I am trying to print off the XY and XYZ parts with a modified printrbot(X axis has been upgraded). I have the build plated as level as I could manage and printed a few test pieces before I left the XY to print on it’s own. I came home form work to find the mess printed below. I watched the print a second time and noticed the edges curl and eventually pop off the build plate.
Anyone else have issues of have any suggestions for getting this to print? (I will try to upload specifics of my repetier config when I get home.)
This is the first part I have had any issue printing. only 4 parts left to go!
Thanks for the tips, no heated bed yet and I have tried hairspray before but never had any good results. I’ll pick up a glue stick and give that a try.
(I am also going to check how level the bed is again)
I am printing on green painters tape (frog tape) and had good results so far.
I think I just need to adjust the temp. as I watched a raft bubble and warp last night.
One thing you could try is lay down your glue stick then heat the bed material with a blow dryer. After the first layer the heat bed isnt that critical with PLA. But in my experience the glue stick alone should solve your issues. Cleans up nicely with water. The attached picture is the brand I have found to work the best. I have tried several different ones. Some did not even work at all.
In my experience it is not enough to use the gluestick, heatbed is really needed for such a large part. I just printed the XY part using Raptor PLA from MakerGeeks, on a glass covered with gluestick at 60C.
So while the bed was still hot after printing, I could not get the part from it. But when the bed cooled to the room temperature, the part separated on its own and I picked it up with zero force. This means that if the bed was cold, it would have probably popped off mid-print.
Now, PETG and such are another story. I printed T-glase and had to soak the glass bed in water to dissolve the glue and separate the printed part. Without water I broke off pieces of glass.
Blue painters tape is like ‘easy mode’ for PLA, in particular Scotch Blue seemed to work the best out of the brands I had on hand back when I was doing PLA a lot.
It also protects your glass bed, I have had ABS stick so tight to just a clean glass bed (alcohol cleaned like vicious1) that it ripped out chunks of glass and cracked the whole thing. There is one part on my MPCNC now with borosilicate glass merged with it. PETG has done the same thing to a lot of people. With blue tape on there it just pulls up on the tape instead of breaking glass when things stick too good.
I don’t know if the OP solved this, but I had some issues where parts with a wide base were lifting off the bed every time.
I noticed on my raft looking closely that the evenness of the bead was not perfect, resulting in less than 100% contact with the bed. I dropped the steps per mm for the extruder by about 1%, and the line smoothed out.
I also re-levelled with a dial indicator and squished the initial layer by a further 0.1mm.
Things seem to be sticking better for now. I’m using blue tape.
The aluminum plate of the Printrbot seems to be cold in my basement shop. A little shimming and taping a layer as it goes I got it to print. I’ll have to look into investing into a heated bed for the future. I’m going to try using a hairdryer if I have any more issues.
When you print on blue tape with the bed at 45C, how exactly do you remove the print? Perhaps I’m squishing too much, because I’ve had that tape pretty much embed itself into the bottom of my parts =(
Other parts were fine, but I went through some trouble with the xyz part lifting at the edges. I don’t have a heated bed, so I needed a solution for a room temperature bed.
I tried sanding the blue tape, putting hairspray on the blue tape, printing on kapton, sanded kapton, sanded kapton with hairspray, glass with hairspray, and they all failed. In fact they were all slightly worse than the blue tape.
So I went back to some fresh blue tape, but being lazy I didn’t clean the hairspray from the glass first. There were a good 3 coats on there. This time I got my best part yet with no lifting at all.
I’ve printed 3 times on the same blue tape now, and the surface has none of the bubbles I’ve seen before where the PLA lifts the tape. Maybe the glue on the tape holds better to the hairspray than to plain glass. So I’m going with the idea that adhesion of tape to bed is as important of PLA to tape.
Maybe heating your bed to 45 is giving you more PLA to tape adhesion than you need?
After printing I sit the parts in a bit of rubbing alcohol and the tape comes off real clean.
If you have a heated bed I have switched all of the printers over to PEI. For me it didn’t work until I turned it up to 60 for PLA. I have not tried it unheated, although it is supposed to work.
I have been messing around, I left 2 shiny and smooth, one got scuffed with a scotch bright lightly, and one I sanded with 220grit. They all work great no differences yet. So it seems if you beat it up of scratch it no big deal just sand it down if necessary and keep going. the down side is I found a cold spot on one of my beds that things don;t like to stick to.
Have you tried PLA printing on it cold? I haven’t had time yet all of mine are still set to 60C.
I printed my MPCNC on a Printrbot Play with painters tape/aqua net hairspray, but dealing with tape sticking to parts and having to put new tape down, it gets to be a pain.
I’ve since switched over to a heated bed and PEI – I’ll never use anything else! Zero warping and easy to release every time (specs are Hatchbox PLA at 205c with bed at 60c).
