Transcript:
Hi, this is Herb Shapro with the Dr. Vax channel. I have a wonderful job as a Youtube content creator. I get to play with a whole bunch of things that I’m curious about. I test them. I evaluate them and then I report to you. What I found now? If I hadn’t spent 40 years building software technology companies, I couldn’t afford to be this type of youtuber. Yes, Youtube pays me a little money. Every month I earn a little bit more money on affiliate links and it basically pays for all these supplies. I buy so it’s a great gig now. Today I’m going to talk about probably the most frustrating problem for people new to 3d printers and even people that have been printing a long time and that is. How do you get your model to stick to your build surface? And a related question is which build surface is the best build surface to use and finally does using a adhesive really make a difference, so stay tuned and let’s learn something together. [MUSIC] Today I’m going to share my experiences with a range of printers, But most recently I did a series of tests on the Ender 3 version 2. I was able to do these tests easily to change the build surfaces with a variety of build surfaces that are different thicknesses because my Ender, 3 version 2. Has been upgraded with a BL touch, so the BL touch auto bed leveling system is going to check the height between the sensor, which is calibrated with a Z offset to the nozzle to the build surface and I have it set to check before each print, so I can change the build surface with build surfaces of different heights because in firmware, it’s going to use the actual measured position of the build surface to create the proper Z elevation off of the surface for each of the layers, including the very first layer, so that made it much easier to do these tests. The Ender 3 version 2. Ships with a new print surface from creality. It’s a sheet of glass. Therefore, it’s not flexible and it has a coating on the top That’s bonded onto the glass. You cannot peel it off. I know that because I thought I’d be able to peel it off to try other surfaces. I could not so for one of these tests. I actually put another surface on top of this surface. I have been okay with this new print surface. It tends to be very, very flat because it is a sheet of glass doesn’t necessarily mean it will be perfect, but it tends to be pretty darn flat, but adhesion has not been spectacular. And I’ll talk about that specifically now. Some of the other print surfaces we can consider are print surfaces from other manufacturers, So I also have a Prusa i3 mk3 and it came with a very interesting print surface. It’s a flexible piece of spring steel that is locked onto the print bed with a magnet, In essence, It’s like the magnets That are on the ender fives that hold the print surface onto the Ender Five. This is just a magnetic sheet. A spare from creality now. The advantage of this print surface is it has very good adhesion and in general, I don’t need to add anything to the print surface. The adhesion is activated by heating the print surface. I found a temperature of 60 to 70 degrees Celsius. Excellent, and then if you wait till your surface cools down to room temperature, you just flex it, and the print comes off, so a very, very interesting print surface now over time as it wears, you can clean it with regular rubbing alcohol and that will enhance the ability the adhesion of the print surface. So the question is if you have a printer like the ender 3 version 2. Can you use this print surface well? The problem is that this surface you could buy These from prusa doesn’t quite fit. Let me take this print off and we’ll talk about this print in a couple minutes and put it over here. You’ll see that in the standard position. It won’t fit between the rails. Interestingly enough, it will fit on an ender five, but if you put it in this position, and you line up the back and you line up this notch here, and then you put some binder clips in the on this side here like this and these clips can either be folded over or folded under because they need to fit through the gantry here, so I’m going to move this one over to here and fold it under, and then you put some on the back and the back will not interfere with the print because it doesn’t go back that far. Oops, one just disappeared on me, so I’ll use three now. Then this actually fits quite well, but buying these from Prusa doesn’t seem to make sense. There is an alternative and the alternative is even better and I use that alternative both on my ender 5 my Ender 3 I’ve used it on now and on my prusa and the folks at matter. Hackers make a print surface called layer lock, so it works under the same basic principles as the Prusa surface, it’s flexible spring steel and it’s coated with a material called Pei. The Prusa surface also has Pei. That’s a material that activates when it’s warm now. In the case of the third party materials, very often, people recommend you heat the print bed to 70 degrees C. So I did my testing at 70 degrees C, so I actually clipped this layer. Lock onto my Ender 3 Model 4. So this is one option that works quite well. Uh, the prints stuck to the print surface much better than on the original ender 3 version 2. Surface. Now, what happened with this surface? Well, using the same parameter 70 degrees the lines around the outside of the print, so the skirt and this test line all stuck very, very well, But one of the reasons I designed this print. This way is because it has relatively small feet. I wanted to make sure those feet would stick and I could not. I readjusted my printer. I adjusted the Z offset. I could not get my prints to stick reliably on the native Ender 3 version 2. Print surface until I added some magiku by putting some magic Goo on this native Ender 3 version 2. Surface. The adhesion was excellent, so one alternative for people with the new creality print surfaces is to buy a 19 bottle of magikoo now 19 for a bottle. This size seems like a lot of money, but I do a lot of printing and these last a really long time. I don’t know six seven eight months. If you’re a hobbyist printing periodically, this will probably last you a year. So is it worth 20 bucks to have a year of printing that is more successful, so standard print surface from the ender 3 version 2. With Magikoo is excellent. The second alternative we’ve already spoken about is using a Pei print surface. I like the Pei print surface. That’s flexible steel. From matter. Hackers called layer lock. Once again, you can take this off and flex it to get your prints off. The only difficulty I’ve had with this surface is sometimes things stick too. Well, so I’ll actually put a little magic glue on because magic Goo releases a little better when your print cools now. Are there any other types of print surfaces that might work on any printer Because I’ve used variations of these on all of my printers? Well, there are other alternatives. What about printing just on glass? So this is a sheet of glass provided by creality, it’s interesting. It came from creality, but it’s actually a little bit too small for this printer. I could line it up with the corners here. I’ve used sheets of glass on printers that had print beds that weren’t level, but I don’t like printing right on glass. It will work sometimes with magic Goo. It will work reliably, But I still just don’t like printing right on glass. I find the adhesion is not excellent, and they’re better alternatives, so here’s an alternative that is very consistent and is an easy add to any printer. This is called Buildtech. It’s a print surface, a sheet like this is about 15 I buy these in sets of three. You can buy them at matterhacker’s. You can buy them at Amazon. You can buy them at a number of online locations. You place it on your print bed and you cut it to size. Then you peel this off and it will stick to your print bed now. The good news is when this wears out and it will a little bit scratched and marked up and sometimes you’ll jam your nozzle into the print surface. It’s easy to peel off and to put a new surface back on again, So I’ve tried buildtech on my ender 3 Model 2. And literally. I just stuck it on top of the existing glass. Then the existing glass fits perfectly. You can use the original clips. They’re a little tight now. Whoops, so you have to be careful that doesn’t happen, but you can use the original clips or you can use binder clips. You just have to make sure the binder clips are out of the way of your print head and the side, and it works quite well. In fact, it sticks so well that sometimes I have trouble getting the print off, and when I do have trouble getting the print off. I have a very simple solution that works and will not damage the surface. That solution is a paint scraper, specifically the type that is a single edge razor blade. So this has a single head razor blade in it and I can hold it very flat and just carefully Get it under an edge and then pick up my print now. It is a razor blade. So you have to be careful that you don’t cut yourself, so we’ll just work our way around until we’re able to get that off, and that’s stuck exceptionally well, in fact, so well that I probably will reduce the temperature a bit from the next print. The other reason I’ll reduce the temperature is. I have a little bit of an elephant foot effect. That means the bottom of these prints. These test prints spread a little bit so instead of setting the print bed to 70 degrees. Which is what I used for these tests. I will set it down to 60 degrees, so there are a number of ways to print successfully on your Ender 3 model version 2. And on any other printer You have you can use the original print surface that’s provided by the manufacturer. In this case, Creality provides this new print surface. Which, as I said only works fair, you can then put a little magic goo on pretty much any print surface and it will work so magic Goo. So the cost of that is 19 for hundreds of prints. Another alternative that works exceptionally well is to use build tack build tack can be applied to pretty much any print surface. It sticks very well. In this case, it’s stuck too. Well, so you want to test different print temperatures, so I printed these at 70 degrees Celsius on the build surface and build tack was a little bit too tacky. It stuck a little too. Well, so next time, I’m going to use 60 degrees. So build tech is an alternative, another alternative that I looked at on the Ender 3 Model 2. Version 2. Is to use a PE. I sheet of spring steel. This is the layer lock surface from matter hackers. Well, folks. I hope this gave you some interesting ideas. The simple solution is buy a tube of this. Um, but I really like buildtech and I may continue to print on this build tech surface on my ender 3 version 2. Thanks for watching. If you found this helpful. Give me a thumbs up. There are affiliate links below the description of this video. When you click on those, you help support these, so I can afford to buy all this stuff, and when you subscribe, make sure you click on the bell. So you get notified about new videos. If you want to discuss this and you have opinions about it, you can always leave comments, but if you want an interactive discussion, go to forumdrvaxcom and you can subscribe absolutely for free to that discussion group for my viewers. Thanks so much have a great day and let’s continue to learn things together.