I'm working on my own industrial quality 3d printer design at the moment....but am not an expert on 3d printing.
IMO, you would want a frame underneath the bed, perhaps made up from 1"x1" T-slot or something similar. I would think that it will be easier to get the entire bed flat as a whole with a frame under it.
As far as accidentally bending the bed goes
I'm guessing that the 3 motors are some of the highest torque Nema 17 steppers? 5mm lead ballscrews? Sure, you could get quite a large amount of force on there that could bend things. I'm not sure what the best solution is, but is it possible that you could make some easily replaceable attachment points designed to break away before the point of damaging your bed occurs?
Are you using a duet board and trinamic drivers?
https://duet3d.dozuki.com/Wiki/Stall...sorless_homing
There might be a way to reduce the available motor torque while homing, combined with a stiff enough structure under the bed, assuming that during a homing sequence is the only time this accident might occur.....
Sounds possible perhaps.Originally Posted by Duet Wiki
For the bed
I've been thinking about using 120V silicone heat pads with a PID temperature controller. Haven't sorted out the details. It might be nice to have two sections on the bed for only heating half of it on smaller prints.
The way I have envisioned it is underframe, aluminum plate, insulation, silicone pad, glass, and just a couple of clips on the four corners to hold the insulation, silicone heating pad, and glass on there.
I wonder if I could get away with underframe, phenolic, insulation, silicone pad, glass (or buildtak?) instead.
I have been thinking about using unheated phenolic for printing Nylon. In that case I could just take off the top layer. But I need to investigate the properties of this material first to see what temperatures it can be exposed to and what it's coefficient of thermal expansion is. Plus finesse the concept a bit.
What are your thoughts on all of this? What print surface are you planning to use?
I need to look up the coefficients of thermal expansion for aluminum, phenolic, and glass to get started with a better final design for myself.