Heated Fan vs Heated Bed

[chronoless 0]

I was wondering if it is possible and many even easier to use a 'heated' fan rather than a heated bed?

Does anybody have any experience with it or some arguments why it may or may not work .

[Daid 303]

I don't think it will work, because the idea behind the heated bed is that you keep the bottom warm enough to stick to the bed. (as warm plastic gets sticky)

[jenschr 6]

I've seen some experimenting with a "heated chamber" by moving the steppers on the outside the Ultimaker, and enclosing the build space. That would still require a heated build surface, but this setup can prevent some cracks in ABS models as they cool off.

J

[rewolff 0]

Also, you want your plastic to cool and become solid before the next layer.

I wrote a program to output G-code yesterday and forgot to put in an "enable fan". So my build started, and things got sloppy after a few layers. Apparently things heat up/don't cool enough that it isn't solid enough for the next layer.

And I had already put it "too" slow. I put in 30mm/sec for the first layer and then forgot to change speeds. So it rpinted the whole thing at 30mm/s instead of faster for the higher layers. A similar object printed just fine at a higher speed, but with the fan on.

Anyway of course I put in the "enable fan" but forgot about the speed and it printed great in twice as long as the other (similar) object.