Print Lifting

[Dee Smith]

How accurate are those infrared thermometers? I have one from Harbor Freight but I have no idea how accurate it is. I use it to check the temperature of the oven when I'm cooking Thanksgiving turkey and so far I haven't burned or under cooked one yet.

[brod]

Im having the same issue with PLA . Im using blue tape and the extruder is 200. Im using a printr bot go large.

[Marm]

How accurate are those infrared thermometers? I have one from Harbor Freight but I have no idea how accurate it is. I use it to check the temperature of the oven when I'm cooking Thanksgiving turkey and so far I haven't burned or under cooked one yet.

Well it seems to work then?

Calibrate it then.

Just get a known temp source and shoot that. Humans are actually well regulated, so you know at worst your looking at 37c +/-1. Just stick an oral thermometer in your mouth to get a baseline, then shoot your tongue with the IR thermo. Should be close enough for your needs.

[curious aardvark]

even the cheap ir thermos are pretty accurate.

[JohnA136]

If you are printing on Blue Painters tape and want more adhesion, just wipe it with an alcohol wipe before printing. It should stick like crazy! For my sons PrintrBot I just use the plain Blue Tape and everything stuck great.

On Kapton tape (only used on our ABS machines), we use a slurry of Acetone and ABS to get a good stick. We run our heated beds at 100 all the time for ABS and 45-60 for PLA. At Maker Faire NY some guys gave us a sample of BuildTak and it worked outside, in the wind, dust and humidity all weekend long. I just ordered it for my Kossel and Prusa printers.

Hair Spray is for women, don't gunk up your printer!

[Marm]

How long does the blue tape last? More than one print or does it need reapplied each time?

[Geoff]

How long does the blue tape last? More than one print or does it need reapplied each time?

Depends if the bed's heated. A heated bed will kill mine quicker, I will get 4-5 good prints out of it before it loses a bit of stick and I need the glue stick,

If the bed is never heated like my kossel, I get maybe 10 good prints, but the best thing with the blue tape, you place it in commonly used areas of your beds and make your strips cover broad parts in those areas. If you are printing smaller things you then only really need to be replacing a smaller amount of tape at a time. I usually do the bed levelling with a plain bed with kapton, then after levelling put the blue tape on over the kapton, this makes the print false start a little lower than expected due to the extra 0.08mm of blue tape or whatever it is, so the first layer is super accurate for me, especially tracing fine details on the first layer, raftless of course.

[hedning]

EDIT: Post in wrong section.