Qidi X-Max build plate stickers developing ripple patterns

[elmoduck]

Hello. I purchased a Qidi X-Max several months ago and have overall loved the printer. However one huge issue I've been having with it is that any time I complete an ABS print that takes several hours, the magnetic build plate sticker starts to develop permanent rippling patterns. Like imagine you printed a human hand with ABS. After the print is done the areas around the fingers (the area where plastic wasn't printed) show signs of warping, while the area the print was actually placed on seems fine. Generally it's too small to notice with your eyes or on camera, but you can feel it running your hand over the surface and any time I acetone smooth a print that was done where the pattern is occurring, you can see the pattern has transferred to the print as well. Printing with PLA doesn't cause this effect on the print bed. The extra annoying thing is that over time it gets worse and eventually a print will bond itself with the print bed sticker. It's as if the warping is the top layer of the sticker un-gluing itself from the rest of itself, which then rips off when I remove the print. I've already gone through 4 print bed stickers in 4 months. 2 out of 4 of those times I wasn't even using a scraper to remove the print. I simply flexed the magnetic sticker after removing it from the print bed and some of it came off with the print :(

I also own a Qidi X-Pro and I can print ABS on it all day with no issues. I'm still able to use the print bed stickers that came with it over a year ago. The X-Pro print bed stickers show no signs of wear.

I've searched for this issue in many forums but no one else seems to be having this issue with any brand of printer. A few things I have tried to fix the issue are:

- Lowering the print bed temperature from 100 C -> 80 C. This seems to help but causes prints to not stick as well and ones that do stick tend to end up warping.

- Lowering the print bed temperature from 100 C -> 80 C after initial layer. This also causes prints themselves to warp later on

- Countless re calibrations and re-leveling

- Using a different brand of filament

- Using a different color of filament (I've primarily used black but white and red show the same issues)

- Tried different print speeds

The only thing I can think of that I haven't tried yet is using a 3rd party print bed sticker. Does anyone have any place they would recommend buying one from? I'd prefer to not use glass as they seem to be both expensive and fragile and I'm intimidated by the idea of trying to remove large size prints from a glass surface

[fred_dot_u]

I've run into problems with my ABS prints on glass on a different printer. As the job cools, the print pulls pieces of glass out of the bed. I was astonished to see this. The solution I used, which fails occasionally, is to apply glue stick to the bed. I've noted that the X-max bed sticker also suggests using glue if something won't stick during a print, but the glue layer also makes things separate easier. When I've printed PETG on a Genuine Prusa, I also applied glue stick, as I learned that PETG will tear up the PEI layer on the Prusa.

Purple Elmer's Glue Stick™

[jamcultur]

Have you asked Qidi tech support? They are very responsive.

[elmoduck]

I haven't contacted them yet but that is good to know in the future!

[elmoduck]

I've run into problems with my ABS prints on glass on a different printer. As the job cools, the print pulls pieces of glass out of the bed. I was astonished to see this. The solution I used, which fails occasionally, is to apply glue stick to the bed. I've noted that the X-max bed sticker also suggests using glue if something won't stick during a print, but the glue layer also makes things separate easier. When I've printed PETG on a Genuine Prusa, I also applied glue stick, as I learned that PETG will tear up the PEI layer on the Prusa.

Purple Elmer's Glue Stick™

I had thought about using glue stick but was turned off due to my experiences using it with ABS in the past. I haven't used the purple glue stick before but using the opaque glue stick tended to cause the glue to, I guess burn wouldnt be the right word but kind of crust on the bed if that makes sense? I found it harder to remove afterwards than when I had used it with PLA prints that refused to stick.

I decided to risk a new print bed last night and did what I always do with a new one and print a PLA model that covers the entire build plate. I've found that if I print ABS on a brand new X-Max build plate it sticks WAY too well and often rips parts of the bed with it. After the PLA print I did a 2 hour 30 min ABS print with 230 C as the print temp, 90 C as the initial bed temp, and 80 C as the overall bed temp. The ABS print stayed put, no signs of warping, and it actually didn't cause any damage to the build plate this time! I've done 2 more ABS prints in the same place and it's still showing no signs of damage. I think I may have found the Goldilocks zone lol. Thank you to both you fred_dot_u and jamcultur for your support!

[jamcultur]

One other thought, ripples in the first layer are often caused by the nozzle being too close to the build plate. One way to compensate for this is by specifying Z Offset = 0.1 (under the Advanced tab in the slicer).