A bear of little brain!

[majic79]

It shows a gap around the edges in the manual as well. I've not looked with a camera, but I don't have any issues with bed heating and I've done a few full sized plates. Mine's a 450w heater - the heater power is going to be directly coupled to the size

 

[ChrisA]

I wouldn't worry too much about it. My pad is not an edge-to-edge and I don't have issues. Honestly, most print jobs don't put parts out at the edge anyway. That said, a couple I've been doing lately did push at least my purge line right to the edge and everything stuck just fine.

Try an experiment, get a metal cup and put a small amount of water in it. Set the build plate to 105C or 110C and then place the cup in the center then on the corner corner and one edge. Look at the water and if it acts the same in all locations. If it boils in the center and cools off when moved to the edge, you have a problem. This is very crude but, I think good enough

I thought of this one evening when I was drinking coffee and working on some software, my V0.2 looked like a nice coffee warmer, Set the plate to 80C, and closed the door. Then I wondered if setting the cup in the middle of the plate or the edge would be best. Then thought I could test it

I bought a cheap IR "laser" non-contact thermometer. I doubt it is accurate on an absolute scale but it should detect relative temperatures. It can't see any variation across the plate.

 

[peter.rue]

Try an experiment, get a metal cup and put a small amount of water in it. Set the build plate to 105C or 110C and then place the cup in the center then on the corner corner and one edge. Look at the water and if it acts the same in all locations. If it boils in the center and cools off when moved to the edge, you have a problem. This is very crude but, I think good enough

I thought of this one evening when I was drinking coffee and working on some software, my V0.2 looked like a nice coffee warmer, Set the plate to 80C, and closed the door. Then I wondered if setting the cup in the middle of the plate or the edge would be best. Then thought I could test it

I bought a cheap IR "laser" non-contact thermometer. I doubt it is accurate on an absolute scale but it should detect relative temperatures. It can't see any variation across the plate.

Thanks for the suggestion. I actuallly have an IR thermometer but I had not thought of using that! The whole of the bed is pretty consistent but the perimeter takes a few minutes to get there. That's not a problem unless I'm printing over the whole of the area in which case I will just preheat the bed