I am testing a new tex plate and eng plate with only windex as the cleaner; no soap…ever.
I suspect a light spray of windex and a dry wiped prior to each print or print cycle will produce a dry film interface that will coat and preserve the build plate and aid part release without damage.
So far after several prints, the windex did greatly improve the release of the part from the build plate. This was on the BL tex-plate and eng-plate both with PETG on 80c bed.
I do not know the long term use of this technique, but I know the tex plate will not hold up after printing several of these parts…well my two did not, but it could have been a bad batch.
It seems like the PETG grip can be regulated to a small degree with bed temperature; higher the temp, the more it grips. The problem is large area perimeters tend to release and warp, if part cooling is too high or if aux fan on.
Temp measurements across the bed shows it about 7 degrees lower then set point on my machine.
I’ve had mine for a couple weeks now and have done a dozen or more prints with various materials and no issue here. I’ve only hand washed with dish soap. I feel the ipa is alittle much for the coating.
I believe IPA will dry the Tex plate surface and cause brittleness with frequent use. PETG grips the textured surface and can cause damage when the part is force removed. Even cooling to room temperature before removal will not fully release the grip.
I print the same pat over and over. I’ve tested the texture plate with windex application wiped dry prior to each print and the part sticks to the build plate when hot (80c) and fully self releases when cooled to room temperature with no damage to Texture plate.
With IPA only, the part stuck to the build plate when cooled to room temperature and was reluctant to release….this is when damage takes place.
I suspect windex dries and leaves a film on the texture plate that aids in the part release.
Not knowing if windex build-up will cause a problem, so I will flush clean with water occasionally.
This technique isn’t new, just declaring it works for my application.
Windex also removes those pesky fingerprints too.
In my experience, IPA (even at 99.9%) always tend to make plate less sticky.
I nearly always use water + soap for all beds, the Bambulab but also for other beds on other printers (which are mostly beds glass/mirrors)
Anyway that’s not IPA causing holes.
PETG is know to sometime fuse with bed, especially glass beds, where it can even grab with it some chunks of glasses when printed object is removed. First time it happened to me, I really suprised to see glass chunks fused with the object.
One solution is to use glue to make a thin layer of separation between bed and PETG printed parts.
The other solution that I use when I forget an than realise It is nearly impossible to remove the part, rather than risk to damage the bed, is to warm the bed a little more than the glass transition temperature to remove the object.
Glue stick / hair spray serves dual purpose. First help with first layer adhesion, then as a release agent…which defies logic. Must be temp related. I quit using the smooth plates months ago when BL came out with the Textured PEI.
I use 90 IPA only when I have first layer boding issues, and I spray on the towel, not the build plate - BL Textured PEI.
Next task is to get a G10 sheet in there. Just need to solve the build plate ID argument.
My prints always pop free if not completely separated from the bed when cooled below 30c. Not much PTEG yet, but PLA and PLA+ work well. ABS however tends to be a PITA to remove the single border test lines and brim. Print however pops right off (and leaves the brim 75% of the time).
I have printed quite a bit on the textured plate, and you couldn’t tell it was even used. It is by far the most durable option out of the Bambu solutions. Either you had poor settings or a defective plate, this isn’t normal wear and tear.
I’ve found that higher bed temperatures can result in excessive adhesion. With the aggressive texture, a lower bed temperature may help reduce problems. YMMV
My opinion is that this bad advice. While warm, it takes some force to remove the print, while cold it just slides right off. A removal that requires no force at all is preferable.
No issues so far. Being using the “IPA Side” exclusively so far, with a single adhesion issue with PETG that was resolved by re-cleaning with IPA. So, no need to try the other side yet.
I print PETG on our Prusa textured PEI sheets regularly & wipe with ipa when needed, have never experienced this. A proper pei sheet should “just work” stuff sticks when it’s hot and doesn’t when it’s cold, at most requiring a slight bend of the plate to pop prints off.
My suspicion is that Bambu uses cheaper or less (both?) pei coating on definitely cheaper & thinner magnetic sheets, they likely thought it was good enough for most people and it is, but it can still cause issues and degrade faster (cheap parts is how they keep the machines affordable after all)
You can bend a Bambu plate in half with very little effort compared to others like Layerlock/Prusa, if they’re skimping on a thin sheet of metal I’d bank they skimp on the PEI spray that goes on it too
PETG can stick to build plates almost too much and especially PEI surfaces in my experience. The engineering plate w/ adhesive I have found to be an excellent surface for PETG and I set build plate temp to 90C.
That’s interesting cfrancisco1266 does your experience include Prusas textured pei sheets? I ask because we have several hundred hours of print time across a few textured plates and have never had any PETG stick too well that I’d consider a release agent.
And I’ve definitely never had the plate chip like OP or others who have dealt with the same thing
Definitely need a release agent if printing PETG on a smooth PEI though
Sorry, I should have mentioned that my experience is only smooth PEI sheets. I assumed PETG would stick too good on smooth or textured PEI surfaces because I thought the material of the build plate had more effect vs. the texture.
An honest mistake that’s why I asked!
But yeah PETG on the smooth PEI with no release agent is pretty much guaranteed to jank up your bed haha
But the textured one is amazing, and the satin sheet is literally magic, when I say that prints glide off the bed I mean it, once the bed cools prints are fully released, should only really need to take the plate off once in a blue moon to wash it when 90% doesn’t cut it anymore
I’ve had a P1P for a bit over a week now, previously used a Prusa MK3+ with a textured plate. The stock slicer settings with Bambu Lab PLA and ABS have been working fairly well, but I have been having some problems trying to print PETG - the material in question comes from Filaments Depot and is branded as “Filaments Depot Low Gloss PETG”. Bambu Lab Textured build plate was carefully washed with dish soap only. I would get poor initial bed adhesion, and layer separation in the print - while there are a few different things that would cause this, under-extrusion seems to have been the problem.
After digging through various settings - flow rate, temperatures, speeds, fans and whatnot I finally came across the “K value” setting hidden away in the slicer device tab, Ext Spool; plus the “Cali” button next to it to print out a calibration pattern so it can be set properly. From the look of the forums of people with similar problems the path I took to find this problem is with this setting is not unique. This “K value” seems like it can only be set within Bambu Studio - not from the Smartphone Apps (it doesn’t even show up in the material pane on either iOS or Android), and not from the front-panel interface. I’m not sure if this setting is retained when starting a print directly from the front panel to print a file on the SD card - they clearly state it is “not retained” on a power cycle.
I think this printer was designed only with an X1C with AMS in mind; the P1P with external spool holder was an afterthought not completly flushed out. In any event, with a new “K value” of 0.04 entered in my PETG print is coming out perfect - too perfect it turns out:
The plate was left to cool down to room temperature for several hours before the parts were removed (run overnight). On this build plate, letting it cool off like this on anything else I tried has the part completely loose by the time it has cooled.
I’ve used this same filament on a Prusa textured plate for some time without issues. It’s possible the coating on the Bambu Lab texture plate I have wasn’t put down the best, but it’s also possible this filimant sticks so well and the first layer on the Bambu lab printer is so much more uniform than what the Prusa was capable of that it simply fused itself to the PEI surface. I had something similar happen to a Prusa smooth PEI sheet printing with PETG when the glue barrier used didn’t cover the entire plate due to user error.
I have another textured plate on order - the original thought was to pull one plate out, let it cool before release and start a new print with the second sheet. Now I’m hesitant to try printing on this sheet with PETG at all - is the hot plate used with the X1C + glue any better? Or perhaps this textured sheet needs a glue barrier in this case? Has anyone else came across PETG pulling up the textured surface like this?
does your experience include Prusas textured pei sheets? I ask because we have several hundred hours of print time across a few textured plates and have never had any PETG stick too well that I’d consider a release agent.
