Serious difficulty in getting the material to adhere to the plate

[Rede]

 

Hi, I need your help.

I'm struggling to print with my LDO Voron 2.4, as I can't get the material (I've tried ABS, PETG, and PLA) to stick to the print bed. I've tried everything.

For ABS (what interests me most), I have used hairspray, glue, ABS juice, sugar, and even a "bare" plate, but nothing sticks. I even tried "roughening up" the plate with a metal scrubber and cleaned it with acetone, brake cleaner, dish soap, and alcohol—still nothing.

For Esun ABS, I have tested different temperatures, ranging from 245 to 270°C for the hotend and 90 to 120°C for the bed.

What am I doing wrong? Everything is perfectly calibrated. The only time ABS adhered was when I pressed it hard against the bed, but as you can imagine, the print turned out terribly.

If the stock LDO plate is just bad, could you recommend a suitable print plate for the 350mm version?

Thanks a lot!

 

Edited March 20 by Rede

[mvdveer]

Is it smooth or textured? If it is smooth - have you removed the plastic sheet that covers it when shipped. I missed removing mine on a few plates, then nothing will stick.

My routine when breaking in a new plate:

• Remove any plastic that may cover the plate
• Clean with scourer, hot water and soap
• Dry with soft lint free cloth
• Apply a small amount of diluted Nano Polymer Adhesive and distribute around plate with soft lint free cloth

Acetone is bad for textured plates and it is advised not to clean your plates with it. Normally scrubbing with a scourer, hot water and soap should be enough on a textured plate. I use nano polymer adhesive initially on new plates and then after every 20 or so prints (Small amount diluted with alcohol, sprayed onto the build plate and wiped with a soft cloth.) 

In Australia, I get my build plates from PhaserFPV, which is their own brand. However Aliexpress has some good plates - I used the Mellow store for my VZBot replacement plates.

Fabreeko's Honybadger and PEI range is very good and reliable. 

[claudermilk]

I have a couple of plates that nothing would stick to at first. I was to to use 600 grit sandpaper to roughen it up; that was a bit scary and I didn't like the idea of scarring up a brand new plate, but tried anyway. Those plates worked great after that.

[Penatr8tor]

Plus +100 to everything @mvdveer and @claudermilk said.

I will add... The build plate surface needs to be completely free of waxes and oils.

That means no wiping or sweeping off dust or picking off some little piece of crud with your fingernail, etc. with your hands and/or fingers... That kind of stuff. Treat it like the surface of a vintage phonograph record and everything you print will stick.

I can't stress how good the Nano Polymer Adhesive works and believe me... I made my share of posts asking for help.

Below is what I'd call Full Build Plate Prep...

Obviously, remove from printer and wash the plate 1st. Like @mvdveer, I too wash the plate with warm water and dish soap and dry with a paper towel (a fresh off the roll PT is clean and dry where your trusty microfiber cloth might have been used or washed with fabric softener aka scented wax). I'll wash my plate again when I think it needs it, maybe after a 30-40 or so prints. Bring that roll of PT with ya... you'll need em. 

With the plate installed, I grab a clean half a sheet of PT, fold it into a square pad and squirt some alcohol on it. The alcohol needs to also be free of oils and waxes so no rubbing alcohol. Try to find something labeled ethanol, isopropanol, etc. I got a gallon of isopropyl alcohol in a can from my local hardware depot and just filled up a squirt bottle. 

After an alcohol wipe, I apply the polymer adhesive. I apply maybe 5-6 big drops and I immediately lightly spread it all around the print surface with the already wet with alcohol PT pad we made earlier. Save the pad... it's good for 4-5 wipes.

And you are done. Ready to print.

OK so... Your print stuck this time, and the print is done, and you reach in and pull on the part and you're like... Woah! This thing is stuck too good. 

Chill... let the build plate cool a bit, then take the plate out and bend it until the part releases. Yes, you'll get fingerprints around the edges of the build plate but that's OK, you don't print there so treat the edges as a safe zone. Most of the time parts release on their own or I just bend up one corner until the part pops off, the important thing to remember is not to touch the plate with bare hands... Do that and you're back to the kitchen sink with dish soap again. Anyways, once I get the part off, I usually have a prime blob or strip and also a skirt that needs to be removed before the next print. I use a plastic razor blade scraper. Nothing works better for scraping a build plate without damage like these cheap scrapers. Spend the $6 US and you will thank me later. 

On the next print I grab my old TP pad that I used to spread the nano with and saturate it with alcohol re-activating the dried adhesive in the pad... Now I do a light and quick sweep over the center of the plate and I'm ready to print again. Be aware that if you squirt alcohol on the plate and make a puddle and then smear it around of wipe too much with the pad you'll re-activate the nano already on the plate and it will make a mess so just a quick wipe is good.

and yeah... just rinse and repeat for the next X prints until you decide you want to add some more adhesive.

So, that's the plate prep part... There is also the 1st layer. You may know this already, but it bears repeating because your 1st layer settings in your slicer are just as important as the build plate.

I'm not going to go into all the detail, there are plenty of videos and sites to go to like Ellis Tuning Guide but I will say this...

0.2mm is a good 1st layer height, I used 0.3mm for a while but 0.2mm seems to work the best.

Always print with a skirt. Mine is set to 6mm away from part and 3-4 times around. The reason why I print with a skit is to 1, get the plastic flowing and 2, after the print is over, I can measure its thickness with a pair of calipers to see if my printer is really printing the 1st layer 0.2mm. If I measure and it's 0.15mm (I take the average of a few measurements around the skirt) I then make Z offset adjustments for the next print.

And here's the last thing that I did to all of my printers to reduce the constant chore of adjusting the Z offset every time I switched from ABS to PLA or PETG, etc...

I installed Beacon probes on them.

With the Beacon probe and Beacon Contact... Every 1st layer is a perfect 1st layer and perfect 1st layers stick... Every time.

So, Good Luck and hope you're able to glean something that will help you with your issue from my overly long reply.

[PFarm]

4 hours ago, Penatr8tor said:

I installed Beacon probes on them.

With the Beacon probe and Beacon Contact... Every 1st layer is a perfect 1st layer and perfect 1st layers stick... Every time.

 

I've noticed the same thing since installing Beacon on my V2, The Beacon probe came in today for the Trident. Well worth the $$ IMO.