I have been using my FF Creator Pro for about 2 months and have chewed up the stock
plastic print surface a bit. Luckily, Flash Forge has included some adhesive backed replacements so I’m gong to use one of those. The original is stuck on the aluminum bed extremely well.
I have tried using some denatured alcohol to try and soften the adhesive holding it to the plate but doesn’t seem to work. Anybody replaced one yet successfully yet?
Yep, done two already in 4 months! I found heating up the bed to 50 or 60 seemed to help a bit. Just go slowly and take your time. If any glue is left on the aluminum bed, just dab it with the sticky side of the old print surface and it tends to pull the glue off.
But seriously, switch to glass and glue stick. Works way better!
So generally the FFCP is shipped with a layer of Kapton tape on the build plate, it is supposedly a good thermal adhesive layer. It tends to be better for ABS printing rather than PLA, but in my opinion it is pretty useless. I ripped mine off the first day (but that was a leveling issue.) You should be able to pull it off but is does stick to the plate really well when it is applied right, just have to get a good grip and pull evenly and slowly on it. Kapton is a pain to put on right and rips and tears too easy to make it worth using I think.
I prefer to use blue painters tape and a glue stick or a glass plate with aerosol hairspary or an ABS slurry on it depending on what I am printing with. A bit of Isopropyl alcohol rubbed on the surface of you bed will help to clean off your plate from most adhesives, but you can also use it on the blue tape to make it a bit more tacky when you start your prints too. The nicest part of the blue tape is it is cheep and easy to replace, the adhesive is fairly weak so it can quickly be removed and cleaned from your bed, and you don’t worry about ripping it if it sticks to your print.
As mentioned previously, heat the bed to around 60 degrees C and peel off the old sticker. Get rid of any detatched ahesive, you want the bed spotless before applying the new sticker. After you’ve replaced it, try using UHU glue stick as an adhesion aid. If you’ve ripped up the old bed sticker getting prints off then you might want to get yourself a “Cake Boss” spatula. I find the shorter model with the overmoulded plastic handle to be the pick of the range. They have a nice curved leading edge and are very kind to your print bed. Using one of these I have had a bed sticker on my Dreamer for over a year and it’s still in good shape.
Hello JD, One of the first things I did was to get some 6"x9" rectangles of 1/8" window glass from a glass shop and install a z axis shim. The glass just sets on top of the original kapton tape. I used binder clips at first to hold the glass, but now I just use 2 strips of painters tape to hold down the side edges. I was having issues with the extruder a hitting the binder clip edges during the initial extruder movement, but now the tape is much more forgiving. I spray aquanet hairspray before every print and clean the glass once a week with warm water and a razor. This setup has worked for both ABS and PLA. When I finish printing larger objects, I remove the glass and run cold water on the bottom of the glass to release the object. After drying the glass, I throw it back in and start my next job. This method has worked like a champ. Good luck!
