Has anybody upgraded just the heated bed to MK52?  

RE: Has anybody upgraded just the heated bed to MK52?

which Mk52 heatbed? 12 volt or 24 volt... they have different mountings

Joan

RE: Has anybody upgraded just the heated bed to MK52?

Ah voltage wise, I still keep everything the same, 12 Volt Heatbed, Fan, Heater Cartridge, etc.  Not changing electronic, other than that and adding IR sensor, BondTech extruder.

Posted by: @joantabb

which Mk52 heatbed? 12 volt or 24 volt... they have different mountings

Joan

RE: Has anybody upgraded just the heated bed to MK52?

Hi Anthony, 

On my Mk2, MMU1 printer, I Simply installed the Mk52 12 volt heatbed. and promised myself not to try XYZ calibration... 

the sense spots are, I believe in different positions on the mk52 heatbed... 

then I re adjusted the Pinda to suit the removable heatbed, and all is well!   (Normally you should upgrade to Mk2.5 firmware and hardware, but that would stop my MMU1 from working... 

Joan

regards Joan

RE:

Hi Joan,

I see your point, probably MMU1 makes it harder to adjust the FW.  I don't have MMU, and I was able to tweak the latest FW to make it think its an MK 2.5S+.  Calibration and all work fine.  I am happy with the conversion so far.

Cheers,

Anthony

RE: Has anybody upgraded just the heated bed to MK52?

removable build plate is probably the best feature!

regards Joan

RE: Has anybody upgraded just the heated bed to MK52?

Joan,

Right on! Been struggling with tons of issues using fixed bed. Replacing PEI is a nightmare. With this baby MK2 now MK2.5S settled down, I think I will get an MK4 next. 

RE: Has anybody upgraded just the heated bed to MK52?

I couldn't afford Mk4, so I have Mk3.9

RE: Has anybody upgraded just the heated bed to MK52?

Hi Anthony,

What did you tweak exactly? Considering its all fine and working well I wonder if I missed something... Just asking for future reference 😀 

RE:

Haha 🤣 that is funny, I couldn't afford MK3.9 at one time, every hobby is expensive. I looked at the reviews on MK4 and still wonder if it is worth to go with that, there seems to be a lot of good reviews on MK3.9 over MK4 regarding quality and stability.  Maybe it is still too early for MK4 to be a real deal.

Posted by: @joantabb

I couldn't afford Mk4, so I have Mk3.9

What I had upgraded includes:

• 12V MK52 Magnetic Heatbed (best feature in this upgrade),
• BondTech Extruder & drive gears,
• Smooth rods,
• Misumi bearings with flat clamp kit,
• SuperPINDA,
• IR Filament Sensor rev 0.4 with LED mod, 
• Plated copper heatblock (this really helps to make temperature stable),
• 12V 40W cartridge heater (noticed that my MK2 stock was 12V 30W),
• Heatblock thermistor,
• 12V Hotend Noctua Fan NF-A4x10,
• 12V Delta Blower Fan,
• Misc: new timing belt, printed parts, firmware mod from latest 3.13.2 (mixed of MK2 and MK25S RAMBo13a using Visual Studio).

Posted by: @jacada

Hi Anthony,

What did you tweak exactly? Considering its all fine and working well I wonder if I missed something... Just asking for future reference 😀 

Cheers,

Anthony 

RE:

I have not, but if it's useful for anyone, there are magnetic, 12V MK2-style heatbeds on AliExpress that are drop-in replacements. I bought this one a few months ago for my MK2S and it's performing beautifully: Prusa i3 MK2.5 3d Printer Heated Bed MK52 Beds with Back Traces N38SH Magnets Prusa i3 MK2.5 Heatbed Prusa i3 MK2.5 Heatbed (aliexpress.us). I bought a dual-sided (textured/smooth) PEI build plate to go with it and am really liking that as well: ENERGETIC Double Side Black Powder Coated Textured PEI Spring Steel Build Plate 241x254mm Prusa MK3 (aliexpress.us). Magnets are good strength, no cold spots, heats at the same rate as the original bed, etc. I ended up cutting off the ring terminals and soldering the power wires directly to the heatbed because I don't' trust them, but that's a personal thing. The only "trouble" I had was that one of the heatbed screws that came with it didn't have threads, but a quick trip to the hardware store solved that. Otherwise, the hardware that came with it was totally serviceable.

Pardon the AliExpress plug, but if I can help anyone else upgrade their MK2S with magnetic build plate awesomeness I'm happy to do it 😀

Happy printing!

RE: Has anybody upgraded just the heated bed to MK52?

I ended up cutting off the ring terminals and soldering the power wires directly to the heatbed because I don't' trust them, but that's a personal thing.

Good call, actually, I experienced the problem initially.  PCB screw-in method with the cheapo ring and cable material not designed for the movement.  The poor contact caused overheating and melted part of the cable.  I threw that to the trash and replaced with #10 copper wires with silicon insulator, soldered with two big blobs of tin.  Problem solved.

RE: Has anybody upgraded just the heated bed to MK52?

Finally, got an extra upgrade to make the printer super quiet. Thanks to Kevin's add-on board that can host the silent drivers prusa-mk225s-silent-driver-upgrade-board.  This is so quiet like a MK3.  Also it runs with the latest FW 3.14 with some line of code change to make it compatible with the MK2 dimension. I think I should suggest to commit the changes to the main branch so future builds won't require this manual modification step.

Some pic of the newly revived MK2 with extra capabilities

(Driver board still dangling about before I got the enclosure printed.)