I have been using the Bambu PEI plate for about a month for PLA and PET. Not very intensive, about 20 prints. I was very pleased with the excellent adhesion. All this time I tried not to touch it, but oily fingerprints stayed on the plate. But the adhesion remained perfect. A few days ago I cleaned the plate with strong ethyl alcohol (about 95%), after which it lost adhesion. Maybe this is not a reason, but just match in time. Anybody help this? How to resore it?
I found and will try a recipe with washing the build plate in very hot water and dish soap. Hope it helps )
Gently wash it with mild water and non-abrasive dish soap; use something (e.g. absorbing paper towel) rather than your hands to hold it and let it dry afterwards;
Buy and use isopropyl alcohol (instead of ethyl) with 99% purity if possible.
Thank you
Also I saw somewhere advise to use NOT strong alcohol for cleaning PEI. What do you think?
My question is why you are using moonshine on your build plate
I read about 3D printing users stating the IPA reaction with PEI material, yet I couldn’t find any scientific work sustaining this statement.
I use IPA 99% for minor cleaning and mild water with a generic dishwasher to thoroughly clean all my plates. I do not have enough time with the X1CC to comment about the long-term effect; however, in my other printer, an S1Pro, I have two PEI textured plates with more than a year and one with significant use and mistakes marks, and still operational.
Yet, these plates are consumables, and you will have to replace them at some point.
Instructions unclear, gave my P1P a bottle of IPA and now it’s stumbling around telling me “I love you bro ya know”
Ethyl alcohol is not a good solvent for cleaning the plate. It often leaves a film of additives.
IPA is a better choice because it does not have additives.
Can strong IPA or ethyl alcohol or hot water destroy the PEI coating. What do you think?
On my PEI, small areas appeared where the coating became softer and sticks to fingers a little. It seems like on very old computer mice the scroll wheel becomes sticky with age.
The IPA fallacy has been debunked I’ve never wanted to use moonshine on a build plate before as its something that aids in certain consumer level plastics to degrade and fail, Florida Men attempting to use plastic bags of E85 as transport vessels on camera come to mind
My take on the alcohol vs water and dish soap is that with soap and water, you are rinsing the plate of the contaminates that the soap has dissolved and put into suspension. With alcohol, the tendency is to give it a good wipe with a dampened paper towel thinking that the towel will absorb what the alcohol has dissolved. Instead, you are leaving behind a nice even layer of everything that was on the plate. If you use alcohol, you must do some sort of rinse, either washing it two or three times with a clean towel each time and a lot of alcohol each time or flooding it and letting it run off which seems more expensive than just washing it in hot water with soap.
I used for cleaning the plate not moonshine but pure medicine ethyl alcohol without any additions. I have one and usally use it for cleaning electronic components after soldering, etc…
Medical grade moonshine…
I appreciate your participation
I also have issues whenever I clean the plate with IPA, just wash it with warm water and dish soap afterwards, wash everything well and dry it with non-woven fabric or something that doesn’t leave dust and strands behind (paper towels work but don’t scrub it with them)
What IPA fallacy?
IPA and ethyl alcohol are different chemicals. Ethyl alcohol is the kind people drink. In order to prevent people from drinking it, when ethyl alcohol is sold for other uses it is denatured. Denaturing is adding chemicals to make it poisonous so that people will not drink it. The denaturing additives can leave a film when using is as a solvent. (When ethyl alcohol is added to gasoline the gas makes it not drinkable.)
IPA is just isopropyl alcohol diluted with water, commonly 70%, although other dilutions are also available.
Both IPA and ethanol are used as disinfectants.
The 3rd common alcohol used as a solvent is methyl alcohol. Methanol is also commonly used as a fuel or fuel additive. It is highly corrosive so it is not used in common fuels.
There was a time when audio enthusiasts believed that ethanol was a better solvent than IPA for cleaning tape reading heads for their equipment. In order to get ethanol without denaturing additives they would by pure grain alcohol at a liquor store. Everclear is 95% ethanol diluted with water.
Random but has anyone used brake cleaner or mineral spirits before? Couldn’t those be used as a degreaser for the plates?
Interesting idea.
Working on motorcycles I mostly use PJ1 super cleaner. I only use brake cleaner on brakes because it is my understanding that it is a very harsh cleaner, or at least is more likely to attack some materials. The super cleaner I use on everything, including plastic.
I am going to keep using IPA on the printer plate. It is way cheaper than shop type cleaners/solvents.
When I first started out with printing and then got my first bambu PEI plate. It worked ok for a while but my lack of experience and bad filament stuff wasn’t sticking. So I was adding glue, and cleaning the plate with dish soap and water, and then 99% IPA. And then I was getting more and more frustrated with stuff coming off the bed. So I would clean more and try without glue and with glue.
Finally I flipped the plate over and magically everything started sticking again. So somehow I ruined the coating in the matter of 2-3 months
I know they are consumable, that’s fine. But thought it would last longer. But I guess my cleaning ruined it.
Hi, just to also throw something in the ring. I had similar issues in the last week. I cranked up temps and that seemed to work, but I did get a noticeable improvement after I did a factory reset, I guess something to do with this:
Although this isn’t strictly under extrusion, I found that a slight under extrusion was making my adhesion pretty bad. I guess around the time I started getting troubles, I threw in a firmware update.
Anyway, with slightly increased temps and a factory reset, I get amazing adhesion now. I did the whole cleaning with dish soap and then with alcohol, thing, I noticed no difference.