs in the same direction, by cutting the size of the spring we can see that there is one level and one not, we must leave them all on the same side.
The concave washer will allow us to eliminate the unevenness caused by the cutting of the spring.
Then we will use heat-resistant duck tape to give a little more subjection to the original Ultrabase screws. In this case the tape we use supports up to 120 degrees Celsius and is fire resistant so there should be no risk of fire.
Duck tape is a type of adhesive tape that is characterized by adding a mesh of natural or synthetic fibers similar to a bandage as reinforcement. The adhesive side is always white. The non-adhesive side is usually metallic gray, although it can be found in black. Can use to join or repair flexible tubes, covering tears in clothes, tents and boat sails, temporarily fix pipes, etc.
We will proceed to present the heated bed with bolted supports and insured for a final adjustment and we can see that it fits quite well to the dimensions of the original holes.
Here we can see a bottom view on how the base is already installed correctly.
In case of using as a basis of the project a CR-10 of standard measures (30cm x 30cm) there is an Ultrabase available with these dimensions, with which you would have to see the heated bed that suits you best, in this case the Keenovo 30cm x 30cm would be a success. However, one should try different ways to adapt the dimensions of the heated bed to the base of the CR-10.
