I take it all back on account of EDGE. EDGE at 80C sticks like crazy! Guess PLA is the odd one out with PEI?
I've had great results with PLA, Edge, ABS, and nGen on my PEI plate. I use 60 degrees for PLA and it 'just works' for me. As it seems with everything in 3d printing, your mileage may vary My PLA is generally either e3d or Fillamentum - other brands may differ I suppose. My general approach is if it doesn't stick, increase the temperature a little and try again. Not tried anything yet that didn't work, though sooner or later I'll find a problem I expect.
I have to go all the way to 70 to get okay PLA adhesion. 65 works, but sharp edges start to curl up. EDGE at anything below 80 tends to curl and adhere badly too, unless printed at 240C. At 240C, 70-80 for the bed is fine. It hairs up like crazy at 240C, though, and seems to shatter rather easily when stressed.
I've been printing Edge at 240/80 for quite a while now and don't seem to get many issues with it (both on bigbox and on cheap prusa i3 clone). Not had any brittleness, but some models do come out quite hairy. Most don't. It's not given me enough trouble to make me really dig into it though, so I have no idea why we're getting different results. My bigbox is currently in bits for upgrade, so I'll see what happens after it's all back together.
Experimented a bit with 220-240, and 70-80 for the bed, in various combinations. So far, 240/80 is the only surefire combo. I'm trying 240 for the first layers only, then drop to 220 now, for a print with quite a few overhangs. Gonna see how that works out... It's pretty interesting, btw, the inter-layer adhesion is excellent, so it cracks along arbitrary looking fault lines:
I've yet to see that happen. Very interesting, and I'll no doubt encounter it at some point. I'd really like to know what causes that sort of failure and how to prevent it.
According to E3D, moisture. Except this was a print immediately after unpacking a (double-sealed) spool, so don't think that quite jives with what i've experienced.
Ok.... So moisture can cause that - useful to know. I agree it seems unlikely in this case though. Have you tried with another spool just in case there is something wrong with that spool?
Nope, that's the only spool of edge i have atm. I've contacted E3D user support, they've said it most likely is moisture from being stored/unused too long (even if sealed). Their recommendation is: "To counter the moisture in the filament, we recommend putting the spool on the heated bed of your printer at around 50-60C and enclosing the entire spool in a box with some desiccant. This should draw out most of the moisture in the filament and improve the durability of your prints."
Interesting. Has to be worth a try. I'm a little surprised it would pick up moisture while sealed, but I suppose anything's possible...
No seal is a perfect seal, i guess... I've got a new problem - edge refuses to stick to PEI all of a sudden. Yes, cleaned it and everything, but still nope. The only way i can get it to stick now is with a very light mist of 3Dlac.
I have no idea why it shouldn't work. On mine, everything 'just works'. I print edge at 240 on 80, and the only time I've had trouble was when my nozzle was too high. I occasionally use a little isopropyl alcohol to clean the bed (not often), and other than making sure I have the height right that's it.
The thing i'm having issues with are the supports... Printing lots of wavey paths in the first layer just doesn't stick well enough to work and it ends up spaghetti, as it unsticks and gets dragged over everything. I'm fairly sure everything's fine with my setup otherwise, as as soon as i apply the tiniest bit of spray, it suddenly sticks just fine and prints fine. Tried cleaning with both IPA and acetone.
I had that with one model last year where most of the first several layers was support - same issue with the same model on a glass bed with gluestick on my i3 clone though so I didn't really think of it as a bed specific issue. I think I worked around it at the time with a skirt (something like 5 or 6 outlines) at 0mm. Not had the same issue on any other models since though, so not had to try to work out a better fix. I try to avoid needing things like rafts. All I do normally is heat the bed up and wait for several minutes for the temperature to even out - takes longer than glass, I probably wait longer than necessary though (I've never tried to work out how much time I really need to wait, I just give it 10 to 15 minutes or so) - then print. That generally doesn't actually delay me often as I usually start the bed heating then do other things for a while before I'm actually ready to kick off a print. Nothing special. I've been using 240/80 for ages with no issues, though I have printed at higher and tried lower. I don't use any cooling fan with edge except when bridging - in fact I don't use the cooling fan much at all even for pla (probably not as much as I should). I maintain the same temp for the entire print. I can't think of anything useful to suggest unfortunately - as far as I know I don't do anything special to make it work.. I would like to understand why it's not working and how to fix it though.
Continuing to have the same issues, but since i didn't have time to debug much, i simply printed with 3Dlac sprayed on the bed (which is what i'm used to doing with glass too). Almost done with the GDPR and post-GDPR nightmare at work, so probably will have some more time to poke around in the next few weeks. It's pretty weird, when i print on the naked PEI bed, and get bad adhesion, i can just tap the support traces with my finger and they'll stick to finger (due to static electricity / adhesion due to smoothness) better than to the bed and just lift off.
ColorFabb Semi-Matte Black (on Clever 3D PEI bed black) 70°C for the bed 210°C for first layer and 205° for the rest on the extruder Cooling off for first layer, ramp up 25-50-75 over the next few layers, 100% for bridging Prints very clean, pops right off with minimal effort
AtomicFilament.com Carbon Fiber Extreme Black PETG Had a hard time getting this to stick to the PEI plate and still release after cool down. Before it fully solidifies, the texture of the extruded plastic is different than regular PETG which leads to it curling around the nozzle rather than sticking to the bed. I could force it to stick by raising the bed and nozzle temperatures a lot, but the print would be too stuck, refusing to pop off the bed when the bed cooled down. if it does not pop off by itself during cool down, its increased stiffness makes it much riskier to try to peel the finished print off the bed. The last thing you want is to accidentally tear the PEI coating off the bed with the print. I finally concluded that the trick was going to a thicker first layer. Turns out a 0.4 mm first layer sticks much more reliably than a 0.2 mm layer. My Carbon Fiber Extreme Black PETG settings are Layer one height - 0.4 mm Bed Layer 1 - 112C Bed Layer 2+| - 90C Hotend Layer 1 - 260C Hotend Layer 2+ - 255C Nozzle diameter 0.6 mm Extrusion multiplier 1.00
That's far too hot for PLA. I had the same issue as you with edges curling and parts not sticking so I contacted Clever 3D who told me to drop my first layer speed to 20% and drop the bed temp down to 55. If my print didn't stick at 55 adjust up by 1 degree at a time until i had no problems. It seemed counter intuitive dropping the temperature from 70 to 55 at first but of course they were 100% correct and PLA sticks like a rock at 60 degrees with 0 curl or lift.
Interesting. Will give this ago but need to know - 20% of what? Can you give that in a mm/m figure? For me I tend to go with 50% speed (3000mm/m) on layer 1 with 80C, then drop to 65 for subsequent layers. But I wouldm't describe it as rock solid. I have variable results and would definitely be interested in moving to 'rock solid'.
Sorry that's a typo, i meant 20mm/s for first layer, heat the bed up for a minimum of half an hour from cold to make sure the plate is to temperature. First layer temp on pla i set to 210 then 190 for layer two up. First layer height 89% seems to work perfect for enough compression into the build plate without elephants foot.
