Half way through printing my raft started lifting hope the tape lasts for another hour!
Good save.
Tape alone isn’t strong enough. You need a heated bed, or enclosure. Even if you put it in a box and use a hair dryer, you will get some improvement.
@Stephanie_A Nope - not with PLA. Painter’s tape (blue or green) has been good enough for me, even printing large objects on my Simple. However, I would recommend adding a glass plate to make the surface nice and flat, and to make it easy to change tape. I have my glass attached to the plywood bed with double-sided tape tabs, which are strong enough to hold it during printing, but make it easy to pop off the glass to do tape changes.
Its the first time ive done a tall print and think the bed is moving to much. Hopefully I’ll have a nice ally plate this week .
@Stephanie_A tape is good enough. And as for draughts after an hours printing for it to lift would make that unlikely. But thanks for the input.
Anyone ever think of equipping the bed with some threaded holes, printing a slightly sturdier base/raft, and then using mechanical hold downs like on a mill?
I have done a idea how to improve the bed. The springs seem a little to soft on the simple and allow too much sideways movement rather than just up and down.
Frosted acrylic is all I use. Cant stand blue tape - too much PITA - but unheated kapton tape will never work well.
I find that blue painters tape is the way to go. PLA seems to grip better to that then i expected.
Thing is kapton tape works well with short prints. And requires a fair bit of force to remove objects. So saying it will never work is a slight understatement @Brian_Evans1 and after removing the prints I found the raft wasn’t fully formed.
@Nigel_Dickinson That is one of the things that you have to check for on the simple… if layer 1 isn’t cool the print will fail.
@Nigel_Dickinson I think you mean overstatement, but no youre absolutely right that print looks fantastic. What was I thinking? Clearly you have an amazing grasp on this technology.How dare I suggest anything to the contrary?
The print was perfect. After an hour the raft failed. Only after investigation it was too thin. So how “never” work is wrong. And I do have a grasp of the tech. But using acrylic is rather silly as heat will make it brittle over time. And another reason for the tape is it was there as I have a Huxley. The post was done to show people if your quick enough you can sometimes save a job.
If you don’t like painters tape, PVA glue stick or hair spray over kapton should give you more than enough hold. Be careful to not use to much as it may r make part removal impossible. But if you’re using a raft, the part will come off the treat, and the raft can be scraped
Found out my interface layer was too small. Slight increase and no lifting. And the raft is now easier to remove.
@patric I’m printing with a Printrbot Simple V2. I use a 6"x8" bathroom tile as my print surface. I tested it against multiple flat edges and it is smooth and flat. Most likely tiny deviations like 0.005mm, but after applying the blue painter’s tape, it becomes a non issue.
Benefits:
- risk of cracking/breaking is greatly reduced vs a sheet of glass
- $0.80 per sheet. I have 3, pre-tapped and ready to go.
- grooves in the underside of the tile allows me to rest them on top of the hex socket head bolts.
- Secured with binder clips on the sides. (See my profile postings)
- heat resistant, so can be used as a heated bed
- edges aren’t sharp.
