Getting frustrated with things not sticking

I'm new to 3d printing. I inherited a printer from a guy who left our dept. at work. I've tried several different items and a few different materials but I'm having a terrible time getting things to stay stuck to the glass. Please forgive me if I don't use the correct terms for things, like I said I'm new. I've used ABS, HIPS, and PLA and am frustrated with them all. ABS and HIPS will stick to some degree but usually at some point during the print at least one corner will start to curl up. Sometimes the item is still usable, other times not. PLA doesn't seem to stick at all. I'm using the setting the previous guy left behind. Generally a nozzle temp of 240C and a bed temp of 120C. I've tried increasing these temps with no luck. What am I doing wrong?

Edit: Sorry, I forgot, I have a Lulzbot TAZ 5 printer.

PB2

For sure it is way too hot. Stick with the PLA until you are successful and lower the temp to 190 with the heated bed turned off.

Get some hair spray to spray on the bed and let it dry before you start.

Make sure the bed is level and close. If the nozzle is too close to the bed then the extruder stepper will click because it is unable to push plastic out, if you are too far away it will not stick well, it has to flatten the extrusion against the bed on the first layer but not too much. That part is difficult and time consuming.

Not all hairspray works as well as others. Aquanet extra super hold is the highly recommended:
http://valuepal.com/media/catalog/pr...7990600115.jpg

use a gluestick. best all round temp for pla is 210, bed temp at 50c
And your only problem with pla will be gettign the bloody thing off the bed :-)

Abs, never got it to succesfully stick to anything and no longer have any use for it anyway :-)

Everything else has either stuck to pva (cheap gluestick) or printbite (what i use now for most things). For flexible tpu filaments I have to use pva because it sticks way way to much to the printbite.

The other thing is to make sure your first layer goes down at betweenm 10-20 % of the full print speed. slower you print the first layer the better the chance that it will stick well.

I've also recently replaced my borosilicate and all of the glue, hairspray and hassle that goes with it with print bite. I absolutely love the stuff.

So far everything I've printed in either ABS or PLA has stuck to the plate like nothing I've ever known and once the temperature drops down under 30C after a print the parts have been just lifting off cleanly.

Don't think I'll ever use anything else again. No tapes, glues, hairspray or anything either. Just an occasional clean with an acetone mix.

Thank you all so much for the advice. I will try each of the suggestions until I find what works best ofr me. Thanks again.

I tried some of the above suggestions and got the following results...

Settings: Nozzle temp 205, bed temp 50
Result: Filament came out and glommed up. Nothing would stick to the bed.

Settings: Nozzle temp 205, bed temp 60 w/glue stick on bed.
Result: Fliament came out glommed up. Nothing would stick to the bed

Settings: Nozzle temp 170, bed temp 0 w/glue stick on bed.
Result: Filament would not feed at all.

Settings: Nozzle temp 230, bed temp 0 w/glue stick on bed.
Results: Filament feeds well, sticks to bed completely. (At this time it's only about 20% completed with the print but far more successful than any previous attempts with PLA material)

Thanks again.

I suspect your PLA is ABS. :)

The label says:
GIZMO DORKS
2.85 PLA FILAMENT
GLOW IN THE DARK GREEN
1.0KG NET WEIGHT

Am I missing something?

Hmm, bad idea to start learning with oddball filaments, a lot of them have strange behaviour.

Have you any bog standard flat colour PLA to get going with?

I don't. Like I said I inherited this printer along with the filaments. I will say I've had similar issues where a corner will lift off the bed with both ABS and HIPS.

did you use gluestick ?

If it didn't stick to gluestick then you're calibration is off and needs to be tighter and use more glue.
I generally start with 3-4 comprehensive layers on a clean bed.

Bear in mind that you HAVE to calibrate wit the printer bed and nozzle pre-heated to the same settings you're going to print with. Otherwise you have no chance as everything changes when it heats up.

I am finding that if I move the object to the left side of the bed to be printed it sticks much better. Perhaps when the new bed arrives it will be better. I guess I failed to mention that the bed was broken by a ham-fisted electrician who couldn't wait to yank a newly printed object off the bed.

Not sure about abs, but the best thing you can get or the best thing ever worked for me is blue scotch tape. Amazing stuff and if thats not good enough. Brushing some 70% iso over it will make your prints stick like lava

http://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/8...e-sea-blue.jpg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PB2

I am finding that if I move the object to the left side of the bed to be printed it sticks much better. Perhaps when the new bed arrives it will be better. I guess I failed to mention that the bed was broken by a ham-fisted electrician who couldn't wait to yank a newly printed object off the bed.

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ah then it's simply down to calibration issues. Most things tend to be.

A lot of great potential solutions in here. Another thing you can try is Wolfbite...the original formula works specially for ABS. The newer "Wolfbite Nano" is formulated for PLA, but a number of our techs have started using it for ABS and other types of materials and are having a lot of success with it.

Hello, I would recommend purchasing from wolfbite from airwolf. It is a special formula for plastics to stick directly to the bed.

http://airwolf3d.com/shop/wolfbite-p...s-from-warping

I have been using this stuff for a little bit and it beats the hairspay/glue stick/kapton tape methods by a long shot.

When the bed warms up, this activates the "stickiness" of the solution and when the bed cools down, this deactivates it. Too much though will cause the part to stay stuck even on a cool down. The solution is water soluble. Hearing a cracking noise is normal. This is the part the is being released from the bed.

I use GeckoTek on my Craftbot and haven't looked back. It works flawlessly every time.

http://www.geckotek3d.com/

Final follow-up on this issue. I received the replacement bed. Once I got it all leveled everything seems to be working fine and no more issues with items not sticking.

Thanks for all who responded and made suggestions.

Getting the correct bed height is critical.

I just stuck a glass plate on my printer, and couldn't get a damn thing to stick. A 50/50 solution of wood glue and water, thinned, spread, and dried out results in thus far everything sticking even through multiple prints, small and large with PLA. Have not tried the ABS yet. I see issues in my future.

Previously I had been lightly wiping the oem sheet on the bed with a small amount of acetone on a rag, and while it solved my issues with things not sticking, the result was that everything stuck to it like it was superglued on. The acetone was slowly removing the texture of the sheet.

For ABS the sheet still works great though, since it has a hard time sticking as it is.


I guess my point here is to watch the print surface. After a while it needs to be replaced if you are using the sheets, or abusing the surface like I did.

just use cheap pva glue sticks instead of watering down pva glue.
Much simpler.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by curious aardvark

just use cheap pva glue sticks instead of watering down pva glue.
Much simpler.

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Yeah, but I have pints of the stuff here, and no gluesticks, so that's what I used. Plus it only takes a few seconds to mix up.

Try using blue tape or invest in a zebra plate. Adding a bit of hairspray just before printing, so it is as sticky as possible, works very well too in my experience.
What you can also try is raising the printing bed a little so that for the first layer the nozzle is very close to the bed. With blue tape, I sometimes let the nozzle just touch the tape so the first layer of plastic is extremely thin and pressed into the tape.

clearly the problem isnt what he has on his print bed.
Though theres alot of good techniquest being discussed here.
I personally rock a no name white glue stick. Cheap like borscht. (hell sometimes i apply it once and just print for a week on that) reapplying the glue can make for a rough surface and cause defects on the bottom layer.(doesnt always matter)

Anyways, you said it yourself when you move the model it prints. Thats your bed level. No idea what kind of printer you have or how it levels the bed but you should try moving the head around and adjustint it to the print bed using a peice of paper as a spacer.
So not sure how you'd do that with yours, but you really need to look into your bed level. My printer was a nightmare when i got it, untill i fought and fought and fought with the level.

Next thing was changing filament, check out hobby king PLA its SUPER cheap and perfectly adequate to learn with. its like 12$ canadian, so its not an investment.
Does the filament you're using have instructions for temp ranges? your initial temps to me seem off the chart. with my PLA i rock 210C and a print bed temp of about 60 i think.


Just so you know though. I have succesfully printed against my glass bed with NOTHING.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by VonKlutch

clearly the problem isnt what he has on his print bed.
Though theres alot of good techniquest being discussed here.
I personally rock a no name white glue stick. Cheap like borscht. (hell sometimes i apply it once and just print for a week on that) reapplying the glue can make for a rough surface and cause defects on the bottom layer.(doesnt always matter)

Anyways, you said it yourself when you move the model it prints. Thats your bed level. No idea what kind of printer you have or how it levels the bed but you should try moving the head around and adjustint it to the print bed using a peice of paper as a spacer.
So not sure how you'd do that with yours, but you really need to look into your bed level. My printer was a nightmare when i got it, untill i fought and fought and fought with the level.

Next thing was changing filament, check out hobby king PLA its SUPER cheap and perfectly adequate to learn with. its like 12$ canadian, so its not an investment.
Does the filament you're using have instructions for temp ranges? your initial temps to me seem off the chart. with my PLA i rock 210C and a print bed temp of about 60 i think.


Just so you know though. I have succesfully printed against my glass bed with NOTHING.

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Aye, definitely speaking the truth there. I'm the same, I've been able to successfully print on all of the surfaces I've used, though I wouldn't change what I use now.
But getting that bed levelled is your top priority. It's astonishing how a great printer can become a pile of horse shit just because one corner is a fraction of a millimetre out of place.
Just like the man says, get a sheet of paper and adjust until you only just feel a little friction between the nozzle and the bed at several checkpoints, especially the four corners.
Or if you're a bit OCD like me, get a set of feeler gauges and adjust to **Edit, I mean 0.10, not 0.01 thats what happens when you combine morphine and iPhones ;) ** But papers perfectly fine, I only stopped using it because it seems no two makes are the exact same thickness and I'm getting better results now with the gauges.

When I got my second printer it took me 2 days to get it dialled in perfectly. Patience is the key. And what I often do now is adjust by eye with a sample print. Get a box stl file and make it about 30% smaller than your build plate. Then set your slicer to print, say, 5 skirts. Watch the thickness of the line as it prints the skirts and you can easily tweak each point to get a nice even line.


(Sorry for waffling on, morphines kicked in.)

ive tryed everything (well almost)
i have only printed in ABS
With glass on topp : i got best result With blue painters tape then lightly sanding it , and the a gluestick
and the best result using kapontape With a light layer of abs slurry on top, With out the glass plate (right on the alulinium)

bed must be 100 Level and the nozel shud be almost tutching the plate, so that the first layer is sqwesed/flatend. and the bed set to 100 (or even 110 if the temp isent true)

I set my bed height and clean the glass with alcohol before each print and I don't have too much troubles. If I get fingerprints all over the glass or I let a layer of dust settle on the print bed it doesn't like to stick so much. If it is a print with a smaller area directly contacting the glass, then I will make a .2mm high patch right next to my print just to create more surface area to bite to the printer glass. and the .2mm easily cuts off the print with an exacto knife. I have also done well keeping print speeds down so as to keep the bed from shaking or changing directions and speeds to fast.

Use right bed temperature is important to create good adhesion.

If your object is big then use thin layer of glue.

Do you experience warping?

Lately I've changed to a PET tape print bed top layer, it works very well for ABS; much more resilient than Kapton, the only time I had to replace the surface was when I accidentally changed the Z calibration and the print nozzle tore through the PET.
It's supposed to work just by itself, but I still like to use glue stick on it because it has the advantage that, if a part sticks too well, I can pour some water around the base of the object and it will slowly infiltrate under it loosening the glue and releasing the part with no effort.

I keep it old school: ABS slurry for ABS and HIPS; sugar water for PLA. ;)

printbite for everything except mymat nylon, polycarbonate and flexismart.
Between that and pva gluestick not found anything that doesn't print - well except the polycarbonate - and for that I need an enlcosed print volume - which i can't be arsed to make :-)