What do women’s nails have in common with 3D printing? Acrylic!
(Disclaimer: I work for DeltaMaker, but figured this would be relevant to anyone attempting to use acrylic as a PLA build surface)
DeltaMaker has been criticized a bunch for using Acrylic build plates. While I’m doing my best to change this, there are instances where users (and even ourselves) have had a machine skip and dive a 230C hot end into the acrylic bed, scarring up the build surface.
This morning, I’m attempting to repair one of those majorly scarred up build plates. I don’t think I have the solvent/acrylic powder ratio down yet to get perfectly clear application, but the initial results for repair are promising. The acrylic liquid can start to shatter the build plate if too much is used, and it looks as if I covered one of the holes with char inside of it. I’ll be attempting to use a large endmill to clean the next attempt out and get better optical clarity. Since we sand the tops of our build plates, it’s not terribly important, but it would be nice to do the best job possible.
Apologies for not having a before picture. Only thought about posting this after the fact.
@matthew_bennett , the kits come with a little brush. The acrylic powder is the filler material. You dip the brush into the acrylic liquid to get it saturated, and then dip the tip of the brush into the acrylic powder (very small amount!). This causes the acrylic powder to stick to the brush, and then you wait for the solvent to work its way into the powder and then apply it to the bed.
I think I’ll be using an orbital sander afterwards to smooth everything out, but so far so good I think. This should give our kickstarter backers a good way to repair their beds.
Acrylic will crack when solvent is applied. I’m not sure why it happens, but hundreds of surface cracks will appear. I don’t think they go deep enough to cause structural damage, but it can flake off sometimes.
I guess that’s in case of the tension the material gets during the process. It’s the same with lasercutting acrylics - getting the cut corners in contact with solvent makes them crack (in that case it might be tension caused by the temperature change…)
those cracks are called crazing. It has to do with the internal stresses of the acrylic. Thats why it shows up in laser cut pieces. The laser introduces heat stress along the edge.
