Hey guya. I recently bought a FF Creator Pro and already got some pretty nice prints. But one problem that occurs is that my Scotch Blue Tape wont stick to the standard blue (not glass) printbed of the creator Pro when i heat it up. Atm Im printing PLA with heatbed on 60°C and the the tape is not sticking to the bed at all anymore. Its not a big problem for PLA; since i can just skip the bedheating, but once i try with ABS I won´t be able to do that.
I´ve read that it´s best to use a acetone / ABS slurry on blue painters tape to prevent warping of ABS, but thats gonna be really tricky when not even the tape is sticking to the bed.
Since I want my printbed to have a longer lifespan I want to prevent printing directly on the bed surface.
I´ve seen so many guys using exactly THIS tape with the abs slurry and heated printbed, and it seems that it works fine on them, so what the hell am I doing wrong? Do u need a glasbed for it?
appreciating any kind of help, cause google is quite silent on this topic
I would make sure that you clean off the blue print bed with alcohol (isopropyl 99%) and let it dry to ensure there are no adhesives or oils latent on the sheet. Also make sure that blue pad still has the clear coat left as it wears down sometimes.
After going through several of those blue pads we started to use a borosilicate glass bed on the flashforge and print PLA, ABS etc right on the glass usually with aquanet ultra hold hair spray. While I understand there are a thousand methods and materials each with it’s own merits and like religion different people find different methods the best we found that hairspray on glass with our print settings give the least issues on the flashforge and several other printers.
Also, while the tape + slurry can prevent warp there are some models such as an open bottom thin wall box that is 8" x 6" which would likely pull the tape and maybe even the pad off the print surface due to warp.
You bought a printer use it. Printing on tape and wasting time and money in failed prints just because you want the printbed to last longer is stupid. Use it and when it wears out replace it
I´m not using blue tape out of nowhere. It´s a tipp that u will read in like every 3D printing forum exisiting. Why wasting money and time on buying printbeds when there is an easy and well working way to make their lifetime longer? Do u also just use no screen protection on your smartphone, cause u just can “buy a new screen”?
I already bought myself a borosilicate glassbed and will give that one a try as soon as it arrives. The surface should be quite clean since I havn´t touched it, but I will swipe it with IPA a few times like u said and see if that works until my new printbed arrives.
If you can, try to use Kapton Tape as it adheres much better to the print head and is able to withstand high temperature changes that would normally cause other tapes to warp. If you do choose to use painter’s tape, my situation has been helped by taking an additional piece of tape and basically sticking one end so that it overlaps with both ends of the tapes on the print bed, then sticking the other end directly under the print bed. It should be fairly clear once you do it yourself - you’re basically just reinforcing the print tape on its end where it usually curls. By the way, if you have a gluestick, this reinforced painters tape+gluestick has worked well for me in the past. Good luck!
You could also try Kapton tape with abs slurry… because if you do blue painter’s tape with abs slurry the part will be almost impossible to remove from the tape… so you’ll end up with a part that has blue tape all over it…
with kapton tape it just peels off after it’s cooled down… granted it’s annoying to keep switching between blue painter’s tape (PLA) and kapton tape (ABS) but unfortunately it’s not as easy to do universal printing…
unless you print ever ABS print with a raft then you won’t have to worry about switching between materials on the bed…
We’ve developed a patent pending bed plate that doesn’t require the need for blue painters tape or glue sticks. Our plates lasts for 100’s of prints & while we haven’t been in the industry for long, we’ve been getting some great reviews from individuals with the same issues as you guys so here we are trying to get the word out.
