Just wondered what type of plastic the build surface was on the cool plate and engineering plate?
Not sure I’ve seen that anywhere, thanks!
glue wasting stuff ?
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The stuff that dreams are made of.
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Love the Engineering plate. Beats all others when not printing PLA
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It works great with pla also
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Pro Tip: The engineering plate is coated with some type of enamel that really doesn’t like coming in contact with acetone. 
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Oh, that’s good to know. Does acetone take it off completely? I have an old one that has a damaged surface and I was thinking about trying to replace the engineering plate surface with a wham bam pex sheet.
I’ve also had good experience with the engineering plate for all types of filament, although the wham bam plate is the go to surface now (except for ASA)
It might eventually strip it off completely if you soaked it in acetone, but I didn’t try that. I tried cleaning some stubborn residue off mine by wiping it with an acetone soaked shop towel and all that did was make the plate surface kind of soft and very sticky. Definitely seemed like the coating was being slowly dissolved. The stickiness went away after the acetone evaporated off, but I’m not sure what effect that had on the coating. I didn’t print on it after that and just bought a new one.
Why waste? It isn’t necessary to rub the whole plate with Bambu Gluestick, as in the past when tinkering in elementary school.
It is enough to “paint” a cross on the plate. Then I spray the plate moderately with ethanol 70% (picture). Now I take a 5x5 cm white cotton cloth (picture, e.g. a tea towel without pattern and color!) and rub the painted cross on the plate with circular movements. A light film is formed (picture), which is no longer visible after the alcohol has evaporated.
After 3-5 print jobs I spray the plate again with ethanol and take the same cloth again and repeat the rubbing. The first few times I repeat the cross. After a few applications the cloth is so saturated that you don’t need the stick for a while. It is important not to use a huge cloth to spread the whole stick content in it.
I wouldn’t use isopropanol alcohol 99%, because IPA dissolves too much. If you don’t have ethanol at hand, you can also use vodka 40% 
The advantages:
- The layer of the plate is spared. (Some pressure parts can be solved with difficulty).
- The plate always looks good (like new).
- The consumption of the stick is very low.
- You don’t need to run to the sink to clean your print from the glue with water, because you don’t see it at all.
- It also works with other smooth and rough PEI boards.
Try it once. The stick will last for months like this.
EDIT: Never use aceton!
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Wish I had seen this today when I was researching and BEFORE I used acetone to remove some stubborn PLA. It’s destroyed.
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The cool side is a replaceable sticker that will set you back $9 USD and is easy to replace if you’ve printed the tool that comes preloaded with the X1C and maybe the P1P. My printer came with two stickers, I just replaced one because I forgot to reinstall the screws when I changed the nozzle. When it tried to print the calibration lines, it pushed the nozzle into the build plate and engraved the sticker with the lines.
I just noticed that there is a replacement sticker for the high temp plate also.
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Nobody ever answered the question as to what kind of coating is on the engineering plate. Anybody know?
I’ve taken a liking to the engineering build plate for using vision miner bed adhesive to hold down large ABS prints. More like weld down, actually. If it weren’t for the spring steel’s flex, the prints would be permanently mounted there. I’m pretty sure if I were to do the same on a PEI sheet, it would rip off most of the PEI during the print removal.
So… Since BBL is no longer selling engineering build plates, just what exactly is the coating? Some kind of 2K epoxy? What exactly? It’s holding up very well to the abuse I’m throwing at it.
Both the cool plate and the high temp plate are two sided. The back side of each is still the engineering coating. Since the cool plate is the less expensive option, I’d think it’s the way to go if you want a spare. I didn’t think to look at the cool side before replacing the sticker. The little bit you can see past the edge of the sticker looks just like the engineering side. Maybe you can get a two for one?
Kind of curious myself. Best I could find was from their wiki “special thermosetting coating on spring steel”. I do like how it’s a rather tough material that I don’t have to be so gentle with.
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So in all likelihood, it’s one of these, and of those, only the ones with enough flexibility that they won’t crack from bending the spring steel:
If it truly is affected by acetone, as reported earlier in the thread, then that would narrow the list further, as the highly cross-linked coatings would probably withstand that, or so the article suggests.