An old Garolite plate I made for my ancient Tevo Tornado was the best build plate I ever had for engineering materials. Miles better than the Darkmoon G10 plate I bought for the A1 mini. I think I might make one for the H2D. For engineering filaments that plate just worked every single time. Only downside was it was rigid and harder to remove some parts. But all the parts were very flat.
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Yeah, mine also worked out better than either of the two Lightyear garolite plates I purchased for my X1C. Both of those bubbled and thereby lost their flatness, rendering them basically useless. How thick was yours? My garolite was 2.0mm thick and, like yours, didn’t flex much. I attached it with double sided high-temperature tape to a cheap $9 PEI build plate. I didn’t care for or even want the PEI, but it was an experiment, and I just wanted the cheapest spring steel at the time. Ironically, I still use it today.
It also went on a bit crooked, because I did it entirely by eye with no jig. This time around I’ll use a cheap press made from two inexpensive plastic cutting boards so that it’s positioned right. Two cutting boards for perfect flatness. If you have spare plywood that’s still perfectly flat, you could of course use that instead. 3D print the rest of the jig for perfect alignment and then go to town.
I’ve used this Garolite as a DIY option, and it’s still in use today on a flex steel plate on my other printers. They can cut it for you, or you can cut it yourself.
None of the dimensioned plates in the pick-list on that website match the H2D dimensions. Are you saying that they will custom cut one to fit? And it will include a corresponding spring steel plate also cut to 350x320?
As soon as there’s a Carbon Fiber Plate available for the H2D, I’ll be switching to that without hesitation. For now, I’m using the Smooth PEI Plate with the same temperature settings I use for my Carbon Fiber Plate.
And yes—whether to glue or not to glue, that’s a completely unscientific world of its own!
Yes, they’ll cut it to your specified square size just provide the dimensions. It’s standard Garolite, and no spring steel plate is included, but they do provide a 3M adhesive sheet for bonding it to your build plate.
I also use a nano coating to make part removal easier, after one print got stuck and ended up damaging the Garolite plate.
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I just ordered the Ridge Steel G11. In the long run, it will reduce the risk of bubbling, and the steel plate will help distribute heat more evenly.
What I’ve found fortunately with my garolite plate on the Raise3d is that it seems to work really well with ABS, PETG, PLA, and Nylon. I bought it for the nylon and was pleasantly surprised it did so well with the others. I also had to use the Nano polymer as a release agent for nylon after some small garolite damage, but everything else seems to pop off easily if I let it cool. It does make me want to explore other options like the polypropylene, carbon fiber, and G11.
I had high expectations for Wam Bam’s carbon fiber build plate. I’ve only tried it with PETG, but it doesn’t work as well as garolite, IMHO. A big disappointment, at least for my original intended purpose for it–PETG.
From what I’ve heard, Polypropylene is ideal for printing PP, HDPE, and other polyolefins.
It performs poorly with polar or high-surface-energy filaments like PLA, ABS, PETG, and Nylon. So, if that’s right, unless you’re printing the first group, you may not want to bother with it… unless you’ve heard differently or have some other kind of plans for it.