You can. There’s nothing that prevents you from doing so.
However, as glass is not metal the metal sensing probe will not detect it, rendering auto levelling non-functional.
If you are OK using manual levelling, then it will work just fine.
Glass is supposed to be pretty dang flat, so how it used to be done is you would just measure 3 points on the glass, the minimum to measure any rotation of the print plate, and that was sufficient.
However, on the Snapmaker the minimum you can measure is a 3x3 grid, so 9 manual measurements.
It’s not an unreasonable amount of work.
If you attach a piece of glass to the top of the print plate with some binder clips it’s fully removable if you don’t like it.
@Bluetarp the sensor doesn’t HAVE to be swapped out, honestly if you were able to apply an adhesive to a pei plate and stick it to the glass, use a silicone thermal pad on the bottom that will hold the glass to the heated bed, then just adjust the stock sensor, you’ll have glass with the ability to still use auto leveling without having to do anything to the head.
I think there’s been some terms used a bit too loosely here.
PEI alone will not be detected by the prox sensor. However a good number of “PEI print surfaces” come mounted on a spring steel sheet that would be detected by the sensor.
For example, the Snapmaker magnetic removable print sheet is a plastic coated spring steel sheet.
I used an adhesive magnetic sheet stuck to the glass on which the Snapmaker removable sheet is detected in the usual fashion by the print head.
I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that in general as the additional glass and magnet and print plate will hinder heat transfer to the print sheet. But some people do it and I think it’s worked alright, but it does increase bed heating time to something like 30+ minutes.
@brent113 i did say pei plate, implying a pei coated flex steel plate. A lot of people do think pei is the plate itself and it’s not, it’s the coating.
Thanks Artezio and Brent and Scyto for the help and clarification. You guys at the top of the tech chain are awesome to generously (and patiently) share your knowledge with “the rest of us”. It’s truly appreciated! Now I just need to decide if I want to go with manual calibration or Artezio’s sandwich. Great fun!
The original thingiverse link was removed because the author wanted to update it, unfortunately he passed away before posting a new item. You can find the model in his A351 thread: Technical Drawing A351 from stefix
I did add a new sensor, which did have a big difference, but honestly the glass with fifix is night and day vs stock… and not too difficult to pull off.
@MooseJuice just don’t do what @Somnium did and have it snag a glass clip with catastrophic chain of events that really has very low odds of actually happening.
I have a questrion that is a bit off subject. Is there any way to adjust the auto level afterwards? I keep ending up either 0.01mm too high (works, but adhesion isn’t good enough) and 0.1mm too low (squishes first level). Is there any way to adjust that other than redoing the autolevel?
I like the simplicity of this one.
I remixed it to make the gap wider (so i can use a feel gauge i don’t need as the metal)
I couldn’t re-use the existing screws, they were too short on both v1 and v2 heads.
I am playing with making the model a little thinner to see if i can overcome that, but if not does anyone know a good US source of the type of head case screw just few mm longer?
(hmm the model height is 1.9mm i think, but the printed item height is 2.3mm - guess i need to figure that out).
