dramsey wrote:I'm guessing there's a special technique for applying a single large square of this 3M tape to the glass print bed without it turning into a smeared, globbed, tangled useless mess. I know what it isn't: cutting a square of tape the size of the print bed, removing the backing, and trying to apply it in one swell foop.
I'm also hoping there's a way to remove said mess from the glass so I can try whatever method I should have used the first time.
(Laughing with you here, not at you. I wadded my first sheet up around my elbow.)
Okay, the best way that I found to do it was to start peeling the liner off of 1 side of the tape by slooooowly pulling the liner off one side of the full 12 inch sheet while holding the corner down flat, and doubling the liner back on itself sharply. It's impossible to describe with words, but it's a technique used by vinyl cutters to apply vinyl transfer tape and there is a video of it below. It's all in the peeling.
After you have removed one side of the tape liner, lay the tape on a flat desk, sticky side up. Lay the glass down on it. (No way you won't have bubbles in it, but they won't matter.) Cut the excess tape from around the glass with an exacto knife. Turn the glass over and brayer the tape down and pop the bubbles in the tape through the remaining liner, before you pull it off. (Small slashes cut into the remaining liner to let the air out.)
Get it as flat as you can before removing the remaining liner on the tape, using the same technique you used before, to keep from pulling the adhesive off the glass.
Remove one liner from the sheet of PEI, and lay that side facing up on the desk. Flip the sticky side of the glass facing down, and set the glass down on the exposed PEI surface. Press down well. Use the plastic cutter to score the PEI around the glass deeply. Flip the whole thing over and carefully score (using a straight edge) on the other side of the PEI, trying to line up your score marks with the ones underneath. Keep scoring until you can snap the PEI away from the glass.
Sand the edges, remove the top liner on the PEI, scuff the top with fine sand paper and you're done.
Video showing the technique :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-PRVLEaDRY