Taulman 618 bonds too well to print surface?!?

So. Finally, I got some fabric-based laminate board for printing the Taulman 618 filament on to. The product I got is probably not exactly Garolite (being based in Europe, I ordered it from here: modulor). Still, from the looks, what I got should be similar enough to Garolite/Tufnol so that I had high hopes for it to work well with Nylon.
And work well it did! The prints came out warp-free.
The only problem: When removing the objects from the print surface, I ripped some resin off that bonded too well with the 618. After some more prints and hoping that lifting the nozzle a bit might alleviate the problem, even more came off...
Hmmm. Not good. Does anyone else have the same problem with this laminate stuff or am I just unlucky and got a bad board?

This is how my once beautiful, new and fresh build plate looks like now.




You can see how new Nylon from rafts got too attached to the damaged parts (I couldn't get this off, argh) and how the bed is scratched from me trying to scrape stuff off.

For now, I just printed a loose raft to help the object stay attached without clinging to the bed too hard.
I will try to sand it a little bit tomorrow to remove the unevenness. This might exacerbate the bonding problem even further because the cotton fabric gets exposed even more (which might in turn help stabilizing the remaining epoxy).
I have experienced the same problem with newspaper laminate (did some tests laminating paper products and had something left): It sticks quite well, but rips off pieces.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/05/2013 04:04PM by uGen.

I'm wondering if you heat the surface up it would be easier to remove the object (kind of like using a heat gun to peel of stamp, tapes, envelope, etc.

I'm also looking at using this Nylon filament. From the look of this, I imagine the base of the object won't look pretty like those ABS objects printed on kapton tape or glass surfaces.

Has glue stick on glass been thoroughly vetted yet? I've heard of a couple of success stories over the past little bit, and if that works on heated glass like it did for the few people I saw, sounds like it might be perfect. Allows for a heated platform to help with warpage, sticks well, then comes off with water. Anybody had experience with it?

@ThanhTran: Well, the prints do come out pretty well, actually. It's just that the surface comes out pretty ugly afterwards Some parts do have a little bit of phenolic resin stuck to them, though.
I'll see what I can do to improve this situation. Some options I have thought of so far include reverting to a prototyping PCB. The Nylon didn't stick too well to a blank PCB back, but the holes in the prototyping version might help it grip.
Heating the surface might make it stick even more like with ABS on Kapton, but I will try that if everything else fails.

@maddox: Sounds interesting. I will try to get my hands on some to try...
Really makes me think that when printing on phenolic, the fibers in the board don't play as much a role as the phenolic itself in making Nylon stick (if it sticks to glue stick). When I told the instructor of our plastics workshop what I am going to use the board for, he commented that printing Nylon on it might work because the phenolic is an extremely polar plastic. Well, it worked and not the cotton fibers got stuck to the Nylon, but the top surface of the board...maybe we can work something out with this information.

Thanks for the info UGen. Keep us posted. I'm also interested in using Nylon I bought a big plate of Garolite from MCmastercarr for pretty cheap, but I don't know if I bought the right kind or not.

Thanh

Ok, reverted to prototyping PCB for the time being. As long as you squish the bottom layer extremely and switch the heated bed on (I tried 80°C), warp seems to be less severe.
Also tried putting some ABS juice onto the PCB, but the effects were rather detrimental.

I also spoke to the instructor of the plastic workshop. He hypothesizes that the high heat of the Nylon plays a role in this extraordinary bonding. So maybe reducing the lowest layer temperature might also help...
Furthermore, I got some high temperature wax based release agent from him to apply to the phenolic board. Let's see how this turns out (alternatively, maybe ABS juice might also work as release agent since it kept the 618 from sticking to the PCB too well?).

Man, this is massively frustrating. I hoped to output so much these days...

Edit:
This is the result of printing on PCB as described above. Looks meh to me. Maybe a brim might help.




Edit 2:

Also, I have found something interesting: Because I pretty much taped the phenolic onto my glass printbed, the heater cartridge of the hot end always bumped into the same spot on the phenolic. The surface got damaged because of that and guess what, it looks similar to the damage done by the Nylon. So maybe this isn't a problem inherent in the material, but in the calibration. Lifting the nozzle a little bit (or printing the bottom faster) might alleviate the problem.
I will see if this holds true tomorrow. For now, I have sanded down the PCB a little bit. Hope it helps the Nylon stick to it. Edit 3: Nope, it doesn't looks like unsanded.

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 06/06/2013 12:28PM by uGen.

Again, a day of destruction, but we are getting there.
- The release agent didn't help much.
- ABS juice on phenolic is as bad as ABS juice on PCB. The print comes off approximately at the second layer.
- Lubricating oil made for high precision machines (sounds rather expensive, but is rather cheap; very runny) applied as a very light coat and fast bottom layers seem to alleviate the problems somewhat. There are still pieces - albeit small ones - that come off, but sometimes I get corners lifting using this method. Some fine tuning might at least produce some borderline usable prints.

I seem to have found some working solution:
After sanding the phenolic board and applying a very light coat of oil (until the surface is shiny again and feels a little bit slick, but not oily), the nylon adheres pretty well with a little bit of corner warp.
That is partly strange because common logic would suggest that by sanding, you increase surface area. Then again, if the oil settles in the little dents and scratches. After wiping oil away with acetone, the nylon stuck better without pulling off the surface, but still warped a little bit. Somehow, I must have altered something about the phenolic because there is no oil on the surface anymore. This article abstract seems to point to this conclusion, too and makes sense.
Maybe sanding the board opened up the surface and let the board absorb some oil since before, oiling didn't have any significant effect.
Testing was with fast bottom layer, so if I reduce speed and revert to pretty much standard settings, probably bonding could be bumped up to better results again.

I also tried to print on Kapton after reading that nylon also sticks to that in the Ultimaker forum. Squished the bottom layer just to be sure, but the corners warp. The print can be removed very easily afterwards by hand, so this doesn't seem to work for me.

Others also suggest blue painters tape, but I can't get that in retail here. Would have to order it, but maybe tapes from other brands are also viable.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/08/2013 03:48PM by uGen.

I've been using Taulman 618 and now 645 on my Printrbot with good results. My prefered surface is Garolite CE since it sticks just as well as the LE that Taulman recommends but is cheaper. Printing Nylon on Garolite I set the first layer so that it is not squished down tight the way you would typically do with ABS. Just close enough to stick but less squashed so it comes off easier. Even then it's still stuck tight so to remove prints I remove the Garolite so I can brace it on a work bench, and work a fairly thin bladed scraper under the part. This Olfa scraper is nice: Amazon Link I also use a putty knife that I've sharpened to a chisel edge similar to this: Another Amazon link.

Other people are also using fabric such as canvas or cotton glued down to a flat surface. With this you need to get the first layer squished down tight. Prints tend to release easier but I've had more issues with corners peeling up vs Garolite.

My Garolite does get scraped up but not quite as bad as your picture. Even so, the surface remains plenty smooth and prints keep sticking fine. The Phenolic can be removed from the bottom of a print with a wire brush or even better a wire wheel on a rotary tool.

Thank you for the tip, drawcut and welcome to the forums!

Unfortunately, Garolite doesn't seem to be available in Europe. Instead, UK based shops sell Whale Brand Tufnol (which richrap recommends).
Slowly, I get suspicious of the quality of my sample of phenolic board. There are quite a lot of surface imperfections and one area even looks like they used too much resin in production. So I might try other boards (mine is a no-name brand from an designer / architect supply shop).
The scraper you linked looks nice. Saw some bigger version in a catalog of a local art supply store and hope to be able to get one. In the mean time, this Olfa CK-2 craft knife serves me quite well. It's also multipurpose in that it is a breeze to remove support structures with it.

Well, I will try to print on glue stick (finally got some! normally I hate this stuff) on kapton / tape / glass and sanded phenolic to determine whether it was really the oil or maybe just the sanding that changed the behavior drastically (at this point, the board is already beaten up that much that I am willing to sacrifice it for experimentation's sake if necessary). What is certainly interesting is that even after wiping the surface thoroughly with acetone, the sanded and oiled side pretty much repelled water while the sanded only let water stick much better to its surface. The oil absorption of phenolic seems pretty much proven with this.

Thanks for the welcome. I think the Whale brand Tufnol should be equivalent to Garolite CE or LE for printing. Look forward to hearing how your tests turn out.

Hm, sorry about the sparse updates; I've been quite busy in the last time.

This is totally crazy, the Taulman filament will not easily stick to anything for me. I've tried:
- Glass + liquid glue (Coccoina brand) + Tombow and UHU glue stick
- Nopi masking tape with all of the above
- Kapton with all of the above
- Tesa 4306 masking tape without anything, wiped down with acetone (improved grip) and with UHU

All of the above will warp to some degree.
Only with UHU and Tombow glue stick on masking tape I have had moderate success.
I really wonder what other people do to get 618 stick to masking tape or glue stick + glass / masking tape / kapton. Is it maybe true 245°C? I am printing at 240° because I have a traditional PEEK hot end and do not exactly trust my thermistor to be accurate. The filament is rather dry by the way.

One good thing, though: I have definitely determined reduced grip on my sample of phenolic to be caused by oil absorption. After a while, the amount of oil just hit the sweet spot. Now I get enough grip, but don't rip out large areas of phenolic. So far, one oiling lasted several prints.
Well, the E3D hot end should arrive soon. let's see what higher temperatures yield...

Temperature plays an important part, but at 245 °C you *should* be able to get nylon to stick to Uhu-stick-treated glass.
Heating glass (60 °C) improves grip.
In any case you need some additional help from raft/brim....
Increasing extrusion temp can only improve your situation (and layer adesion).

Bye
Davide