SOLDERINGS ON YOUR HOTBED

thingiverse

HOW-TO: SOLDERINGS ON YOUR HOTBED? What do you need? - A soldering iron, the one you usually use for your electronic tinkering. - A second printer (or a hotbed controlled by a board). Better if it works with a 24V power supply. - Tin. Recommended (will help / not a must): - Soldering paste - A pump/sucker A few days ago I was asked to overhaul an old TRONXY X3. One of the things that needed to be done was to rewire the hotbed. So much movement back and forth ended up breaking some wires ... Apparently it is a minor weld that can be done with a 30W soldering iron. And it would be if it wasn't for the fact that the hotbed is a long copper track on a 3mm thick aluminium sheet. As we know, aluminium is not only a very good electrical conductor, but also a very good thermal conductor: think about the heatsinks on our drivers, the ones we put on our Raspberry Pi, those our mosfets stick to, and of course ... the few big ones in our PCs. In this sense, a 220 x 220 mm hotbed is a fantastic aluminium heatsink and a small 30W soldering iron is not going to be able to melt any of the tin points … no matter how hard you try. You won't be able to de-solder the wires at all. This said, if you try, you will probably ruin the exisitng tin points, but nothing more. A soldering iron with twice the power will not be sufficient either! You need to heat up your entire bed to melt the tin spots. - - - How to? Use your second printer and you will have a 120 / 240 W heater! (Better work with 24V powered beds) Put the hotbed you need to fix upside down on your 'heater' hotbed (in my case it is an Ender-5-Plus). Set the temperature of your carrying hotbed to about 95 C and get your soldering iron ready. If you put aluminium on aluminium there will be less heat loss, but more risk of scratching one or both of your beds, so be very careful (I left my glass between both beds as you can see). Now you have a good temperature controlled environment, you can de-solder and re-solder the wires you need with - let’s say - certain comfort. Just find a convenient working position. In 5 minutes you have de-soldered/soldered the wires you need and you're done. Cut and clean the wires and tin the ends with 'clean tin' before soldering again. Voilà! Enjoy tinkering!! O. - - - SOLDER HEATBED SOLDER HOTBED SOLDER HOT-BED WIRING HEATBED WIRING HOTBED WIRING HOT-BED REWIRING HEATBED REWIRING HOTBED REWIRING HOT-BED