I am new to 3D printers and building my own first 3D printer. To start with, I want to try PLA printing using non-heated printbed. People have mixed opinions about acrylic beds for PLA (some say they are bad because prints stick too hard). Is there a key in preparation of its surface? Your comments will be a useful for me at this point. (My last post was deleted due to some remarks about one ‘kickstarter’ printer, I guess. I just want to clarify that I am a research student from India and have no connection with that ‘kickstarter’ project. It was just my curiosity to learn from other open source projects but may be my post sounded differently.)
Acrylic works great with tape. Most people use that blue painters tape. That’s is not available here for me so found wide painters tape that says it is " 8 day " tape and it works really well.
Thank you, Wayne. I will look for such tapes here. I will also share my experience (initial prints) once the printer starts working.
Great would love to see it.
I would really really recommend a heated bed and glass. you will save sooo much time from bed preparation, and the wasted prints which warp, despite the printers tape. I’ve been there, done that, wont go back. it’s like the difference between dial up and DSL.
I agree with that, heated bed and glass is what i use, i only suggested acrylic from his comment of PLA.
Maybe that is the natural course of things, start non heated acrylic then move up to heat and glass.
I use heated aluminum with kapton, seems to work well. True blue painter’s tape with an unheated bed, worked OK, but like they said above, the heated need works better, less likely for the print to pop off
On my Lexan(?) bed I use an ‘Elmer’s Glue’ and water mix. I used to use ‘Blue tape’ but it was to much trouble to get the prints off the bed.
Oh, and I don’t have a heated bed.
@David_Cushing how much do you use. I used a glue stick on unheated kapton for a test, and apparently used too much, as the part pulled the kapton off. And I couldn’t even pull the kapton completely off the part! I’d like to use glue on an unheated bed so I don’t have to wait for the bed to heat
I use kapton tape on glass without heat bed. Printing PLA works fine for me.
@Mohamed_Thalib_H didn’t work too well for me the one time I tried, I should try again though
I’ve been printing PLA on green/blue painters tape on Acrilic with no heated bed. Works very well.
Just tried PLA on unheated Kapton (over aluminum) and no adhesion whatsoever. Using 1.75mm Fuschia PLA (on sale) from Protparadigm. Just added glue stick to retry
@John_Ridley is your heat bed hot enough? is the thermistor in an appropriate place? are the fans cooling it down too much? I cannot remove a part from hot glass by force till it cools.
ah. yes. you NEED a heated bed for straight glass.
for me, on larger prints there was a good chance of failure from warp. either because the part came off the tape, or the tape stayed on the part and came off the bed. even a successful print normally had a little bit of warp in it after it had been detached.
and then there was the hassle of replacing the tape.
a heated bed allows the part to cool more evenly, thereby getting more accurate parts that don’t have any warp.
don’t get any parts which look ugly in the corners due to a little warp there, causing a compressed Z layers.
saves time due to nearly zero bed prep (a quick wipe with window cleaner at most)
and saves frustration from parts which came completely detached.
I did come up with some tricks to minimise warpage from the tape coming off the bed, but that led to an order of magnitude of time for bed prep.
about 60 deg. though the glass plate itself might be a little less than that.