PEI sheet to improve adherence

[ultimprint 4]

Hi,

Before my move to the US, I used Dimadix to stick my prints buy it's not sold in The US.

I found PEI (Polyetherimide) sheet on Amazon, someone tested this?

I think to buy a thin sheet to drop on the glass and one to remplace the glass...

[nerdwarrior 19]

First of all, I do have to say that I've never tried PEI before, but I have heard a lot of great things about it, and if I were in your shoes, I would definitely go for it.

Also before getting to what I've read, here is a video that I find useful. It goes over many types of build surfaces:

Okay, so just like a summary of what I know, PEI is incredibly good for bed adhesion when heated. The Prusa i3 Mk2 and the Lulzbots use it, and overall, it seems to be the "miracle surface" that works better than practically everything else out there: blue tape, kapton tape, abs slurry, glue, etc. I mean, if Alephobjects uses it for all of the Lulzbots, it should mean that it works consistently for something like ABS and probably polycarbonate as well.

However, just a friendly word of caution: you don't want a sheet too thick, but on the other hand, thin sheets will be more difficult to apply.

Hope that helped!

nerdwarrior

[nerdwarrior 19]

Okay, maybe polycarbonate was an exaggeration, and I'm not sure how that will work because it's such a difficult material (maybe it will, I can't say for certain).

But you get my idea.

[ultimprint 4]

I bought a PEI sheet, it works for PLA but with nylon I need to coat the sheet with PVA glue...

When I will have more experience with this type of material, I will write a big review

[StephanK 30]

I just got a few spare sheets of PEI delivered from the Prusa shop (and some i3 attached to one of them) and found these fit the glass plate of my UM2+ nicely with only a tiny bit of cutting required (~ 2 mm on one side, plus round the edges a bit).

Dimensions of the Prusa i3 sheet: 254x224 mm, 175μm with 3M 200MP adhesive

Price for us Europeans is fair enough at roughly 9 Euros, but s&h costs are a bit steep.

So far I only printed with PLA, but it looks promising. I stuck it on a original UM2+ glass plate that was annoyingly uneven and so far, things are looking pretty good. I got some ABS, Filaflex, PLAtec and Woodfill waiting to be tested next.

[nerdwarrior 19]

Which brand of nylon? Taulman?

And what bedtemp did you use?

[nerdwarrior 19]

Try cranking up the bedtemp, relevel the bed, and lower the layer height:

https://forum.lulzbot.com/viewtopic.php?t=1594

Also, you might want to wipe down the PEI w/ some alcohol to clean it.

[nerdwarrior 19]

Here's another video that I watched a while ago:

 

If you need printing help, check out that guy's channel (it's called Thomas Sanladerer). He's got great reviews, guides, tips, etc.

[nerdwarrior 19]

And sorry if it seems like I'm questioning your expertise, which I'm definitely not trying to do. I just feel like nylon should probably work with PEI, but again, I haven't used it myself.