With “A painful lesson” I understand that this is not resolvable?
Good thing I already ordered 3 new textured plates for A1M in the current sale.
I would like to give removal a shot though, just not sure how.
About the glue-stick on textured plate; When I do there is a residue pattern on the prints bottom. Should I not use the glue stick? I dont even use it on the flat plate for PETG, should I ?
I ruined a textured PEI plate in the same way. Although the plate was never back to its original here’s the trick I learned. Freezing the filament is the only method that worked. However, if you already pulled of a lot of material and only have little bits behind, then your only alternative is to print over it with more PETG in order to get the remaining material to come off. While this might sound counter intuitive, here is how it worked for me.
Test this out on small corner first!!!
This is to ensure that the PETG you have and the glue stick your using behave in the manner I am about to describe. What I am going to describe will sound counterintuitive but we are going to use more PETG to grab onto the old bits in order to pry them off. If your plate is too badly damaged, this may not work which is why you want to try this near an unused corner first.
Localize the area with stuck filament. Clean that area with very hot water and dish soap to degrease it completely for better PETG bonding that we will do next.
Use a generous amount of glue stick to trace a rectangle around the area with stuck filament, avoiding to get any of the glue on the stuck filament itself. The glue stick will act as a release liner when you later freeze the build plate. If you did it correctly, your glue pattern should look like you drew a frame around the stuck filament.
In your slicer, create a cube primitive and scale it to cover the rectangle you just marked with the glue stick. This will form a border to help pry away the remaining material after you later freeze it. The thickness should be 3-5mm. Ensure the bottom layers are thick enough for a solid infill. Do not use infill, make that zero.
Print the rectangle primitivie and place the plate in the freezer for 10 minutes or longer if you have a thicker layer.
After removing the plate from the freezer, move quickly while the primitive PETG rectangle/square is still brittle and frozen. Gently lift the corners to work the shape free. If it doesn’t release, return it to the freezer for a bit longer.
How this principle works is that by using more PETG to adhere to the small bits left over you will be able to pull away the material that your blade or scrubbing can’t get too. Scrubbing will only ruin the powder coat. The key to using PETG or PC on any plate is to use Glue stick as a release liner. Yes, it will also help with adhesion but when you freeze it, it also breaks away easily.
After you posted the picture. My amended advice is to try this method on the following section first. This will allow you to validate the method before you commit to the whole plate. If it works, then repeat the process in sections, don’t attempt to do it all at once.
Thanks Olias for the detailed how-to, it is stuff like this that moves the community forward!
Love it, it might work. I shall also try to make it print somewhat slower in case it bumps into the already-adhered PETG so that it can melt / fuse together. (a tip I read online, regarding this approach)
I shall report back in a few days when I found the time to do these steps.
PETG is about as bad as Nylon once it gets stuck somewhere.
I guess what made it worse was the oven baking…
It could be fused into the bed now and impossible to fully remove.
If all else failed try this as A LAST resort before getting a new plate:
Heat the bed to (what’s the max here?) 120 degrees Celsius or so.
Pick a fused spot and print over it, like a block that is larger than the area.
Fill with about 50% infill and 5 to 10mm high.
Take the plate out once printed, wait until it cooled down enough to not get burned and put in the freezer.
Leave in there for at least 20 minutes.
Check if the print pops off without brute force, if not place back on the heated bed for a few minutes and back in the freezer.
Repeating this 4 or 5 times should get even the worst stuck prints off - unless they fused to the PEI.
Here is one thing that fall into the DO NOT DO THIS file. Do not try to heat the plate and then scrape off the material. It is tempting and I had seen on Reddit a suggestion to do exactly that. This photo is evidence of what you will likely see happen. The blade cleanly lifted the PEI powder coating layer right off the steel. I would have never expected powder coat to be that non-durable.
Incidentally, I did provide a picture to Bambu asking about this and they sent me a new plate. You may want to try opening a ticket and try your luck. Don’t outright ask for a new plate, simply open a ticket and ask them what can be done about removing the stuck material. You may get lucky.
My gold plate looks like ■■■■ also due to PETG… funny enough the black textured plate still looks like brand new and is more than a year older than the gold plate. waiting on new stock of the black textured plate.
Well if your waiting on Bambu… I’m afraid they discontinued it last summer much to everyone’s chagrin. The gold plate is not anywhere near what the black plate was. I have a damaged black plate and the other less used side is night and day from the gold plate.
I did order a Bambu Copy black textured plate from AliExpress and that is working for now but it’s not the same quality as the original Bambu Texture plate.
I probably have gotten lucky with PETG and the textured PEI build plate. A simple flex of the build plate and the printjobs pop off. I will say that they are REALLY stuck on but nothing that has taken the PEI off so far.
The one thing I did learn is if you lightly use the metal blade that Bambu provides, you can take the extrusion lines and any left over support material off. Just need to lightly glide under them at a very shallow angle, they pop right off. Dont force it.
I printed for the first time on a new Neptune 3 Max and the PETG got stuck to the PEI print plate. I did not prep the plate with a glue stick, as I have not had to with any prints on the Bambu A1.
I tried this trick and it worked a treat! The new PETG (a rectangle of 3 mm height) grabbed onto the old PETG on the build plate and popped it right off with little effort.
I guess I have had beginner’s luck with the PEI plate that came with the Bambu A1. I have only started 3D printing in the last month and I figured since the PEI plate says that it’s good to use with PETG I figured that no prep was required.
Those glue stick marks are I think one of two things - either physical ridges and marks from ridges and other unequal applications of glue, or actual glue that sticks to the part.
Actual glue can just be washed off with warm water. This especially works with those white areas that are glue on the part.
About ridges and unequal application leaving marks in the model, I haven’t tried it but some here have mentioned warming the plate and rubbing the glue out to not have those ridges, or using liquid glue that just by its nature doesn’t want to make ridges that get embossed into the print.
