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SoliForum - 3D Printing Community → 3D Printer Discussion → do we really need hairspray/glue stick/sanded kapton tape, etc?
Are all these doing anything else except adding some roughness to the smooth glass surface so the molten plastic gets in those tiny holes on the rough surface and sticks better? Why not just have a rough glass/other bed (except aluminum which bends)?
I think there may be some chemical bonding going on with the hairspray at least. A couple of people have tried sandblasted glass in the past and it didn't work.
I think there may be some chemical bonding going on with the hairspray at least. A couple of people have tried sandblasted glass in the past and it didn't work.
+1 along with hand sanded glass and etched glass non of those users posted positive results.
I get fantastic adhesion with glue sticks, now fumes or over spray mess and easy cleanup
I can only speak from my experience. I have tried glass with nothing and gotten disastrous results. Kapton wasn't bad but scratched and had to be replaced which tends to be costly. Hairspray seems to work best for me at least for ABS. For nylon which I have had very limited use, I use a blank printed circuit board. More than anything I think it all depends on the individual setup and situation.
I do wonder whether the glass sand-blasting has been explored enough. It may be the sand-blasting was not the right type of surface finish.
For example, some people use some type of perf-board type holed thing (name escapes me for the moment) and it has absurd adhesion because the plastic gets in the holes and plugs on the other side as it expands a little from the hole. That's like the extreme version of physical surface adhesion. maybe people just need deeper pockets on the sandblast treatment. I guess tehre's no way to undercut the sandblasting, though.
I guess the main reason probably I don't need to try more glass etching styles is because hairspray works really well and I don't need to respray for at least 10 prints.
More than anything I think it all depends on the individual setup and situation.
+1. I used to be a big glue stick fan because nothing else worked as well (ABS juice, hair spray, etc.) until I tweaked the first layer extrusion width on Slic3R. At 200%, suddenly hair spray began to work too well (was pulling splinters of glass off instead of releasing the part cleanly). Now I run at 150% which works great (but still occasionally pulls up some glass). Sometimes, I go to 200% for large prints and use alcohol as a release agent. It's nice to have a knob that directly impacts stick so well. For small parts I will go with the original 100% and the parts just pop off when the glass cools. I now exclusively use hairspray (periodically clean with alcohol and reapply).
Do we really need them? No. I print straight onto the Kapton for 95% of my prints. I'll occasionally use glue stick or blue painter's tape if I have a tall object with a small adhesion area. I think that if your printer and temps are set up correctly, you usually don't need those other aids.
I've been using the same Kapton tape for almost a year now, although I have a replacement standing by.
When needed, glue stick or blue painter's tape works well.
PEI (preferably a cross between Ultem2300 and a version with higher glass content), or, in what I highly suspect is also PEI but in a .2mm adhesive sheet that can be damaged but otherwise works the same, BuildTak sheets.
Neither require any maintenance, and just the other night, before packing up the Solidoodle, still with its ungainly stack of heatbeds and other odds and sods and 3 months of neglect in a corner of the lab, printed a perfect uncurled, unwarped, 100% infill 'pen clip' for a Adonit Jot Script stylus... using the also still attached and exposed to the elements for 3 months Polymax PLA - didn't even do a purge first. Worked a charm.
You can still make out the skirt on the bed (the aforementioned PEI sheet). All done with zero prep or other aids/chemicals and a far from ideal (lol! 
) bed setup.
and the product, complete with some agressive overhangs and 100% infill:
and to confirm it was all warp free:
Apologies for the pics, i've packed the camera already....
What about people just using kapton tape/PET/ painter's tape?
Is there any chemical bonding happening there?
I recently started getting prefect adhesion with my da vinci using simplify3D and slic3r. I preheat the bed to 90C, us a cheap gluestick. A very thin layer, just enough to still be usable in 5 minutes when print starts. My prints have a small brim to stop any chance of warping (Da vinci 1.0 dosent have the most consistent heating plate) I found at layer heigh of 0.3mm adhesion was poor but at 0.2 in settings and an actual layer height of 0.15mm, I get perfect adhesion. Good enough that when its hot, it will not pop off yet when it cools off, it isnt hard to get off at all. I find using as little glue as possible best. One of my latest prints so so flat on the bottem that you can not see any lines from printing. One small burn mark and a fracture in the plastic but honestly I never expected such good adhesion. All my prints are at 90C bed temp with 215 extruder. Been printing for a bit over a month.
SoliForum - 3D Printing Community → 3D Printer Discussion → do we really need hairspray/glue stick/sanded kapton tape, etc?
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