I bought another PEI bed, to settle a question from the last video. Are all PEI beds made equal?
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- Опубликовано: 2 окт 2024
- Last episode I covered how my bed was double sides.
Or is it?
Lost in tech. Lost in tech here. What IS double sided? What are sides? What if everything had sides?
Errr...anyway. The plot thickens, and maybe thins. Watch to find out.
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/ lostintech
Link to the bed (not affiliate):
wedge3d.co.uk/...
(the "single sided textured" is in fact the two sided one!)
Links to models:
www.mcgybeer.xyz/
Thank you to turbo sunshine for the really tricky engine benchmarks: • 3D-Printed - New Print...
The slug from the thumbnail (somehow managed to never include that footage!?) credit isaiah : www.thingivers...
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I will second your opinion. I have a newer Creality Branded [Textured] PIE on my Ender 5 Plus, and I have an older Creality [smooth] PEI Bed on my Ender 3 Pro, and I feel like the Textured one give better adhesion. And I would also agree that it likely has to do with more surface area for the plastic to grip on to.
I added smooth Wham Bam PEX (kind of a "super" PEI) sheets to my Artilery Sidewinder X1. Wham Bam strongly advocates cleaning a new PEX or PEI bed with acetone and fine (000 or 0000) steel wool. PEX works perfectly for me with PLA, PETG, PETT, TPU, NGEN, and Nylon 230. I mention this mainly because Wham Bam have good resources on PEI/PEX setup and use. They also recommend increasing bed temperature to compensate for the poor thermal conductivity of the stainless and the thicker (than cheaper brands) PEI/PEX. I have not had a print come loose or fail to release in ages.
Smooth PEI beds -- the sticker kinda need to be roughed up a bit, some 600 grit sand paper or some steel wool, try to make a uniform swirly pattern so the print doesn't get weird patterns on the first layer. Before these were so common, and powder coated beds were a thing, I used to buy PEI sheets from plastic suppliers and use 3M high temp tape and adhere the PEI to glass. The pei you get from plastic suppliers is thicker, think around 1.5-3mm. But that means you can sand it a bunch of times to rejuvenate it -- as it was very expensive -- Ultem is expensive. I got pretty good at it, I would make PEI applied glass beds for friends locally. That was several years back, and I don't do that anymore -- magnetic powder coated beds are just so much better and easier to use. I even was able to get them for my 500m delta and my 600mm large format machine -- gets expensive at the bigger sizes, but cheaper than heat resistant glass at the same size.
Ha! Was just admiring some huge 500mm^2 beds I ordered the other day, pre-coated and double sided... and was thinking the same thing about "the good old days". Ie back when it was hours of work and self-sourcing to build your own beds from scratch. Ensuring you had flat machine steel, getting the right high temp 3M adhesive films, and ordering raw Ultem sheets. I had even kept a spare cutting of Ultem to explain to others what I was "printing on". 😅
I've been using a tempered glass bed for ages and I don't see why people are still struggling with these other bed types. 1. It's perfectly flat making first layers great (you do have to make sure to level obviously). 2. With glue stick PLA just pops free, usually by itself as it cools (printing with a 60C bed). 3. PETG also sticks wonderfully, you just have to make *sure* you've got a layer of glue stick. Absolutely no issues with over adhesion or pulling up glass. 4. PETG also pops off easily, usually with just a pull, but otherwise a quick hit with a glass scraper in a corner will free it once cool. Some downsides might be a lower heat transfer meaning it takes a bit longer to fully warm up the bed initially (but more uniform and stable heat), and also you really need to let it cool for best release results (PLA will come off with the glass scraper while still hot, but PETG needs to cool). You could use multiple glass sheets and just swap them, as the glass isn't any more expensive than the PEI metal beds. Oh, one other HUGE plus, if you use a scraper, no risk of gouging the PEI film. Neither do you have to worry about a bad leveling getting the nozzle digging into the PEI film. In both cases the glass isn't hurt and at worst you've got to replace gluestick. In fact, I usually only have to reapply glue to the areas that have been printed on 5-6 times.
You've never printed ABS, have you?
@@timlong7289 Quite a bit. It sticks well. The big trick with ABS is to avoid drafts. Use an enclosure if at all possible, even if it's just a cover/blanket (keep fire safe though). Your biggest enemy is edges being pulled up due to contraction further away from the bed as higher layers cool too rapidly.
Hmm, interesting. Confusing for me because my Energetic PEI bed looks like the first one shown, the one with what looks like a sheet of PEI was stuck to the spring steel bed. It clearly has that layer line that I can see and feel at the tab.
You talked about the light straw color, and how it was only a very thin layer. And therefore you think it's most likely a coating.
I'm a machinist, and as such I see that color change very often. It's very thin, and sands off easily. So in my opinion that's not conclusive, maybe hit it with a torch and see how it behaves. If anything seems to burn off there's your answer.
That would definitely ruin the bed so I'll have to leave it a mystery 😂
1:31 “omg face reveal”
Usually textured pei plates are double sided with one side smooth pei and one side textured, Smooth ones are only single sided.
A note on PEI. I would not recommend using it with PETG. I've lost two PEI sheets to PETG. The first time I posted about it, and had about half a dozen people call me a liar and/or say I must have done something wrong. So I bought a second sheet to test it again, and it was destroyed on the first print.
It might not be all flavors of PETG or even PEI, but the PETG I had bonded _permanently_ to the PEI sheet. Even after leaving the plate in the freezer for hours, and spraying it with an inverted can of air duster to supercool it, it just wouldn't release. Using a pair of pliers to firmly grip the print very close to the sheet successfully liberated (part of) the print, along with some chunks of PEI still attached.
This was back when having a PEI print bed meant you ordered a sheet of PEI and some 3M double sided tape to attach it, so it's entirely possible things are different now. But PEI + PETG is just a no-go for me.
Love the double-sided PEI sheets you can get with the textured side and the other side that gives a carbon fiber look. Use the carbon fiber look side often.
Do g10 next
Maybe I will 😉
Were glad you like the energetic bed. If you would like any information from Energetic, we can of course get any questions you have answered. Thanks again for your support- Rob @ Wedge 3D
Hi Rob :) I have really just the one question I guess, whether the back side is "incidentally coated" or whether the colouration is something else like heat treatment. If you can get to the bottom of it, it would be awesome, I notice a few other youtubers thinking the back is coated too!
Thanks for stocking these fairly hard to get beds 👍
@@LostInTech3D I will get onto it for you and let you know ASAP.
We're glad to have found them too, we are incredibly happy with them ourselves. Thanks again for the video about them, as a small family business, things like this are so appreciated.
This is my favorite PEI bed channel on RUclips!
Glad to hear it hehehe
I just want to know if it's ok to use alcohol to clean my powder coated one. I am not sure if it's my eyes or just poor lighting in my studio but when I rub too hard with alcohol I feel like there's very faint gold color on my wipes. I have a double-sided rough surface one and it sticks beautifully with no effort except for bloody eSun's matte filament which I have to bump up the bed to 70C just to get a basic square to stick. Also after removing the print and changing to another filament I have to clean the bed. I'm not sure what they use in the formula but it doesn't stick and causes my regular filament not to stick too.
I have 3 printers running non stop 24/7 for my ebay business and the only print surface that consistently works good is the standard old black ender removable beds. Glass and pei both give much more failures and require a hotter bed temp.
I have a smooth PEI bed from energetic. For PLA, I sometimes spread some hot glue on the print surface. Just enough on the area I'm printing on. Heat at 70C on the initial layer. Then drop temp to.40C to make the glue harden and add to more adhesion while printing. Just heat it up again to remove.
Wham Bam PEX
I got what I thought was a double-sided energetic sheet with my Voron kit. I couldn't get anything to stick to the smooth side (I tried mainly ABS). The textured side was better but I just didn't like the textured finish. I bought a smooth sheet from Energetic and that has been superb, it is now my daily driver. After a couple of weeks I needed to skuff it up with fine grit sandpaper and it has been really good so far. The original double-sided sheet? I can't find anything in any spec that says its double sided. I just assumed. Both sides are a similar colour (light straw colour) but I'm pretty sure now that the reverse is just plain steel. It's completely different to the actual smooth sheet I bought and doesn't appear to have any PEI on it. And nothing sticks (not ABS, anyway) so results talk.
Yeah I'm still not sure what the straw colour is, but I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of it eventually one way or another 😂
i have no idea why, but i keep having issues with my print in place slugs. it comes out fine on the first few layers. maybe half a quarter through. and then it de laminates always in the middle. ots very fustrating this hapens with my textured PEI bed
Slugs are hard to print, I get a lot of failure on them too
You need to do a whole lot more research.... The smooth side is the pei applied as a sticker. The textured side is powder coated by design ... Here's why. Try printing TPU on the smooth side..... Now try getting the part off..... Yeah, it's not coming off..... You'll need to let where it's adhered soak in some isopropyl alcohol for about 20 minutes to an hour to get that TPU part off without ruining the build surface.
Now.... Flip it over, and print the same TPU part on the textured side.
Well look at that.... The part pops right off.
This is BY DESIGN. Smooth "sticker" side is for PLA. Textured side is for "sticky" filaments that will adhere to the smooth side too well, such as TPU and PETG
Smooth side = PLA
Textured side = TPU and PETG
And they both work great for their intended purpose.
TPU comes off fine for me, on anything. I suspect you mean PETG. I'm aware of the situation regarding PETG.
...but what about PEX?
Uhhh...what about it? 🧐
@@LostInTech3D PEX is Wham Bam's "improved" PEI. Perhaps Mt. Taffert was suggesting that you test it?
Hey Mr Lost In Tech, just found your channel, and was wondering if you could help figure something out?
I have tried to print that articulated slug a few times. I've had one successful print out of many fails, which seemed more like a fluke than something I actually did to help, because with the dame settings next attempt it failed.
No matter the orientation, speed of print head, a few different slicer settings, scaling up, it seems to have layer shift on the X axis.
This has never happened with any other models before, or since. Just this one slug.
It is a motor skipping issue rather than a belt slip issue.
I put it down to the sharp angles of each body segment and the sudden direction change making the weight of the print bed moving (on the x axis) overcoming the torque of the stepper motor and skipping a "step"
Is there another setting like acceleration jerk or something I could change to prevent this?
that is really weird...I don't like the sound of that. Do you have an ender 3 v2?
@@LostInTech3D it's an anycubic i3 mega S
I even cranked the print speed right up on other models, didn't have any layer shift.
Just the slug.
that is even weirder. It might be worth popping into discord and sharing some pics of it
You could do a episode about how to fix a damaged bolt hole that holds the bolt of a Hot End on a Aquila maybe?
I have a Aquila and the hot end nozzle banged into the top layer of a model even though the print was level to it.
Hence the left bolt has chewed the screw part of the gantry back metal plate under that hitting pressure and now the bolt on the left of the red cooling block
that holds the hot end unit in place will not hold the hot end as there is no screw lines in the hole to grip the bolt?
The right one is fine But you need both to be held firmly or the hot end wiggles side to side like me did and bugger up your print with the layers sloped to the left.
Step by step help videos like how to fix this without having to pay tons out on a replacement back gantry plate would be great!
Better I think t know how to fix a issue by your own repairing than having the spend tons for a new part, and even finding the spare exact metal back plate for this Aquila is not easy?
The Ender 3 V2 it is cloned from I seen has a different gantry back plate with holes for the attachment of a different hot end cooling block so can't use that one!
If you hop onto discord (link in description) and showed us some pics, I bet we could help out.
I'm pretty happy with my Ender 3 v2 glass bed - no idea what that's coated with, but it sticks when hot, releases when cold and I'm never in so much of a rush that I can't wait for it
I wasn't very happy with it. I couldn't get parts to release without sticking the glass plate in the freezer. After I had already gotten a PEI bed, I saw a video with lots of tips on how to get it to perform effectively.
Steel that has changed surface color because of heat does not change color to any appreciable depth, it's just an oxide layer. Being able to scratch it off is completely normal. When heat treating metals the tempering oxide layer is often polished off. If you overshoot when heat bluing parts like watch screws and other parts you just repolish and try again. This is assuming you just overshot the desired color without getting the part above the annealing temperature, or that the part is being heat blued for rust protection or appearance rather than being hardened and tempered. Watch hands and screws are typically left in the soft state and then chemically or heat blued with no hardening.
Yeah I get that, but you wouldn't be able to scratch it off with something softer than the steel itself, which I did.
Next video about PEI coated glass (Angus once reviewed sth like this, so it exists) xD. Talking about textured glass like creality carborundum, has anyone experience in printing PETG on it? I know it's coated, but still glass so I'm a bit scared of trying it. Does it work or do I have to use some sort of glue (stick or, what I prefer, spray)?
ohhh that was by energetic, I saw it. He ruined it with PETG didn't he? Or am I misremembering?
Either way PEI coated glass seems a bit backwards since how do you flex it?
@@LostInTech3D I think he did, thats why I unsure weather I can do it on mine. PEI on glass might be an option if you don't have the magnet sicker or don't want to apply it. If you switch back to glass it might make the heating performance worse or am I wrong?
Yeah glass doesn't conduct well so I would guess your point is valid.
Use textured PEI for TPU and PETG or any other "sticky" filament.... Use the smooth side for PLA
I've heard that a lot. I'm not convinced that pla isn't better too on the rough surface. But....that I guess needs a lot of further testing
I noticed you have trouble putting the pei bed on too. Put the back edge of the bed at the end the line it up and set it down. (The edge isn't very magnetic)
Haha yep. Thanks for the tip.
The glass transition temperature of PEI is 217 °C, so powder coating is probably possible. They remind me of photoengraving printing plates. I wonder if they're coated and then cured on the sheet metal to achieve a more uniform and well bonded coating.
I have bought 3 replacements to replace the glass bed. Creality magnetic (non steel) Creality steel PEI and HICTOP steel PEI. Both of the steel seem to be coated on both sides. One rough and the other smooth. They all print about the same on the rough side. I don't like the Creality non steel as well as the others. The HICTOP sells a double sided for about $15 more. I think they may be the same? I was looking at trying the Fulament double sided steel PEI but it's $55 and I'm not sure I dont already have two double sided PEI sheets. All that said, I think it comes down to what works best for you, as with a lot of 3D printing supplies and parts. Thanks for the video!
i just ordered one like this but the back side has a sheet of plasitc with holographic impint patterns. 20 usd so yeah
those holographic patterns are all the rage at the moment.
just finished my first print on it. super clean bottom edges like bare glass but it sparkles. ill definitely be getting some more patterns soon. @@LostInTech3D
You can definitely print tpu just fine on the steel, i use reverse side of my tectured bed with plain stainless steel and it works a treat, sticks well but does not require a spatula to peel off. I wonder if petg would print on the steel
I use a mirror works great for me, I print nylon Asa and petg without any bed adhesion problems. Just set it up right
Definitely recommend checking out the Ultembase, a PEI-coated glass bed. I got one recently and have been loving it.
do you find things stick too hard, and you can't flex it?
@@LostInTech3D Good question, but anytime things seem like they're stuck down too hard, I just wait for it to cool down a bit more and they're loose by the time I go to check it again.
The rough side is the powder coated PEI. The smooth side is a PEI film. The powder coating not only has more grip, but it's also more durable. You can also use a thicker sheet of pure PEI; that's what Lulzbot printers have.
My only concern with thicker sheets...I guess...is thermal conductivity.
The thicker sheets are the entire bed. They don't flex, and often have the heater attached directly to them. In my experience they work great. Prints stick when hot and release when cool. Anything except PLA needs the bed to be scuffed with steel wool occasionally. I have a smooth, solid PEI bed on one printer (stock Lulzbot Taz 6). I have a textured PEI flex plate on the other (Railcore 300zlt). They both have their advantages and disadvantages.
I looked it up after last reply, the conductivity of pei is higher than glass so yeah, it's not an issue. 👍
Comments like these make RUclips so awesome. Thanks Nerd Made and Lost in Tech.
Hmm, I have a Prima bed which is also only coated on one side. I've never tried using the flip side.
I wonder if scuffing the metal surface would help adhesion?
very likely, but it will also show on the print
@@LostInTech3D very true I wonder if you can get a Scotch-Brite pad on a drill and make a swirled surface. If done right that looked pretty cool
Scratching the bed to reveal a steel color underneath doesn’t tell you that the color is from a PEI coating. When you heat steel up, as you pointed out,you can get a straw color, but that color is caused by a thin film of oxide formed by the heat. If you scratch it, you will reveal the unoxidized steel color underneath.
It scratched off too easily compared to how much you would have to for heat treatment, in my opinion. Of course the only definitive answer is going to come from the manufacturer who are not answering...but at the same time I imagine it also makes no particular sense to heat treat steel to exactly PEI colour, for a printer bed.
Good video
I am super curious to try one of these style of bed.... mainly for the weight reduction via the stock ender glass plate.... but simply flipping it over and keeping the plain glass free of oils and using ABL sorted me out in 98% of my prints not needing any additional adhesion. Parts stick as effectively as those rubbery window stickers when it's hot and when it's cold they typically lift off with little to no effort, worst case I take the bed off and give it a gentle sharp tap and it comes off every time. PETG included..... so I wonder if it's actually worth buying these at all :/
In the last episode I pretty much said...well I actually said, that I felt like it was an alternative to glass but not worth replacing glass directly for, even though I might choose it over glass. When you need your next bed then give this a go, but really, to me, it's very very much like the carborundum in terms of operating temp, levelling, etc. And unlike glass, if your metal bed base thing isn't level...you'll know it when you put this on 😂
My ender 3 v2 "steve" is staying firmly with the glass bed, put it that way. It aint broke, so I aint fixing it.
@@LostInTech3D that's kind of how I feel, but I want to go higher and I'm getting the wobblies on taller prints and I suspect it's the bed being a million pounds of glass, but it could be the rollers too if I'm not mistaken? Idk I'll likely end up doing both, I'm in too deep now to go back
I'm not entirely sure what "getting the wobblies" is but it's probably not the glass bed if it magnifies with z height, I guess!
Smooth glass and Aquanet unscented super extra hold hairspray. Works great and cheap to boot. Aquanet is only available in the US though.
sounds like it contains PVA, which is an interesting idea, I dont think PVA normally sticks to glass.
@@LostInTech3D Contents: Water (Aqua), Dimethyl Ether, SD Alcohol 40-B (Alcohol Denat.), VA/Crotonates/Vinyl Neodecanoate Copolymer, Acrylates Copolymer, Aminomethyl Propanol, Sodium Benzoate, Cyclohexylamine, Triethyl Citrate, Cyclopentasiloxane, Masking Fragrance (Parfum). I believe it is the copolymer that makes it work so well. I've used this on PLA and PETG. I've tried it with ABS too. It'll work but not with parts that take a large part of the print bed.
I am definitely not a chemist but 'acrylates copolymer' sounds suitably vague enough to be legit 😂😂👍
@@LostInTech3D Agreed😆
I had the same adhesion problems on my smooth PEI board (sticker) until I realized (after extensive testing) that cleaning with iso (alcohol) harms on the PEI coating and affects adhesion badly. After cleaning with warm water and dish soap, everything holds up fantastically.
Conversely, Alcohol works incredibly well on ultra-smooth surfaces like glass or polished metal.
Here should be tested again whether it is possibly due to the cleaning of the surface that the results have turned out so surprising.
I never use isopropanol, never needed to. Ever. I always feel like it's not necessary at least with the usual materials.