Buildtak experience

[Derek P]

I recently bought a heated aluminium bed and LCD in order to run the MP3DP 

http://www.vicious1.com/looking-for-a-project/ 

standalone and in the garage. I started trying blue painters tape on the aluminium surface but I found the tape didn't seem to work as well as previous experience on plain glass. I purchased some Buildtak sheets and see if I could get better results. For my fist test I used this:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:38096

and found it stuck slightly too well at 55 degrees C and 190 degrees on the hotend. This test was done in the house at an ambient temp around 20 degrees C or 70F. I moved the printer to the garage and tried to print the MPCNC roller mount http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:724999 

I tweaked the bed temperature to 50 degrees C and left the hotend at 190C. The garage ambient was about 6C or 40F (bit nippy!). the first layer looked OK but the part warped badly about 30 layers in so I stopped it. I decided to try another part so I printed the MPCNC XYZ arm at 55C and 195C, again the ambient was around 6C. This stuck almost too well to the point where I nearly damaged the print surface well trying to pull it off. The part has zero signs of warping though and is perfect.

My thoughts so far are that Builtak works well but has a small window for successful prints. I'm going to dial it in some more but by trying to print in a cold space I have introduced another variable that is tricky for standalone printing. Does anybody have any tips for printing without having to tweak the settings for every print?  

[Steve Roy]

Hi Derek

I use BuildTak when printing with ABS on my Prusa i3

My best results have been when the ambient temperature in the room is constant and I have a box covering the front of the printer.

For ABS I heat the bed to 65c, use a brim and also make the nozzle to bed gap slightly wider than when printing with PLA on blue painters tape - but by very little.

When it sticks well it really sticks well

Cheers

Steve