Gina

Quite right! But then, you don't have to. I gather that removing the mat and bending it is the normal method.

I find that with printing on clean glass the print pops off of its own accord when cooled down.

Mine is 8 years old now.

I beg to differ about PLA! Perfectly good for many applications. I use PETG where I have difficult overhangs or where more flexibility is required. I print on scrupulously clean glass - no goo of any sort or PEI sheet. I often run a long print overnight without issue. I have several years experience of 3D printing and 3D printers. I build my own.

My ROR has sufficient flexibility to allow the wheels to run easily on both rails. Each side has two wheels so no problem with alignment that you can get with three wheels (or more).

rigid.ink was just about the very best but they are not selling filament any more. The Economy range from colorFabb in The Netherlands is a lot cheaper pro rata and very good. You might have a problem accommodating their very large reels though.

Part of the sky - screenshot of part of my ASC image looking through my living room window roughly south. Solid cloud!! 60s exposure with zero gain setting and camera temperature of 9.5°C. This is zoomed in more than pixel resolution. No dome but a less than perfectly clean window. Ambient temperature is about 19°C indoors - be a lot lower when ASC is outdoors.

Looking out of the living room window - cropped.

Very wise indeed!!

Dirty bed? When I have problems with the filament not sticking to the glass, a good clean usually fixes it.

The nozzle should be something like 0.2mm above the bed. I'll have to leave it to someone using the sort of controller you have, I'm afraid, Louise. You need the bed level and the nozzle about the thickness of a piece of paper above the bed.

I'm afraid it's so long since I used this type of control on a 3D printer that I forget now. I'm using the Duet WiFi control board which is controlled from a web browser remotely.

PLA+ is not the same as PLA and needs different settings. Both nozzle and bed need to be hotter. This website may help even if you're using a different make.

Huge difference - only gone down to 21°C and the cooler is very hot - barely touchable, probably 70°C. Conclusion :- Without a fan and air duct, the Nofan beats the Artic Alpine 11 Passive cooler into the dust!! The Artic passive cooler works alright with active airflow through it but so do much cheaper finned coolers.

For completeness I'm going to try the large aluminium passive cooler supported the same way.

Crept down another degree.

After setting it all up again it's got down to 11°C and seems to have stopped getting any cooler.

Have the Nofan perched on three blocks 50mm above the table which should improve airflow through it.

Thought I'd try continuous exposures to see if imaging made any difference to the temperature - it didn't - steady at 11°C. Turned out the lights and ran a sequence of 30s exposures.

Well, surprisingly it seems to be better, the temperature has dropped to 11°C. Room temperature same and I don't think anything else is different though the thermal contact to the TEC could have changed, I guess, maybe squeezed the thermal paste out a bit... Dunno!

The new print has finished and I'm now running a test to see if there's any difference from the previous one under the same test conditions. The difference with this print, apart from the mounting holes and the rerouted USB cable is that this uses ordinary rectilinear infill rather than the honeycomb I used previously. This gives a more open cell structure with a lot less filament. Also less printing time. Again starting with the camera running and starting at 28°C.

The only filament that really suffers from damp is Nylon but that is extremely difficult to print anyway and few printers are capable. Normal indoor conditions shouldn't give you any problems with PLA. A damp shed may be different.

Not going down much more - just 13°C now. So that's about it. Total cooling 15°C. That may be enough for a cold night and will be better with free airflow.

Well, the temperature has come down to 14°C so far. Think it's still going down. Not surprised the cooling isn't brilliant as I'm not really giving the cooler much of a chance. Ambient is 21°C.