Reporting back: I re-watched the maker’s muse episode on G10, and Angus preferred 1.5mm thick as an all-around best. As it turns out, that is the thickness that the guy above used (he provides an amazon.com link in his youtube description for the suplier he sourced his from).
He used a laser to cut a plywood router jig for making his bambu lab build plate template. Alternatively, I assume it should be possible to 3D print a template of some kind (maybe with some kind of joinery to make it big enough) to make an equivalent router jig that way.
I received the inexpensive garolite that I had linked to above on amazon. I haven’t removed it from its protective plastic as of yet. It is just a rectangle. It is not profiled. It covers the productive part of the build plate, but it does not cover the little tab in the back that the X1C wipes its nozzle against. So… I guess in this case you would have to put a Bambulab build plate under it or else it would fail during print setup because it lacks the rear tab? I don’t know. I haven’t tried printing on a build plate that didn’t at least conform tothe profile (shape) of a normal bambu lab build plate.
I would assume the nozzle depth works on the pressure sensor and afterwards when it homes and does the centre Z height things will carry on. At the very least if it throws an error you’ll know, I don’t think there’s any chance of damage as at best it’ll hover in mid-air trying to wipe . I am interested in doing up one as a project later on for sure, its just a plate and apart from the barcode read and nozzle wipe there is nothing different other than a great surface to work with.
Worst comes to worst, I could print some kind of “pseudo build plate” underlayment in PETG and having the right profile that would level everything out when the garolite is placed on it. The 2mm of garolite is rigid enough that the underlayment could be taped to it with Kapton tape, creating a hybrid surface. It wouldn’t be pretty, but it would be good enough to test drive the garolite before going all-in on it.
Now that I think of it, for proof of concept I could probably skip even the clips and simply kapton tape the garolite to the heated bed and hold it in place that way. It only needs to last long enough to get a feel for whether garolite is something I might like or want to pursue further.
I mislaid my Kapton tape, so I used a small number of Nashua 324A foil tape strips as a temporary measure to hold the garolite in place. It’s UL-listed, easy to find at home depot, and it’s rated to hold 160 degrees celsius. It’s also stiffer than Kapton tape, so maybe it will do a better job holding down the garolite.
Other than peeling off the protective plastic layer, I haven’t yet done anything to clean the garolite. I wanted to see how it performs straight-out-of-the-box first. From what others here have said, I expect I’ll need to give it a light scrubbing with a Scotch-brite pad to get the best filament adhesion. Presently pre-heating it to 90C, and then I’ll let her rip with some test-drive prints…
I had spoofed the X1C into thinking it was printing on the engineering plate. That worked, and it had no complaints.
Pre-Heating the build plate to a nominal 90C resulted in a surface temperature on the garolite of just 74C, as measured by an IR gun. I looked up the emissivity of garolite as being 0.95, which suggests that the true surface temperature of the garolite was roughly 77C
The first layer went down very roughly. I had given the print objects a wide brim, so it nonetheless kept going, but it ultimately broke free of the garolite with great spaghetti fanfare:
So, to correct for that, I think the next step will be to scrub the garolite, as others have reported doing successfully with their build plates.
Considerations: Why was the garolite surface temperature so low?
Analysis: the heat had to travel through the PEI sheet on the back of the engineering plate and through the bambu lab glue on the front of the build sheet. Presumably both are thermal insulators. Furthermore, the 2mm of garolite is definitely a thermal insulator. Therefore, mounting the garolite onto a bare metal plate might help. Also, since garolite is itself an insulator, choosing a thinner garolite would also likely help.
Final Thoughts: the original plan was to use 3M 468MP to hold down the garolite to a metal build plate. However, I’m guessing 468MP is also an insulator? If so, is there some other tape that could be used and which is also a thermal conductor? Maybe it’s asking too much (?), but that would maybe be more ideal.
@NeverDie, for what it’s worth, I routinely have to scrub with scotch-brite and and glue to the top surface of the bed. Another tip would be to heat the bed up for 15-20 minutes. That really helps. I’ve printed the following parts and materials with great succcess:
PETG@8hrs
PLA@4hrs
ASA@6hrs
PLA-CF@3hrs
PAHT-CF@4hrs
Just to be clear: exactly which type of Scotch Brite are we talking about? The mild blue one or the aggressive green one? Or if another type, which one do you recommend the most?
Avoiding the purge lines with the tape method is a bit tricky, because the purge lines go very nearly all the way to the edge. On the other hand, on my trial run above, the purge lines actually traveled over 4 of the tape connections, and, curiously enough, it didn’t seem to matter. I suppose as long as the tape is thin enough, maybe it simply doesn’t matter. For instance, a typical Kapton tape, with adhesive, might be 0.07mm thick, so the nozzle isn’t going to collide with it. The thicker foil tape I used didn’t collide either. The short-lived rise in backpressure while unexpectedly printing over it didn’t seem to matter… I suppose by definition a purge line is just a messy dumping ground anyway.
Also, it seems that I don’t have to worry about perfectly mating the garolite to the engineering plate below, because 2mm thick garolite appears to be rigid enough and flat enough that its own plane dominates, maybe even 100%.
Therefore, I think the next thing for me to try is taping the garolite directly to the heated bed. That means it will throw an error because it can’t rub its nozzle against the tab-thingy at the back, so this approach would lose whatever advantage that nozzle rubbing/scraping might confer. However, if it will continue after I clear the error, then … maybe it will work anyway. Well, I suppose it is worth a shot
Oh you mean sans the nozzle wipe area. I was referring to attaching to the plate and wondering if the step would be an error. Well missing it altogether is going to necessitate some start gcode changes to turn it off.
Well, good news: Just to see what would happen, I tried running it without a build plate, and therefore without the tab-thingy. It does throw an error: “buld plate marker not detected”. However, it offers the option of hitting “resume,” which I could do even from the Bambulab Handy, and it continues on its merry way without the nozzle rubbing/scraping that it would otherwise do.
I view this as a good thing overall, because this way there’s no insulation between the heated bed and the garolite if there’s no build plate in-between.
For the same reason, if ever I were to order the Lightyear version, I don’t think I would order the two sided version of their garolite plate. But this is just theory. Those who have tried it would know for sure.
Because my investigation of a cheap and simple DIY garolite build plate has evolved and eventually diverged from the topic of this thread, I’ve created a new thread and will continue with the new topic there instead of here:
. I am interested in doing up one as a project later on for sure, its just a plate and apart from the barcode read and nozzle wipe there is nothing different other than a great surface to work with.
