Bed adhesion with ABS juice

[danilius 117]

I have been using ABS juice exclusively for a while now, and figured now is a good time to share my experience with it, since there are so many posts regarding bed adhesion.

I use juice for PLA, ABS and Nylon (Taulmann Bridge) on borosilicate glass and regular float glass (way cheaper, and works just as well).

My recipe is quite simple, I stuff some white ABS filament into a bottle (a thin solution of white ABS makes for an almost entirely transparent film), fill it with acetone and then let it stand for a while. Every now and then I shake the bottle. I have tried thicker and thinner versions, and prefer a very thin solution. This is determined by eye, no fancy calculations.

For printing PLA the bed is set to 50C, for ABS 110C. Once the bed has cooled to ambient temp, PLA usually peels off leaving the film behind, which is re-usable for another few more prints, not sure how many, I usually re-coat once a week, or once there is no more usable film left on the glass.

The two biggest issues with ABS juice for me is applying it in the first place, and then removing it before recoating.

For coating I use an 8mm steel rod and simply dribble some juice across the glass and roll it out. It only takes a few seconds, and dries within 20 seconds or so. If the rod is clean and the juice is thin, it leaves a transparent film on the glass that is almost invisible (if you use white ABS), really thin and gives an almost glass-smooth bottom layer.

After a disastrous encounter with a stanley blade and my left thumb, I took up @Cloakfield's advice and used hot water and a sponge to wash it off. One day I placed the glass bed in a bowl of hot water and promptly forgot about it; when I came back the film had separated and was floating on the surface! So now I  simply do that, put the glass into a bowl of hot water and leave it there for ten minutes or so, and it cleans itself.

There are three techniques I use for removing prints: the instant, the chilled and the cool.

The instant method involves removing the glass bed and tapping the part with a sideways hammer blow. Even if the glass is hot, a well-placed blow will snap the print off. Of course your part may not stand up to that kind of abuse, so it's not universally applicable. Another disadvantage is that it will inevitably remove some film in the process, even with PLA.

The chilled method is simply to pop it into the freezer. This takes perhaps five minutes. The disadvantage here is that the glass condensates rapidly, so the plate has to be dried one way or another. I don't bother with this method anymore because of that.

The cool method is to allow the glass to cool to ambient. This can be expedited by removing the glass bed from the printer. After around ten minutes you can hear the print crackling as it contracts and disengages from the film. At this point the print can be removed by careful tugging at one corner. If using PLA, you can wait a little longer and then the print will have detached itself fully and can simply be lifted off. Either way, PLA usually does not remove the film, leaving it reusable, whereas ABS always pulls the film off with it, but just in the printed area.

All in all, this is a rapid and easily employed method that so far has yielded really great results for me.

A tip: have some float glass plates made up for you at your local glass shop. That way you can always have a ready-to-print bed in your printer, and they are so much cheaper than a borosilicate one you can afford to have two and still save over half the price of a UM glass bed. I paid £4.50 each which included having the edges bevelled and polished.

[cloakfiend 980]

If you want to remove the abs juice quicker than 10 mins or without soaking it for a while then just use warm water with washing up liquid (i used the green fairy brand ) and youll be fine in a minute or so with a plate scrubber and little to no elbow grease so even a child could do it. Slap on the fairy first and then let it work for a minute and just clean it off like cleaning the dirt off a plate.

While everyone appears to have their preferred methods for adhesion application, i guess the best one is the simple fact of having a spare glass plate that way the time it takes to coat it, then come of the plate becomes a non issue and all you are looking to improve is warping edges. I use glue as its quick and easy and lasts for months.

However i disagree with your hammer blow instant method, as i've split glass off the plate doing that leaving only one side of the glass printable. I do not recommend that at all. Especially if there is a lot of contact.

Edited February 21, 2016 by Guest