Better Clamp Plate Design?

[evanevery]

Anyone other than me think its odd that you have to move the thumbscrews when switching between PRINTING and BAKING?

Why can’t we have clamps than can be swapped without having to move the thumbscrews? Seems an obvious issue and so simple to resolve…

[MikeL]

This actually was previously the case, we had a lot of users that were upset that the dimensions of our board referred to their actual dimensions and not their usable area when clamped. This is the result of changing the size of the boards to accommodate those users. That said we did at one point talk about looking at adjustments to the clamps though I don’t recall where that left off.

[evanevery]

Sounds like you shortened the depth of the slot on one side without also doing it on the other. The depth of the print/bake slots simply needs to be identical and the length of the thumbscrew slots simply need to at least allow the thumbscrews to fall on the centerline…

This is not rocket science and anyone who uses this equipment is going to notice the design failure immediately.

[evanevery]

Can I still buy a set of the older mounting clamps? Completely unscrewing and repositioning the thumbscrews every time I flip a board is frustrating waste of my time. I also expect its putting needless wear-and-tear on the threaded holes in the build plate…

[MikeL]

Older clamps won’t help you here. As mentioned above the changes made were to the substrates not the clamps. The only changes we’ve made to clamps was adding a recess for the thumbscrews so they wouldn’t sit proud of the clamps. If you have substrates that are actually 2x3 and 3x4 you won’t see the problem you describe. As noted above it’s the result of us increasing the board size because users complained about the measurement referring to actual board size rather than printable area when clamped.

[evanevery]

I don’t understand why clamps cant be designed to be flippable for ANY board size! Did you guys not consider this?

[scottcun]

I tried an experiment today – since I had an extra set of thumbscrews, I mounted the original set slightly above center (top set being at the 4th position down from the top), second set at the position to clamp the board for printing, and the third set toward the bottom for baking the board with it rotated 90 degrees.

I haven’t had a chance to test the circuit yet (just finishing reflow right now), and of course, I’d need to remove all of the thumbscrews to put down the spoiler board for drilling, but I think this might be a good work-around to the thumbscrew/clamp alignment issue.

Has anyone else tried this, and/or see issues with this approach? Note, I’ve only tried this with the 3" x 2" FR1 boards; I haven’t tried with a larger size yet.

[jdresser]

why don’t they just make a simple tray to put the boards in that just rests on the bed and keeps the board at the appropriate distance from the heating bed while curing? it doesn’t need thumb screws at all… Think like a picture frame shape. a frame that is sized for the 3x4 boards could hold the 2x3 boards as well.

[jdresser]

I just made my own “baking tray” by designing a board in Eagle with bunch of drilled holes in a rectangle shape. two of them, one sized just right for the 2x3 board to sit in, and the other just a little bit smaller. then I had the Voltera drill the inside rectangle in one 3x4 board, and the outer rectangle in another, then glued them together. This way when I want to bake a board, I can just move the clamps out of the way, set it in that tray and let it cook. no need to clamp it down at all. it just needs to be held up off the board so the paste doesn’t smear.

I don’t know how well the fiberglass and glue will hold up the repeated baking, but I will report back after its been run a few times.