Problems with PLA sticking to heated bed

Hi,

I have bought some PLA from here Amazon which i'm having trouble printing with. Previously i have used the faberdashery PLA supplied with the Huxley and it worked fine. Does anybody have any experience with this PLA or any suggestions as to what it might be?

Many thanks

Tristan

What is your printing surface, glass, some sort of tape, (hopefully not) directly on the heated bed ?

For an always good solution with PLA, I recommend 3M/Scotch 2090/2080 blue painter tape. Even works without heating the bed for most parts.

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Most of my technical comments should be correct, but is THIS one ?
Anyway, as a rule of thumb, always double check what people write.

Hi,

It is a sheet of glass on top of the heated bed. Is that a double sided tape? I have some regular double sided tape would that work? I also have 3M spray mount do you think that would do the same job?

Thanks for your help!

Tristan

Nope, the property of PLA sticking is pretty specific to that tape I mentioned.

It's simple sided, you stick the adhesive side onto your glass. I suggest to upper your home Z a tiny bit when using it, PLA doesn't need to be pressed as much as on bare glass to stick, otherwise it can become difficult to remove the prints sometimes (worst case being you have to change your tape as it comes with the part).

You can find it online, as it's not available in all retail stores.

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Most of my technical comments should be correct, but is THIS one ?
Anyway, as a rule of thumb, always double check what people write.

I friend suggested a different solution to this problem. Rubbing the glass from the heated bed with fine wet and dry paper (wet) to give the PLA a key when doing the raft. This worked a treat!

Try to replace the glass plate with a piece of polycarbonate and print directly on that

I too recently got some new PLA and was surprised by the differences in adherence compared tot he fabberdashery PLA. Though, I got mine from voxel factory.

I tried a few things.

* 1/8th inch acrylic, 140mm x 140mm. This worked too well. It adhered beautifully for the first layers. I simply clipped it to the whole bed assembly and didn't heat the bed. However, because it was so thick / small It was difficult to get enough flex on the acrylic for the piece (a hollow calibration pyramid) to pop off. I was able to get most of it off by prying under it with a Tsukineko mini squeegee. Although, when I tore it off, it left a few layers of one of the corners on the acrylic. It was impossible to get that bit off.

* 0.25mm acrylic sheet, 140mm x 140mm. This adhered very well. Again, I printed with it clipped and without heat. Most prints came off without removing the sheet. Items with larger surface areas required removing clips from one side, or the entire sheet completely, inorder to peel off the print. However, I should note that this did nothing to help with warping, and after a few prints the sheet will be very warped and frustrating to use. However, it did work fine for the requirements of geared hearts and some bottle openers... Not so much for an iphone 4 case.

* 3M Scotch-Blue Painter's Tape 2090. I bought it in 2inch wide rolls at Home Depot, works great so fart at 85c, haven't tried lower temperatures. I'm working on 0.5mm thin wall cube right now (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5573)

[edit] After 3 calibration cubes the tape no longer provided adherence. However, it was simple to remove the worn out tape and reapply another piece.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/11/2012 09:23PM by hobbean.

When I use scotch blue tape, I don't heat the bed at all. Works fine except for extremely warping parts.

And for me the tape seems not to loose adherence when ageing - I only change it when it has too many holes due to parts removal.

Maybe the heating damage its adherence ?

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Most of my technical comments should be correct, but is THIS one ?
Anyway, as a rule of thumb, always double check what people write.

I ended up using up to three layers and haven't had any issues since.

Will explore lower temperatures for the bed. I got the PLA from voxel factory