Hotplate burnout, what about multiple connections?

[GreenAce92]

My friend has a 3D printer and the crappy hotplate broke when one of the two contacts burned off the copper "thing"...

Anyway, I said "What if you had multiple connections" parallel rather than just one set. Would that distribute the heat at the entry/contact point so that it wouldn't burn... Good or bad idea?

It's one of those maze-like thin copper that's spread out at the bottom of a glass plate to create "even" heat. Like those heated sidewalks.

I'm just wondering why or why not this idea isn't used in production. Aside from "It's easier to just solder two things than ten" for example.

 

[chuckey]

Hard to judge from your description, but the copper is good for the current and so are the contacts. So perhaps it was a bad soldered joint between the two. It could be that the local heat is too much for the solder. Where exactly did the joint fail?
Frank

 

[GreenAce92]

Hard to judge from your description, but the copper is good for the current and so are the contacts. So perhaps it was a bad soldered joint between the two. It could be that the local heat is too much for the solder. Where exactly did the joint fail?
Frank

This image isn't mine

Looking at this image, where the pos/neg contacts are soldered to the heating element, that's where it failed. Hard to say which one on his as both were black wires.

Hope this link works for you

 

[chuckey]

The way that film is bent makes me think its actually flexible. This means it changes shape as it gets hot. The problem is that a blob of solder does not, well not until its hot enough to melt. It could be that the wires were too tight, so every time the holtplate got hot, the wires tried to pull the track off the film.
Frank

 

[FlapJack]

The connection to the copper on the film is not supposed to flex. The wires connected to it may have been to stiff.