How to Print with Baby Smooth Bottom ?

[ian 32]

Morning guys. For the fun last night, I took off my captain tape off my heated bed and tried to print directly onto my alu plate.

I set the alu plate to a confortable 60 degrees... printed slowly at 40 and a temp of 220.

I really wanted to try and get a really shiny beautiful flat bottom... test...

What happened of course was, the first layers went down beautifully... really nice.

then it printed without problems for 30 minutes, with cooling fan full blast...

after 30 minutes, the energy heat in the corners of the printed walls was too much and started turning up.. this suddenly snapped the connection between the model and the print surface... and of course i woke up to PLA spagetti ;-)

My question is... what is the best method in printing without captains tape, that i can get a shiny polished bottom surface ??

is it doable ?

Thanks.

Ian :-)

 

[gr5 898]

Hopefully someone else can answer this as I don't know techniques for printing directly on aluminum but...

Have you considered getting larger kapton tape? Would 6 inch wide be enough for most of your prints?

 

[ian 32]

yes the 6inch tape would be good for me, but that gives a nice flat surface but i have seen models with almost polished bases... im just trying to find out how that works ?

Ian :-)

 

[illuminarti 16]

I get a mirror-smooth finish printing on 8" wide kapton tape on a cold bed... but it only works for flat/thin parts, else the print starts to curl up off the tape.

 

[joergen 1]

I had great luck with printing ABS on plain glass and on frosted glass, at least for certain types of objects (large and flat, as illuminarti said). frosted glass gives a beautiful surface, sort of matte, and impervious to finger prints. plain window glass makes super shiny surfaces that show every finger print. I start with 115C glass surface temp, and drop to 100C after the first layer(s), minimal airflow (if any at all).

it is important to slightly overstuff the fist layer, to make sure no or little print lines are visible (click the table up 1-2 clicks during the skirt). ridges around the print head are necessary, which will cause additional drag, so make sure you print the first layer at modest speed (40-50mm/s), and make sure your glass plate doesn't shift around.

frosted glass has less adhesion than regular glass and airflow under the print will delaminate it almost instantly. plain glass makes a better seal against the air, and has better adhesion. YMMV (i don't use any special trick, no abs juice, no hairspray or anything)

The 2012 360Rig was printed and produced in this fashion: http://freedom360.us/about/360rig/

Sorry, I have little/no info/experience about PLA on glass.

 

[hreedijk 4]

I'm printing PLA on 20cm wide kapton tape on a alu HOT bed.

To prevent curling of corners with large objects, I setup the model to print with a brim , at least 6 to 8 lines.