Replacement of Hairspray or Blue Tape

Hi,

I was struggling like many of you with the adhesion of the plastic to the heated bed.
I was okay with PLA on blue tape and an unheated bed but due to the very poor quality of this filament by 123-3D.nl I stepped up a notch and bought nGEN PLA from Clolorfabb.
What an amazing quality PLA is this, no nozzle clogging anymore and a smooth silky feeling material. But as many changings in life it comes with a learning process and that is okay.
The nGEN PLA needed to be printed at a bed temperature of 50 C and the blue tape, neither the hairspray I was using did created enough adhesion.
After surfing the internet I ran into a blog, and I don't remember which one, and the person was using sugarwater; yeah, ... why not.
The mix should have a 50/50 ratio in weight, so I heated up some water and mixed it with sugar in the advised ratio. I applied it to the bed and after the bed was heated up, all the water was evaporated and a nice sticky surface stayed behind.
As from the first print the parts, small and big, adhered perfectly to the bed.
Simplicity supports quality, ... again and again.

Have fun and don't be scared to change

I was using artificial lemon juice to degrease and sugar coat the glass in one move. Worked well and is less messy than hairspray. ( Which is based on sugar, too)

So I too am struggling with bed adhesion i recently bought some PEI and it worked great and left prints with a manufacture finish and with great adhesion after the part cooled it pops right off... However i changed some things to get a better bed level calibration and now even after treating the bed with some acetone and a cloth I just cant stick anything.

Do you print on glass with this sugar water spray?

Quote
Ace67aod
So I too am struggling with bed adhesion i recently bought some PEI and it worked great and left prints with a manufacture finish and with great adhesion after the part cooled it pops right off... However i changed some things to get a better bed level calibration and now even after treating the bed with some acetone and a cloth I just cant stick anything.

Sounds to me that your Z height calibration mat be off sInce you made those changes.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

I significantly increased my printing temp for my bed which helped start sticking prints at least to the point where I can finish a print if i get a good first layer.

now i am working on getting a level bed with the IR sensor now... I can still see small level issues that end up not sticking prints, in some areas of the bed i am going to re calibrate my Z-height and H parameters to see if this will help. Is there any other way to correct for differences in the trigger height? i seem to have done everything i possibly can but i still see some differences highest about 0.3mm - 0.02 or so...

Allow me to post my experiences in short cuts:
1) Leveling a surface is not the same as flattening a surface. Often these two things are mixed with frustrating consequences.
If a surface is not flat within 0.1 mm, leveling has no use, ... it does not solve the problem.

2) An aluminum bed elongates (becomes bigger in diameter) when heated up. 0.3mm (0.11") for a bed of 230 mm (9") If a heated bed cannot elongate freely it will become VERY un-flat when heated up.

3) A cold rolled aluminum plate as a print surface will never be flat, it will bite you in the b... over and over again. An Alcoa aluminum die casted and machined bed on the other hand will stay flat because it is tension free. (search on eBay)

4) If using a glass plate make sure you have a flat glass plate. I have seen quite some bubbly plates.

5) Also a glass plate must be able to elongate freely. With three (3) point in the Z surface a plane is defined. 4 or more point creates an over defined plane what consequently will be unstable and NOT flat.

Sugar water works for me very well and it is environment friendly compared to the rest.

Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 03/06/2016 12:20PM by evandene.

I wipe my glass plate with a cloth drained in sugar water. Do not spray! Your spray bottle will get clogged and your sticky spray is all over the place; just use a clothe and gentle wipe the glass plate.
Be kind of sweet to your stuff