The Salt Solution for PLA
I came across an article by a German University who was using salt as a PLA baseplate sticking material. The author has a glass buildplate and found it to work exceedingly well for sticking PLA. I also have had my share of PLA problems, so I thought I would try it on PEI, and it worked great. Its easy, cheap, and if your are having sticking problems, its worth a try. Note: I have used gluestick, blue tape, and many others with little luck, but this DOES work, at least for me. It ONLY works on PLA, NOT ABS.
1) Clean everything off your build plate.
2) Use distilled water to clean it all again and dry.
3) Take an ounce or two of distilled water and mix in some table salt. Add maybe 1/2 teaspoon per ounce.
4) With a paper towel, take the salty water and wipe on the bed. It doesn't need to be thick. Let it dry COMPLETELY.
5) Heat the bed to 60C and print your PLA. (This only works on a heated bed.)
6) To remove item, let it cool completely. It should easily come off.
For me it works great. Try it out. Removing it from the bed is easy too, just water and a paper towel.
Re: The Salt Solution for PLA
Hi,
never heard of this, but nice idea 🙂
I uses white wood glue in water on my glas bed of the mendel90.
But as I am having some non-sticking area on my pei sheet at the moment, I might give this a try.
thx!
Re: The Salt Solution for PLA
Yeah, i tried it too. It does work. Used it on heated glass beds where i had gotten slight warping with certain PLA brands on large prints.
(But here on the MK2 PLA works fine for me on just the PEI even for full size prints provided the bed is clean, level and you give it a good squish.)
Re: The Salt Solution for PLA
hmmm... sounds promising when you have problems with releasing the pla stuff from your heatbed.
💡
i think about the biofila platec filament, which sticks like hell at the pei sheet.
@allen.n & stephan.k did you alter your z-live adjustment level before printing onto the dried, salty solution ?
dem inscheniör is' nix zu schwör...
Re: The Salt Solution for PLA
I didn't change my nozzle distance. But is a different printer, manual leveling at 0,2mm distance. Since you mention getting prints off: water will pop them right off. Are you using actual PlaTec or GreenTec (still cant decide if there's a difference between these two)
Re: The Salt Solution for PLA
I did not change the Z-live adjustment for the salt. I'm currently printing a tray with PLA which covers most of the bed. Before the salt, no matter what I tried, I could not get the PLA to stay without some warping, which would eventually catch on the head, and destroy the whole thing. This hasn't happened with the salt. But remember, PLA only, and a 60C bed. When the bed cools, it will hopefully just pop off.
Re: The Salt Solution for PLA
... Are you using actual PlaTec or GreenTec (still cant decide if there's a difference between these two)...
yes, i use the biofila platec for parts that need to withstand higher temperatures and need to be reasonably strong (used it at my i3/mk2(x) clone).
i got the greentec filament as well (brand: extrudr), but there seem to be some tiny differences... so the greentec bdp was not as strong as expected inside boiling water and the layers didn't bond as well as with the platec stuff.
but you're right, both filaments are very similar. maybe the different properties that i've encountered are related to the settings i used ?
dem inscheniör is' nix zu schwör...
Re: The Salt Solution for PLA
I came across this technique for another printer and it worked super-well.
But I am a little afraid of using salt on the metal plate of the mk3 ...
Isn't it going to react (make the plate corrode)?
Diederik