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So the company I work for has a Makerbot Z18. Yes, the largest build volume makerbot offers, and yes the printer with probably the most complaints regarding the smart extruder among many other things. However, I’ve been able to get this printer to come out with some really nice prints, I will say Makerbot has improved quite a bit since this purchase.

That being said It’s time to make another move forward, we want to print ABS.

For those of you not familiar with the z18, it has an enclosed, heated build chamber and only currently is capable of printing PLA. But printing ABS doesn’t seam too out of reach, the extruder is capable and makerbot’s filaments seam to be the same diameter. So that leaves me in need of a heated build plate. I’ve found many build plate options online and have settled for a 12 x 12 aluminum topped build plate with thermistor.(as seen here Rep Rap Champion ) but I’m not so naive to think I can just stick those wires in a wall outlet and viola! the build plate automatically adjusts to the perfect ABS printing temp! So my question is this, how do I wire this thing so I can regulate temp and see what temp I’m at? Mind the fact that I will be running the heated plate independent of the printer. Please any info from you ambitious DIY-ers out there is appreciated!

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Hello, we are currently working on a complete system for the Rep 5 and also will offer that for the Z18 a bit later.

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Sounds very interesting. I have been thinking the same thing. The plastic parts of the platform are what i am concerned with on a long print. For temp control you would need to have a controller that does the work for you or manually adjust with a regulated supply. I am curious to see how it goes. When i get mine will get done. That link is not 12x12 i assume that is just the same idea.

J

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Well if you just bought one of the cheap power supplies for a prusia i3 they can Pretty much get the bed up to temp and almost no farther . basically what I’m saying is they get the bed to about 110 and never really any farther

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Hi @runninred57 the electronics involved in temperature controlling something like this are really quite simple; the kit appears to come with a thermistor, so all you need to do is measure it’s value, compare that to your setting, then turn the power on/off to the plate as appropriate. The trickiest part would be calibrating the thermistor (ideally you’d need an infra-red temp reader to check it), but that’s not an unsolvable problem and, once calibrated, it shouldn’t need doing again.

Because I’m lazy, I’d probably use a small Arduino of some flavour, an LED display for the temperature to set, a power switch and a couple of up/down micro-switches (maybe a few components for the circuitry). You could print an enclosure for it and you’d be set.

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Who are you and when do you think this will be ready?

Thanks

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Hi there

did you notice your heated build plate is 300x200 mm?

build plate of Z18 is 300x300.

I would prefere to go for biger one.

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Hi, you can check out our profile :slight_smile: we make upgrades for the Replicator 2 and 2X for about 2 years now and especially work together with big german companies like Bosch for example, who have a lot of Replicators in use and just want to have them more useful and reliable (cause for them time is money). We thought about a version for the new generation for a long time, cause we noticed that many users are not very happy with the 5th gen, and most of the users that have both, the old and the new makerbots, in fact do not use the new ones. So we designed a solution for the 5th gen and will be able to sell that in about 2 weeks. We will offer the same system for the Z18, the problem is just that we have no z18 and first have to buy a build plate holder, so we can make sure to design the heated build plate so that it fits perfectly. Of course if someone has a z18 and can rent us the build plate holder for about a week, this would really help us :slight_smile:

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We have a replacement Z18 coming to us in a couple of days, that we might be able to send you the build plate from.

I would want to look at your past products and how well they work.Do you have a website?

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Another straight forward option is to purchase a PID temperature controller. You would need to use a thermocouple instead of the thermistor, but a whole kit including a controller, thermocouple and SSR can be bought from Amazon for ~$30. Then you just need to wire it to your power supply. Make sure you match voltages of the SSR and powersupply.

Cheers,

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please keep us updated, I will definitely buy a heated build plate, I hope to hear from you soon.
Wayne
SwiFt I.T Network Solutions

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Hi guys, since several of you contacted me, i wanted to inform you about the status: We decided to purchase an Z18 to make sure we can adapt our 5th gen replicator HBP system for the Z18. We received the Z18 2 days ago and had a lot of work to adjust everything (really unbelievable how some things were mounted at an 8000 USD machine btw) Do not understand me wrong, we do not plan to make the existing build plate fit to the Z18, we are making a special Z18 version, just in the same kind like we did for the Rep 5th Gen. I think there will be no big problems and I guess in a few weeks i can inform you that it is available. :slight_smile:

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I cant wait, I have to agree with you the Z18 really lacks in build quality for such an expensive machine, a lot of things happened at makerbot through the production and further development of the z18, many features were cut or posponed and the printer was then finally marketed as a PLA only printer when in actual fact this was suppose to be their flagship printer with multi material support with all the bells and whistles utilising the same patented tech from stratasys, they only went as far as to redevelop the smart extruder + sadly no stratsys engineers were put on the project the team was loosly filled from new and leftover employees from makerbot, the team did a reasonable job all things considered however stratasys probably realised the capabilities of this machine and that it would outperform many of the other very expensive objet and fortus machines if they were to allow it front and center stage time.

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Any other news on this? @wabasoc did you get a HBP on the z18? I’d love to chat with you if you did so I can add one on mine. @id3d can you provide some more detail on you upgrades? If you are vetted I’d send you my build plate for you to create a HBP for the z18. Thanks everyone

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Whats going on with this I am ready to drop some cash for one

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me too.

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Hi guys, i already replied to some of you in a personal message. It took way longer than expected to bring the 5th gen thing on the market, cause we had to do a lot of certification and stuff. I will inform you here as soon as the Z18 Version is available - sorry for the long waiting, i would have liked it faster also :wink:

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thanks for the reply, are you able to provide some specs and an inclination of what it will look like, what functionality will it have? is it tied into the firmware? and a rough cost if possible thanks and hope to hear from you soon. i cant wait to start printing abs through the z18.
I’ve done some small tests with ABS and the layers look amazing but need the HBP.

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Hi, it’s completely independent from the software and firmware. It has its own controller where you can set the temperature directly. So there are also no changes at the printer needed, you just replace the original build plate with our build plate system and can switch back whenever you want to the original one.

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Is there a website I can check out your products? one of your posts said you have a system for the 5G, I would love to get one of those and worry about our Z18 later. Thanks.