This is perhaps the opposite of what I see most people having problems with: my first layers stick too well.
I have a H2D (about a month old) and print primarily in PLA and PETG (both with Bambu filament, but also with eSun, Elegoo, and Tinmorry). I’ve noticed that when I print anything that has a support with a flat first layer, that first layer takes me forever to take off with PLA/PETG scrapers, my fingernails, etc. I clean my plates with soap and water after printing.
I’ve tried the usual removal tricks like waiting for the plate to cool, freezing the plate, warming the plate, flexing the plate in the various temperatures, etc.
Printing bed cleaning sheets is hit or miss because sometimes parts of those will overadhere and I’ll end up with even more problems! Nothing consistently works and I dread printing things with supports because I know I’ll be sitting there picking at plastic for over 30 minutes.
I bought a second PEI plate to be able to continue printing while I work up the willpower to clean off the original plate.
I have not tried hair spray or glue – I’ve heard mixed things about how they work for this particular issue and I also live in Japan, so it can be difficult to find the exact products that other people mention having worked for them (anecdata is still somewhat better than no data).
Are there any settings or calibrations I can run to help with this? I read that perhaps the z height for the first layers is miscalibrated and so the nozzle is trying to print “inside” the plate, but I can’t find a recalibration for that that changes anything.
And here I was thinking I am the only person who has issues with this, lol. For PETG, I have to use hairspray, without it the prints will not come off the plate, even with harispray I still get the white stress marks from over adhesion. PLA is not quite as bad, but still they stick.
I have been messing with the z offset for textured build plate in the gcode to see if that helps, so far I haven’t found the right value, but maybe you can try that?
I’ve gotten tons of those and I could never figure out what they were! I always thought it was a sign that I had to change dish soaps or something.
This is probably my next stop if there isn’t some kind of calibration or global setting I’m missing, but I’d hate to have to (remember to) do this with every single print I download.
You are not the only person with that problem. I had problems with it using Bambu PLA Matte, ABS and other filament. But every time on the textured print plate. What help a lot against it, is to use glue like 3DLac spray. It is like a layer between build plate and print object. And for ABS/ASA I anyway use to help with adhesion. Sounds unnatural, but relly helps.
Fresh textured PEI tends to have a bit too much grip at times. It sounds like a paradox but this can sometimes be a job for glue.
I use the Bambu liquid glue on PEI with PLA. It creates a barrier where the PLA doesn’t actually touch the plate. It touches the glue which touches the plate and the glue is very water soluble. If the glue doesn’t want to shear and let go, water will weaken the bond and let the part come free.
Once the plate is used a bit the grip weakens and you might not need or want glue until the grip gets bad enough you start having plate adhesion issues. Then glue can come to the rescue again but instead to increase the grip.
Not everyone likes glue and it does add prep and cleanup to a print. But for me it works and I’d rather spend a couple of minutes washing off a part than losing a print a few hours in.
Thank you! I didn’t realize there was a “breaking in” period on the plates. I’ve probably got a few hundred hours of prints on each plate at this point, how much longer do you think it would be before stuff stops sticking so much?
Hard to really say since the “wear” only comes where filament touches the plate and a bunch of other factors.
In my case I had opened two fresh textured PEI plates when I got the printer but really only used one and one side of that one. After about a year the adhesion started getting iffy and that’s when I started using glue on textured PEI. I’m still using that one plate and side at about the two year mark.
For me, though, I’m absolutely serious about I’d rather apply glue and clean up after than lose a print. When I print lightbox lenses, there’s manual stuff I do between colors to make sure no wisps of one color get embedded in another. It’s not huge effort but more than just hitting print and I don’t want to lose that work.bone less thing to worry about.
I guess I’ll start hunting for a water soluble glue I can source in Japan that will work for this – I’ve been really hesitant to go the glue/hairspray route as I’ve also seen some horror stories when people used stuff that didn’t work well, but after getting the upteenth sliver of plastic lodged under a fingernail today, I’m a little more willing to give it a shot…
The Bambu liquid glue is what I’ve been using on textured PEI and it really works well for me and how I do things.
It has a mild acetic acid smell to it so maybe a clue to the formulation but I haven’t looked to find a generic version or substitute. Maybe someone else knows what to look for?
But others have also mentioned applying glue stick when the plate is warm and spreading that around with a lintless cloth or something. Might be the same or similar enough but I haven’t tried that. I think glue sticks are just PVA but might verify.
Ah! Maybe the one plate is starting to lose grip? Some info on the AMS humidity though - if it’s room temperature the low humidity in the AMS is more to keep the filament from picking up water and not so much for drying water back out of the filament.
One person here did document drying filament in an unheated AMS. The caveats were it had just started showing water effects so wasn’t a really “wet” spool and it was a few days in the AMS IIRC before it printed properly again. Short version is he didn’t have that far he needed to go.
That said, it takes heat energy to unstick the water molecules so they can be removed. There’s heat energy even at room temperature but the process will be very slow. It’s why filament dryers universally heat when drying - to make the process faster.
At any rate, if your humidity is low enough you may not have much of a water issue though you could still get new filament that has too much water. That especially tends to be the case with filaments that have high affinity for water and that tend to exhibit water effects. That’s the other thing to know about filament - it can arrive in the bag with too much water.
