I want to order a glass print surface for my new Ender 3 Pro that should be arriving soon.  I think it needs to be tempered glass to handle the heat.  Right?

I'll use binder clips to attach it.  What am I supposed to put inbetween the glass and magnetic surface?  Looks like some use little disks in the corners.

Thanks!

You can get the Creality version of Ultrabase (fancy glass) from amazon for about $15. Glass is OK but Buildtak or Whambam is a much better option.

Anything that leaves airspace between heatbed and print bed will adversely affect heat transfer. My personal preference is to use a full bed covering thermal transfer pad (0.5 mmm silicon sheet).  If you do that you won't need clips.  Most any glass will work, even a cut piece of mirror tile from a home improvement store (but like RV8guy says, there are alternatives that could provide better results). I'm using a piece of boron glass (i.e. borosilicate). It's claim to fame is a low thermal expansion coefficient.

I'm cheap but had glass cut at Lowe's. One piece yielded 2 plates on my one printer (not an ender). You can also go to the dollar store and see if they have a picture frame the right size.

YMMV but for your uses, and your level of printer, I'm willing to bet your bed warps when heating. A piece of glass may not have great thermal transfer but it will be flatter than your build plate.

Links people!! I'd greatly appreciate links.  I'm not really sure about any of what you're talking about.  Glass I got....everything else is confusing.

Thanks!

easiest thing to know is that dont get super thin glass. get something like 3-4mm in thickness. too thin you can have the glass break from heating and cooling.

I'm confused, are you saying to put a silicone sheet inbetween the magnetic surface and the glass or just use the silicone as the surface?

Again, a link to whatever setup you're referencing would be awesome!!

Thanks!

If you are going with a magnetic surface + glass, I don't how a thermal pad would work in that mix ( I missed that in reading your post  - my bad ...).

In my case, I am just using glass directly over the heater plate.  I was talking about this stuff: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N9HGKR1

It comes as a 400x200mm sheet, you have to cut & piece to get full coverage.  It is very delicate stuff, you do your cuts before removing backing material & only remove backing on one side prior to placing (or remove as you are laying it down).  You remove the other side once it is in place.

The glass rests on top & suction keeps it in place.  To remove the glass you break suction at one corner (a twist with your part removal blade)  & slowly lift away as it comes free.   Again, I don't know if this would play well with the magnetic surface.

So if I'm understanding you, you're saying to ditch the magnetic surface, cut and stick a silicone sheet directly to the heating surface, then put a piece of glass right on top of that.  This way I can just lift the glass off the silicone same as I would have done with the magnetic surface.....right?

While I can cut the sheet of silicone into 220 x 250 (think for the Ender 3 Pro).....where do I get the perfectly cut/sized glass?

Thanks!

Buildtak Flex plate

Wham Bam

Creality Ender 3 glass plate

The Buildtak and the WhamBam are both really good systems. I would ditch the glass. I have one that just sits in a box on a shelf.

I have a Mamorubot build surface on my Tevo Tornado. It works good but like glass you have to crank the bed temp a little extra hot. Not bad for the Tevo because of the AC bed heater but it takes a week for the Ender 3 to get a glass plate up to temp.

I greatly appreciate the links but, $96 for the Buildtak and $55 for the Whambam when glass is $17 shipped?!?!  No thanks!   I see what you're saying about the Ender 3 taking some time to get to temp.  I just can't see spending that much on the first two options when the machine was only $206 shipped.

Maybe I'll change my mind once I get the machine up and running.

Thanks

Any glass cut to size will work. Some guys use mirrors.

just heat the bed before leveling, and you may have to physically move your z stop up a bit.

The stock Ender 3 magnetic build sheet is nice for PLA. Get the temps over 80c and it won't stick anymore. Something that worked really well for me was the build surface that comes stock with the Tevo Tornado. I had an extra so I cut it down and stuck it to the Ender. I messed it up one day by forgetting to to put masking tape on it when printing some PETG. The PETG pretty much welded itself to the bed. Oops.

I'll be starting out and hopefully sticking with PLA+.  So should I still be good to go?   What caused you to want to go to PETG?

Thanks!

I had found some nice shiny transparent colors that I liked.

The filament itself?  I was curious if they made it in clear.  Answers my question.

Thanks!