I’ve had a MK4S for over a week now, and 100% of the prints I’ve tried to make on the textured sheets have partially or totally failed. PLA prints beautifully on the smooth sheet, but PLA, PETG and ABS, I think I could print on the surface of a 10 inch tank of oil with more success than the textured sheet. Plastic doesn’t stick to it. I’ve wiped it with isopopyl, I’ve washed it with dawn…it’s a bad print surface and I want my money back.
I had issues with mine, nothing was sticking to it causing 100% failures. I forgot where I read it but I ended up scrubbing it good with one of those slightly abrasive green pads in warm dawn dish soap, drying it with a clean microfiber cloth and putting it on the bed with the heat set to 60c for a few minutes. It now works extremely well with pla or petg, I just wipe it down with a bit of 90% alcohol between prints. Never had any issues with the smooth and satin sheets.
Kitchen sink washed and rinsed. Water run as hot as I can get it this time of year. Drain plug installed, textured sheet washed with a fresh green Scotchbrite pad under hot water and Dawn dish soap. Each side scoured in horizontal strokes, vertical strokes, diagonal top-left to bottom-right strokes, diagonal top-right to bottom-left strokes, in counter-clockwidse circles in horizontal strokes, and clockwise circles in vertical strokes. Repeated 3 times each side. Dried with laundered microfiber cloth. Placed on printer heat bed and heated to 60C for 5 minutes per side.
This makes the 4th, 5th and 6th time this sheet they tell you not to submerge in water has been washed in a sink full of soap and water.
Brand new spool of Printed Solid Jessie PETG filament loaded, corresponding filament preset selected in slicer. Tool caddy with assistant discs at sharp corners sliced, sent to printer, Z offset set at -0.025mm, 1 glencairn of small batch 90 proof straight bourbon poured…
Edit:
Dried with laundered microfiber cloth.
You don’t use fabric softener or dryer sheets, do you? If you do, your cloth has a layer of wax on it that acts as a release agent on your bed.
Not on towels, no.
It can coat the inside of the drier. Use Bounty paper towels as a control when in question. Bounty are often used in automotive paint shops for a few reasons, but they are trustworthy for composition. If the two plies are separated, they make a good strain filter. That is the primary reason they are used. They also tend to be lower lint though not perfect. A tack cloth is used in the booth with controlled filtered air flow either across or down draft, so it is not a concern for perfect paint.
One of the tricks of automotive painting is to add a couple of drops of Palmolive dish soap to the water bucket used with wet sanding. It makes 3M Imperial Wet/Dry sandpaper last several times longer and acts as a mild degreaser the whole time. Any residue is cleaned in the booth stage using a special Wax and Grease Remover solvent that is the least reactive of the painting solvents. While this solvent is used extensively, still the fact that Palmolive dish soap can be used at all indicates how it is clean, consistent, and chemically irrelevant. Automotive paint reacts with many chemicals but specifically silicon is the worst problem. It causes fisheyes aka little divot like holes to form in the clearcoat. In most situations involving contamination and adhesion, silicon is the main issue that will be very persistent. It is so bad in automotive paint that in the worst cases, we turn to adding an actual silicon solution into the 2k clearcoat and trying to guess what concentration will match the problem area to level it. Otherwise, the entire job must be stripped to the raw surface and start over. Silicon issues only show up in the final wet clearcoat layer shortly after it is sprayed and leveled.
The reason why I have written all of this is to illustrate this point: the silicon is essentially floating on every underlying layer. The solvent has wet the area and the silicon just floats to the top of some filler, 2k primer, sealer, top coat color and when it gets to the clearcoat it blows a hole through it. There are two solutions. Use a two part epoxy primer that is a pain in the ass to sand, or clean the the raw surface with lacquer thinner or virgin acetone. In automotive paint, those two solvents are dangerous for causing a ton of other contamination and reactions issues. However, these are the only solvents that will take off silicon without diluting it and making the problem worse. Alcohol is a joke with no place in the automotive paint world when I was painting. I got out before water based stuff ruined the industry by making refinishing exponentially more expensive. That is only the color coat and some primers, so there may be alcohol used in some way in these, but it will not involve cleaning. Tire shine is the main source of silicon issues in automotive paint.
I have the empirical experience to know what I am looking at with cleaning and solvents. Alcohol is okay for minor issues, but think of it as constantly diluting and wiping the problem across the whole surface. Eventually, just use some virgin acetone to actually clean the thing properly. Paint is just plastic too. Each type requires a different type of tooth to mechanically bond to. With printing, I use 600 grit to lightly knock the shine off of the print plate surface. I go lighter on the textured sheet, but I only use the textured sheet with PETG because it is the only one that takes the textured pattern completely without showing layer lines. I print weekly on average, and use acetone and sandpaper around once a year. When I use glue stick, I clean the plate with dish soap after. I use alcohol in between. You will need an enclosure for ASA, ABS, and any larger PC prints regardless of the sheet or glue. Two IKEA Lack tables with legs stacked using double sided screws, then a clear shower curtain liner, and some tack nails does the job for under $50.
I would never use towels from any drier that has ever had fabric softener used in it for automotive paint. That is a contamination nightmare for me.
So to that wall of text, I’ll say:
I’ve been 3D printing on glass with glue stick for a decade. The procedure for cleaning the glass has been rinse in the sink with water, wipe dry on shirt, put on printer. You can touch it with your hands, it can exist in Earth’s atmosphere…
PEI plates can’t. One fingerprint and it’s destroyed forever unless you clean it in a way the manufacturer says will destroy it forever. PEI is stupid.
I have not had problems with glass or PEI. Your other comments indicate you tried ABS. That will never work without an enclosure, and even then, it will not work particularly well on any Cartesian machine. Sorry that illustrative examples and abstractive reasoning are offensive to you.
ABS is a well-known bastard plastic. I avoid it when I can. I print in PLA or PETG almost entirely.
Printing on glass with glue stick, I could soak the build plate in engine oil, wash it with Gojo, rinse it with tap water, dry it with the T-shirt I’ve been wearing all day, smear it with glue stick and anything an E3Dv6 will melt will stick to it.
Meanwhile y’all are out here cautioning against drying PEI with anything that has ever been in my washing machine because it might transfer trace amounts of fabric softener to the plate and I don’t have time for that mickey mouse bullshit. I ordered a power tool not a clean room experiment.
Seems like great success? If so, great. The only things about your routine I would change is to not submerge, not because that’s bad but because who wants to obsess over cleaning their sink first, and use paper towels to dry. You want to make sure no films are transferred to the bed.
It seems the only thing you can improve at all is scotch instead of bourbon. :P Jokes aside: is your bed heating or does it just shows to heat in the display?
What is real? How do you define real?
I mean, I haven’t had the torque wrench calibrated a split second before the wrench was applied to the faucet handle by state and federal members of the Department of Weights And Measures, but the print bed is hot to the touch when it’s finished printing, yet it doesn’t burn my skin like the one time in A&P school when I set my welding filler rod down over my pliers, then reached to pick up my pliers, burned my thumb on the welding rod and smelled it before feeling it because at the temperature steel melts your nerves die faster than they transmit pain signals…I strongly hypothesize my bed heater is functioning correctly and accurately.
Don’t go to airplane mechanic school, kids. That’s a career for old and mentally ill people. Become an influencer, sell NFTs, become a prostitute, do something healthy, honorable and productive with your life. Let aviation be that thing two idiots from Ohio did in North Carolina that one time and dismiss it as a fantasy for degenerates.
They must’ve really done a number on you, huh?
I’m a CFI, I used to teach flight school. I went to A&P school. Haven’t flown since.
With all the scrubbing you did, I’d start to think you may have stripped the surface of its coating
Well, if it’s destroyed it’s destroyed. It wasn’t working worth a damn so if I’ve killed it, who cares?
I did a similar thing with all my sheets - run over them with super high grit (400/800) sandpaper once or twice, clean with IPA and paper towels and since then I’ve never had any issues with prints not sticking
Grease is bad for those PEI sheets. I wipe it off with alcohol before every print. They need to be hot, too. Around the glass transition temperature of your material. I exclusively print PETG. 70°C will fail, while 85°C will stick great.
Glue stick on glass. Got it. I’ll go to Lowe’s first thing in the morning to get some cut to size.
I chipped so many glass beds back in the day with PLA and Elmer’s glue stick. I’d often put them in the freezer in hopes that they’d just release on their own. Alas, they chip there, too.
Witness if you will, the only two sheets of glass I’ve used since 2016:
Tbh I’ve used hairspray and glass with no issue as well. It cheap after and easy to clean. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If you end up doing glass, check these babies out while you’re at it; https://www.amazon.com/TBWHL-Prtiner-Picture-1inchx0-55Inch-26mmx14mm/dp/B08M9DH8Z4
My textured one is perfect for petg, never have sticking issues. With tpu, I need some glue stick as a release agent because it sticks too well.
I only print pla on the smooth sheet, works well.
And have had mixed luck with both petg and pla on the satin sheet.
Have had a very similar experience with the sheets on my mini, and now on the core1
Yes. Mine has worked amazingly well.
Likewise. Though the bed offset needs to be carefully set. It’s slightly different to the smooth one on mine.
I use a textured sheet for all of my Prusament PLA prints on my Core One and XL, and it’s never given me a hint of trouble. I’m using the Prusa-provided profiles with zero tweaks.
I just hit it with a bunch of 99% IPA while it’s cold and scrub it with paper towels before every single print. I don’t heat it up until all of the IPA has dissolved, since apparently PEI is incompatible with hot IPA. I’ve never washed my sheets with soap, I’ve never applied any sort of bonding agents to them, and I’ve never sanded them.
Maybe you just have a bad print sheet?
I clean mine with isopropyl alcohol every other print or so.
So, to clarify, you’ve EVER gotten yours to work? EVERY SINGLE part I’ve printed on that sheet has partially or totally failed, and I’ve cleaned it repeatedly.
I’ve been printing on glass and glue stick since the Obama administration, and that actually works. You know what? Fuck magnetic sheets, I’m going back to glass and binder clips, because they actually goddamn motherfucking work. I’m sick of people unsolving problems.
It works great. I print mostly in PETG so bed temperature might be a factor.
Back when I had a Prusa I never had any success with the textured sheet and PLA, however it worked perfectly with PETG.
PETG, PLA, ABS, I haven’t gotten anything to stick to it. It’s “powder coated” but it doesn’t say what powder. Is it teflon?
Its PEI, powder coated. Everything should stick to it with out any adhesives. Soap?
I’ve seen instructions saying to, and not to, wash it with soap and water. I have washed it with Dawn dish soap and warm water, I’ve wiped it off with isopropyl alcohol, doesn’t fucking matter. Nothing sticks to it. When we’re done with Greenland, we need to do Czechia.
Freedom soap and alot of hot water is all you need. If thats not enough and you havent invaded the bed in weird ways before its probably bad Start code or user error.
chin on fist it’s been a long time since I’ve invaded the bed in weird ways. Maybe i should call her, she’s married and lives in Texas now but maybe I should call her.
Stupid question, you sure you are using the right bed temperature? The feature of a PEI textured sheet is that it self released the part when the bed cools down,.
That is not a stupid question. That is a valid question. I’m using Prusa’s provided templates in PrusaSlicer. This includes Prusament PETG with the Prusament PETG template. This is a stupid question: As many parts as Prusa makes printing Prusament PETG on Prusa printers with Prusa build sheets, wouldn’t that material template be well tested?
Yeah the texture sheet works, but I would never use it with PLA. I only use mine for TPU and sometimes polycarbonate. Anything else is either smooth or satin sheet.
Yeah its been better than the smooth one, but I long ago got into the habit of using hairspray on every print.
I’ve been using hairspray for years too. I don’t get how people prefer chunky glue sticks or $80 “specialized” bed adhesion fluid over a nice uniform spray from an $8 bottle of Suave unscented.
I find the smooth one works adequately for PLA. I don’t have a satin one, and I think I’d have better luck printing on an inch deep tank of cod liver oil than the textured sheet.
I’ll go back to printing on glass and glue stick before I start fucking around with hair spray.
I’ve tried all 3 and found hairspray the absolute winner of bed adhesion and it’s not even close.
I’ve printed PETG on glue stick on glass since Obama was president and until this week I would have told you PETG doesn’t peel the corners up like ABS does.
The only times I’ve had that happen was when the sheet wasn’t clean enough (which yours definitely is if you’ve scrubbed it with dishsoap), bed temps too low or first layer being too close to the bed (though the textured sheet wants more squish)
The satin sheet is imo their best sheet, buildtak does some great surfaces in that size (pei sheet is great for even abs, their new surfaces are great too). I moved to using fr4/garolite sheets (I use this on my former mk3s, have a larger one for my voron too), not really found I needed adhesive for petg or pla on that.
PETG on textured sheet from prusa here. Works like a charm, and I don’t even use a gluestick.
Is your sheet perfectly clean? Scrub it with a dish washing brush, dish soap and warm (not hot), and dry it with a lint free towel. Even fingerprints (visible or invisible) is enough to ruin adhesion.
You mentioned using Dawn. Did you use the hottest water you can get from your tap, and maybe wash several times? I remember having lots of trouble with my textured sheet initially, but after a few good scrubs with really hot water and dawn, it finally started working just fine. Like there was some residue from manufacturing left on it that took some work to get off.
Per Prusa’s Knowledge Base I washed it with “warm water (not hot!) and a few drops of liquid dish soap (not hand soap).”
I’ll go get out my canning pot, boil up 5 gallons of water, and scrub it with a brillo pad and some brakleen. Can’t fuck it up any worse than Josef himself did.
Mine works beautifully for petg but pla not so good. Trick is absolutely clean. Fingerprints are enough to ruin it. Keep using dish soap and be sure to rinse well with warm water. Forget about isopropyl! Use a fine dry microfibre cloth before printing. You can use a spray of 1L water mixed with a few drops of dish soap on the cloth but if the plate is already clean a dry cloth can be enough most of the time.
Finally make sure your first layer height is adjusted correctly. The plastic needs to he squished slightly more into the textured surface. If in doubt go closer until you are defiantly too close (like almost scraping) and then back up up again. Then you are sure.
I’ll use the textured with Prusament PLA on my MK4S with great success but have to set bed temp to 70C. Prints with sharp corners will still lift if they are large.
Textured with Prusament PETG and Sainsmart 95A works without changing profile settings.
Satin for most of my PLA though. My smooth sheets have accrued PLA residue and are more trouble than they’re worth.
I’m the kind of guy that, when I find something that works, I’ll stick to it for a decade. Hence why my Folger 2020 i3 with its mirrored glass print beds were in service until 2026. PLA prints well on the smooth sheet, so that’s what I’ll do until America elects a female president in 2036. So PEI is going to be my fascist era print bed. I printed on glass when we were a republic. Polymer print sheets are for dictatorships I guess I’ve decided.
