A machine to wash build plates?

Yeah, it’s a called a “sponge.” Most glues are water soluble, or if not then 99% IPA always works. Just don’t use IPA on any specialty PA coated sheets.

1 Like

This checks out, actually. When I started having adhesion problems with my main plate (textured PEI), after something like 600-800 on it, what solved it was using fine steel wool, gently but firmly, and cleaning the !@#$ out of the plate to make sure no steel dust remained. Worked great. It’s been a few hundred hours of prints since then.

I did try to use a kitchen dishwasher (it has to be full size to fit the H2 plates), and it did work, but the inconvenience of installing a machine that size near the printer is quite extreme.

Now if as stated in my original post, washing build plates is for losers, then so is drying them :slight_smile: so now we have a second problem.

I would pay good money for a machine the size of a large briefcase that cleaned and dried a build plate.

With all the cool fancy new tool changer type printers maybe we can get a new attachment, but this one can pump soapy water and spin one of those carwash, umm, spinning things, and wash the plate all by itself.

2 Likes

Hang on a minute…

Remember those conveyor washers that they used to use in the bar? Dirty glasses go in one end, clean glasses come out the other?

1 Like

That depends on the stainless steel. 18-8 will rust. 316 is much better, but costs a good bit more.

Would you pay good money for a cleaning lady (or guy)?

I really never go to the trouble of cleaning my sheets like this. The CryoGrip Glacier I just wipe down with a dry cloth. The G10 I remove any adhesive with a Kimtech Wipe and IPA.

I don’t find cleaning plates to be all that difficult or time consuming, and It doesn’t seem to be necessary all that often.

For me it just doesn’t justify adding more steps or equipment to the mix.

That could work. How about if you have an enclosed printer it goes into a wash cycle? Seals, fills with water for a while, rinses and dries? I was going to say like those bathrooms but I suppose I should compare it to the ovens I used back in the day when working for Tim Hortons.

Any grade of stainless should last longer than the build plate’s PEI sticker, which is all that matters.

In Singapore we have a live in maid which costs just over S$ 12K a year ($9.5K USA) due to special arrangements with the countries that send maids; this price includes insurance, the maid’s repatriation flights and everything. In the UK this is not practical and you need to pay about £40K a year ($54K USA) and deal with employment law for what they call a housekeeper, so we pay £20 an hour to have a cleaner come in once per 2 weeks; this is not really practical for build plates.

edit I actually checked the accounts and that is the monthly, there are one-off costs that bring the total to S$ 33K for 2 years. I was remembering the monthly as that is what I see when I look at monthly spending. (We should amortize that).

SOS pads… are just steel. In industry we only used Stainless Steel to burnish stainless steel. You touch stainless steel with carbon steel and it rusts.

My suggestion is to use something like Scotch Bright if you must abrade your printer plates to remove some snot you put on them.