I’m thinking of getting an X1-Carbon. I’ve been using a Prusa for two years. I haven’t needed a glue stick in two years. Why isn’t it the same for Bambu? I print PLA and PETG on the Prusa smooth and textured plates and nothing ever comes loose. Sometimes the prints stick too well to the smooth plate.
Get a Wham Bam sheet for PLA and use the textured for PETG. No glue stick required.
Coming from Prusa as well I also didn’t want to mess with glue.
You only need glue stick if you are using the Bambu Cool Plate.
It’s not that you’re doing it wrong, and it seems like a small thing, but I had a Robo for a couple of years that needed glue stick or hairspray and I know how much of a bother that is and how nice it is to leave all of that mess behind. For any new print I only need to spray the bed with alcohol and print, and the bottom of the print is EXACTLY the texture of the bed, not the surface of the glue. I’m happy to hear it can be avoided. Why does Bambu make a Cool Plate that needs glue if that’s been figured out years ago?
I have also heard that the Bambu is louder. Can you compare it to the Prusa I’m now using? Will it be a bother in the office?
I was under the impression you want to use the glue stick on the smooth plates to aid in releasing the prints, so to not damage the plates. I use their PEI textured plate and never have to touch glue sticks. So I can’t say from experience.
I’d imagine there are some scenarios where the glue stick helps keeping the print down, like with PC, PA, and ABS, but I’m pretty sure its recommendation is based mostly on having a film of disposable PVA to help with not ripping the plate’s sticker.
The glue stick is a release agent. It’s intended to keep the print from sticking too well to the plate. You don’t use it to improve stickiness. You do it so the print doesn’t rip up some of the surface of the plate when you break it free.
That being said, I’ve printed PLA, PA, and ABS so far and other than the first couple of prints I haven’t bothered with the stick. Adhesion is great, I have not lost a print. And provided I let the plate cool off before I attempt to remove the print, they just fall right off leaving an unmarred surface.
This is news to me. On other printers, glue stick or hairspray is used to CREATE a bond. I thought I had read that the Cool Plate tended towards lack of adherence. Do I really have it backwards?
Well, the instructions for the printer say this… I suppose though it’s kind of ambiguous. Kind of says that the glue stick makes the print easier to remove but also makes it harder to remove…
But there are other comments on the WiKi about the glue stick keeping the print from ripping off the coating on the plate. I’m just too lazy to go look for them.
Same thought here. I find using hairspray (or a glue stick) helps create a bond when the build plate heats up. And then when it cools off, it adds that barrier between the two to make it easier to release the parts from the build plate.
I also moved over from Prusa (happy I did by the way) and picked up a PEI textured bed on day 1 and haven’t used the glue yet.
I’ve mostly printed PLA and one PLA-CF, no adhesion issues to date and i love how easy it is to remove prints from the textured bed once it’s cooled down. It’ll sometimes pop off by itself as it cools down.
Well that’s not really a realistic comparison… That’s kinda like saying that a Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat is louder than a Toyota Prius.
The X1C was designed to print at desk shaking speeds, while something like your standard trusty Prusa Mk3 was not, in fact they went so far as to introduce “stealth mode.” That being said, you can make the X1C as quiet as you want it to be. At 10mm a second it will be whisper quiet, but you’ll be waiting days for your print and it kinda defeats the purpose of having an X1C.
To answer your question, when the X1C is printing at a decent speed it’s not something I would want on my desk next to my computer while I’m trying to watch YouTube videos. When speeds on the X1C are slowed to those closer to a Prusa Mk3, they sound very similar.
This is exactly the answer I was hoping to get. I am pleased to learn that, if I need quiet, I can slow it down and it will be similar to what I am used to. I fully expect it to make more noise at speed.
But who wants to watch YT Videos if he could watch a X1 at doing its work at that speed
I also abandoned the glue stick after the first few prints (all were failures due lost adhesion). Since then I have printed about 50 or more PLA projects on the cool plate at anywhere from 35C to 55C with no issues. With the door open and the cover lifted (Printables), the chamber gets to about 28 to 29C using a bed temperature of 55C.
I have a High Temp plate and Engineering plate but have never used them. The textured PEI plate has been all I ever needed, but if and when I do want a smooth surface, is it the consensus that the glue stick isn’t needed to get to parts to release? I’d mostly care only about the glue stick in terms of stopping damage to the plate, but it sounds like most people here don’t use the glue stick at all.
Yes, it actually helps with both. But the main reason is to help the print come off the build plate easier. I use hairspray so I don’t get a weird white film from the glue on my prints.
I use hair spray on all of the build plates for Prusa and Bambu for both PLA and PETG and have not had a problem in years.
It’s not so much that I expect a problem with hairspray as that it seems like an unnecessary bother. I have never used hairspray or glue stick on my Prusa in 2 years for PLA and PETG and never had a problem either. (The PETG tends to stick too well to the PEI smooth plate, but comes off readily at a warm temperature when you flex the plate.) I used hairspray on my Robo before that, and overspray got all over the printer and had to be periodically cleaned up.