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Foam core build platforms

Last night I was moving around some of the circuit boards in my Thing-O-Matic when I realized that I couldn’t mount any of the stepper motors in the spots were the extruder boards could go.  The extruder boards are slightly larger than the stepper motors, so the mounting holes are farther apart.

Since I tend to think with 3D goggles these days, my first inclination is to fire up OpenSCAD and whip up a printable solution.  It was only after designing an “extruder to stepper mounting plate” did I realize that I had a much quicker option.  My Cupcake CNC came with a pile of foamcore build platforms.  These are great for ABS printing, but aren’t much good after the first print.  Admittedly, you can still print on the reverse side.  As a result of printing on acrylic, a heated build platform, and later an automated build platform, I’ve barely made a dent in my reserve of foamcore build platforms.

In any case, I thought up three ways to recycle those old foamcore build platforms.  Hopefully one of these will be useful to you:

1. Cover in blue painter’s tape for PLA printing.
2. Cover in Kapton tape for ABS printing if your acrylic build platform is otherwise out of commission.
3. Use in place of a printable “extruder to stepper mounting plate” by mounting the stepper board to the foamcore and then mounting the foamcore to the inside of the Thing-O-Matic in the extruder board mounting area.

Now, the electrical engineers out there will have to educate me.  Would you want to cut channels to allow air to flow under the board?