Hey everyone! Dug through a few builds and it's inspired me to increase my build volume of a CR10S I have that's been sitting as I've got a few other printers that build faster and more reliably. Through this process I'm looking at keeping the Y and Z extrusions the same height, but to extend the four extrusions (the front and rear base X supports, the X gantry and the X top beam supports) so that I'm able to basically at least double the build area in the X. On top of that I plan to upgrade power system to a 24V Mean Well power supply which would then tie into the control system going from the stock mainboard to the BigTreeTech SKR V1.4 Turbo. To tidy things up I'm planning on raising the base of the printer up to house everything underneath of it rather than being in the external control box unit, which should be simple enough. The part that I'm looking into that has me reaching the ends of Google for information and brought me here specifically involves the heated bed change. As I'm looking to heat the entire new build surface getting power through the boards is just plain horrible for performance, so the need for a solid state relay makes sense and there are plenty of sources I've read to see how it's done. The parts that I'm looking for more information on are the following: Is there a reliable source to order custom dimension heated bed mats from? Would it make more sense to buy two heated beds for a 500x500 area and wire them in parallel? In the case of going with the two heated beds, is it safe and reliable to base the temperature reading of the bed off of a single thermistor attached to one bed, or will I have to find a way to monitor each heated mat individually? If so, does anyone have a recommendation of a control board that can monitor multiple thermistors outside of the standard dual (one for the hot end and one for the heated bed)? With the heated bed questions out of the way my next set of question involves the mechanical aspect of moving the bed. I've seen some people post enlarged builds with just the factory 2040 extrusion still being the point where the bed is mounted with V-wheels. My concern is that with the increased bed size, we are talking about a larger and heavier build surface moving which could in turn introduce a rocking movement side to side just due to the weight being shifted around from the Y axis stepper moving the bed. In order to remediate this issue, I was thinking adding two additional extrusions to support the bed on the left and right of the Y drive assembly to hold V-slot plates should remove any shifting. Would this be the best method of removing the possibility of any wobble? I understand that this may be the time to look into linear rail solutions, but based on my experience with my other printers, I have not seen a need to move to that direction. If I'm over looking something here though, please let me know. Thanks in advance for any input and thanks for all of the inspirational builds people have posted to get me to this point! TLDR: I posted my direct questions in bold.
