Introduction
This short post covers the design and fitting of a prototype metal plate to replace the heater plate on a Creality Ender 3 printer.
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| Fusion 360 Model of Ender 3 Mounting Plate |
Repurposing the Ender 3
A Creality Ender 3 printer was repurposed for optical inspection of hardware such as electronic circuit boards. A new bed/mounting plate was required to hold circuit boards in position. The stock heater plate from Creality could be reused by drilling and tapping; however, this is a one-way trip for the heater plate. With no similar plates for the Ender 3 in my region, a build plate was designed in the software tool, Fusion 360.
Fusion 360
During the mechanical design in Fusion, items such as the mounting hole spacing were considered. The existing connection to the Ender 3 gantry was duplicated; this is a four-hole rectangular placement of 170 mm.
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| Fusion 360 Fully Dimensioned Plate |
The heater plate on the Ender 3 is secured with four 5 mm countersunk bolts. These bolts were reused for the build plate.
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| Fusion 360 M5 Hole Configuration |
Since the build plate was designed for testing, 4 mm x 0.7 mounting holes were included along several axes. The release version of the plate would likely require more mounting holes to suit circuit boards of different sizes.
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| Fusion 360 M4 Hole Configuration |
Manufacturing
After reviewing similar optical inspection solutions, the decision was made to manufacture the plate in 6061 aluminium with a black matte anodised surface finish to help minimise light reflections.
The plate thickness was set to 4 mm, resulting in a measured plate weight of 590 grams. This weight reduction is ideal for the Ender 3 mechanics. For reference, the Creality heater plate and a glass bed weigh approximately 1000 grams.
The plate manufacturer required the usual STEP files and drill drawing details to manufacture the design. The files are available for download at the end of the post.
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Manufactured Plate for Ender 3 |
Fitting the Plate to the Ender 3
The Ender 3 was already modified with the filament feeder, nozzle and heater plate hardware removed. Without the heater plate fitted, the lower gantry was easily visible.
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| Ender 3 Lower Gantry (Bed) Interface |
Four 10 mm solid plastic spacers were printed to space the prototype plate from the gantry.
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| PLA 10 mm Spacer for Plate |
The factory-supplied 5 mm levelling nuts were not reused. To prevent the levelling nuts from working loose, 5 mm Nylon insert lock nuts were fitted.
During testing, no adjustments were made to the Ender 3 software acceleration and speed settings (Marlin build). The Marlin version 2 firmware was recompiled to disable the unused hardware (heater plate, nozzle and thermistor) mentioned above.
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| Simplified Marlin Interface for Ender 3 |
A basic G-code example was run from the SD card on the Ender 3. The code below was saved to the SD card as a file.
G28 Y
G90
G1 Y0 F3000
G1 Y235 F3000
G1 Y0 F6000
G1 Y235 F6000
G1 Y117.5 F3000
The clip below shows the Ender 3 with the prototype plate fitted.
Design Notes
The countersink holes in the prototype plate were too shallow for a flush finish with the countersink bolts. Depending on the plate's final use, the countersink holes should be made larger.
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| Raised Countersink Bolt |
Downloads
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| Ender 3 Plate Drill Drawing |
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| Ender 3 Plate STEP |
