Glass plate shim

thingiverse

Customizable Version: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1002887 Want to use a glass plate on your print bed without changing printer settings? Simply put this shim underneath the Z-axis trip-switch so that it gets pressed one glass plate's thickness early. IMPORTANT: Be sure to read Instructions under Thing Info, vital information awaits you! If your printer is like mine, raising the print bed platform triggers preparing for a new job. The height it achieves at that point is its maximum, layer heights are subtracted accordingly. Adding this shim changes the maximum my printer will arrive at. IMPORTANT: Results may vary. My printer (PowerSpec Pro/Flashforge Creator Pro) functions differently than yours may. If your printer ignores the shim and starts cutting through the glass, immediately halt the job. Instructions NOTE: All glass plates are not created equal. To accommodate this fact, I omitted including a .stl file in this thing. My source of glass was from a 5×7" photo frame I bought at the dollar store, which is smaller than my print bed but close enough in size for other reasons. The alternative would be to obtain a custom-cut sheet of glass from OSH or somewhere similar. Measure your glass plate's thickness with a precision digital caliper. Then edit the .scad file and update its value to match what you've measured. Generate an .stl file using this data and then print it out. Place the shim anywhere that hits the z-axis trip switch. For my printer, this area is on the platform behind the bed, just in front of the back wall. Secure the shim in place, preferably with some form of tape. Make sure to adjust the measurements according to the thickness of any tape you use, do not skip this step as the shim may fall off during printing! With everything set up correctly, the shim should be hit by the trip-switch first and register it for a new height setting that takes into account its added value (the glass thickness). If done properly, this results in a perfectly good print directly on top of your desired glass surface. If your printer operates differently, maybe lacks an z-axis trip switch, or simply disregards physical heights altogether and uses pre-set firmware levels to adjust - then this setup just won't work as planned for you.