I attended the P1S class on the 20th. At 10:30 PM I checked on the print that we started in class. The front right octopus was obviously unstuck from the bed. (Parts on the floor, nozzle printing in air.) I used the buttons on the front of the printer to stop the print.
You don’t have to do this. Just my 2 cents. I have found that even with regular alcohol cleaning of the print bed. I need to use dish soap and a soft bristle brush to scrub the surface about every 3 months. I don’t know the 3D print stewards protocol’s. Also the printer is hosted.
Hi @aanne3. Sorry that print didn’t work out. Was it printing with ASA?
I did some test prints during the work day today. The first was with PLA. The print was clearly failing with low bed adhesion, so I stopped it and cleaned the steel plate with dish soap and water (at the sink with the coffee maker) and let it fully dry. I was careful to only handle it by the edges after washing. It is likely that there was some oil or something on the plate from people handling it that was making it not stick as well as usual. After cleaning, two PLA prints succeeded with no problems.
After that, I tried an ASA print. I tried pre-heating the chamber (by setting the bed temperature to 100C for 45 minutes before printing). Even with that, my print failed because it didn’t stick well enough. I added a brim in BambuStudio, and it was succeeding when I left Asmbly. I’ll check on it tomorrow and see if it finished properly (it’s a challenging print with a small base and large volume).
Well, it provided more education by failing. We used Polymaker ASA.
In the future, if a print is not sticking I’ll clean the build plate in the way you described. Even if you put a sign and a box of disposable gloves, it’s still a normal instinct to remove a purge line or brim fragment with a fingernail, so this is probably going to happen a lot. I could buy my own Bambu build plate and keep it in a sandwich bag. But dish soap sounds like a reliable plan. Removing oil contamination from things is pretty much the exact function that dish soap was designed for.
Yes, since this is a shared space, it’s best to assume that the build plate could use a cleaning before you try a challenging print. There’s Isopropyl Alcohol available (usually in little bottles in the resin area) if you don’t want to do a full dish-soap cleaning.
I was surprised that a not-very-challenging PLA print had adhesion issues, which is why I jumped to the dish-soap.
We don’t allow glue sticks on our plates for cleanup reasons, but if you bring your own build plate you are welcome to use them, which would provide even more adhesion.