faberdashery pla settings?

[Mchawkeye]

Hi,

I just started working with some brilliant faberdashery pla, the finish and quality are excellent, but it has a tendency to curl...i am working @195 degrees, 60 on the bed (with kapton tape) with fan...anyone had any experience with it/tips?

[Mchawkeye]

hmmm...I have never had much of an issue with curl before, and pla has always adhered nicely to the kapton; I email faberdashery and they suggested a fairly high temp compared to most pla I've seen -210 or there abouts, i normally print about 190. needless to say, my next print i was fighting to get it released from the bed! all good in the hood now!

I have yet to try ABS, but i will certainly keep your notes in mind when I do...

On Tuesday, May 21, 2013 3:46:50 PM UTC+1, Gregg Bone wrote:

I've used that stuff with my M2.  It is very very pretty, and as you've stated nice quality.  I wish it came on a spool...

As to curl - I've been fighting that with everything and have slowly beaten it down to a low rumble rather than almost every part failing.

First with PLA in general.  Blue painters tape - not kapton tape.  PLA releases from kapton too easily.  It seems to be about the same as printing on the glass directly - which is fine at 60° bed temp if the part does not come within about 2 inches of the bed edge.  There is a roughly 4° drop in bed temperature from center to edge at PLA bed temperature (more like 7-8° at ABS bed temp), most of that drop occurring near the edge.  It's said that you should be able to print on blue tape with PLA without heating the bed - but with large parts I did not have good luck.  But with the combination of blue tape and a heated bed I've had exceptional prints all the way to the edge.

Now with Faberdashery PLA.  Yes a little more curl - I would guess a little higher thermal expansion coefficient - though Im not sure why - PLA should be PLA...  but all those issues were back before I was using the combination of Blue Painter Tape and heated bed.  Only needed for large prints - but the M2 gets to PLA bed temp quickly so this has become my standard print method even for smaller parts unless I don't want the tape texture - then I print on heated glass.

Moving to ABS.  Lots more problems with curl.  Kapton tape - hairspray - no matter what I did parts curled off the bed.  With big parts often they would release completely during the middle of the print.  Have you come back to your printer to find a fuzzy ball of fine ABS filament floating all around your M2?  I upped the bed temperature to 110°, then tried 115°.  Things got better at 110, but at 115 I found out that my M2 can't reach 115° - it can't even reach 111°.  Hmm - that means the temperature regulation loop is going to have big problems at even 110°.  I dug out the IR thermometer, covered the bed with flat black thermal measuring tape (can't use an IR thermometer pointed at a reflective surface). Calibrated the thermometer, and did some measurements (this is where I found out about the temp drop at the edges).  Wow - someone opens the door 25 feet away and 3 or 4 seconds latter the bed temp drops 5° at the edges - at the temp sensor only 1°.  That waft of moving air from the wind blowing in the door really has an effect.  The other very interesting thing I noticed is my bed edge temperature is lower in the back of my machine than the front.  After scratching my head a while I thought about the 3" thick concrete wall over 17" of straw that is only 2 feet behind the machine.  Giant radiant heat sink.  I placed a sheet of cardboard between the printer and the wall and that went away.  I figured that if that helped enclosing the entire thing would help.  Yep - it's really ugly as my current M2 enclosure is plastic cardboard and gaffer tape but now even big ABS parts stay flat to the bed at 110° - no hairspray.

Time to build a nice enclosure - and of course it needs to be done with printed parts.  Oh boy another project to add to my endless list.

Then I need to repeat all my leaning to see if the enclosure by itself fixes all the above problems.  Sure would be nice to print big PLA part directly on the glass.  By the way I purchased a couple of extra bed glass part.  That way I have one plain, one with kapton and one with blue painters tape - and a sheet of Garolite for printing Nylon.

Gregg

[Dean Piper]

Consider printing your first layer much hotter than the remaining layers. I print my first layer at 185C and the remaining layers at 176C with silver PLA. You may need to print your first layer at 210C for good adhesion and then 195C for the remaining layers.

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