I attached PEI sheet with adhesive transfer tape to aluminum build plate and need to say with couple days experience that this is the best bed material what I’ve been using. Just keep plate clean and no problem with warping or sticking when using ABS.
It’s 0.03" thick plate from Amazon. It was 12x12" sized and my bed is 8x8" so I needed to cut it smaller. I used just scissors and afterwards sanded corners.
As you can see from the video, tape what I used is not strong enough to keep the plate down when printing something that big. But I’ll solve that when I really need to print big parts.
http://youtu.be/9nEaUNCpQFw
No, just need to keep it clean(wipe with alcohol)!
Interesting! So a few questions, do you know the themal expansion coefficient relative to Aluminum? Wondering about stress introduced with the aluminum warming up. Also thermal conductivity. So if the bed it 100C what is the temperature of the top of the PEI? Certainly something worth trying on my printer build.
@Mark_Rehorst What I have read is that it warps pretty much, so without testing I taped it down as many other people. It seems to work well!
@Chuck_McManis http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyetherimide
I can’t really offer certain information, but I guess it doesn’t expand so much since every place says that it stays stable at high temperatures. I leveled my bed when it was hot, so no problem however. And glass transition temp is 216℃.
It have pretty low conductivity (0.22 W/(m·K)) but that haven’t been problem. I have thermistor under heating element and when it says the bed is 100℃ so says my IR gauge! Positive thing is also that your hand doesn’t burn right away when you touch the bed 