Tale of a build plate  

Tale of a build plate

This may be of interest to some, particularly those who think they may have {fouled} up a build plate with the nozzle.

I got a note this morning from another user, who is local to me.  (She posts here, but not that often.)

She said that she 'ruined' a Prusa build plate and if I wanted it I could have it, since she ordered a new one.

So, I said 'what the {heck}' and went over and picked it up.

At first it looked really nasty (I wish I had taken a 'before' photo) as in gouged and scraped.  It looked beyond hope.

She said that she was doing a Z calibration and the filament was not extruding so she kept cranking it down and down and down some more and finally realized that the nozzle was digging into the build plate.

I was planning to simply add a PEI sheet (I have one left over from my exercise in masochism about a year ago) to the blank side (this plate is one-sided, for some reason) but I figured, 'aint got nothing, got nothing to lose' so I gave the 'ruined' surface a good once-over with a sanding sponge and it cleaned up surprisingly well.

The lines from the failed calibration are still clearly visible, but I did a test print of a few layers of a recent project, and the impressions on the bottom side of the print are visible if you look for them, but not visible enough to get a good photo of.  My hunch is that after many prints it will be close to near-normal.

One other data point.  This is not a Prusa-branded plate, but Fysetc (however you pronounce it).  For some unknown reason it has the PEI coating on ONE and only one side, with the other side appearing to be just bare stainless steel.  I have no clue why this is the case.

As you can see below, with the light falling on it the right way, you can still clearly see the marks of the nozzle, but if I did not know of the damage to the surface, I probably would not have noticed the slight image on the test print.