MakerGear Forum

I've printed PLA (on bare glass w/hair spray) on an M2 ordered Feb 2013 and always had nice adhesion. Prints would come off by hand after cooling then going in the freezer for 2-3 hours.

My new (~2 months ago) M2 came with kapton tape on the beds. The adhesion with hair spray is too good (if that's possible). Especially with Hatchbox wood PLA. I freeze prints 2x as long and still practically have to break them off. I'm going to try bare glass again and see how it goes.

Is this normal? BTW, the first layer is nice. Now overly squished, no lip on the bottom of prints.

My successes is with the various combinations for PLA:

- Glass with Kapton tape applied.
- Glass with hair spray (Aquanet) applied.
- Glass with PEI.

You shouldn't have to add hairspray if you're using Kapton or PEI for PLA if your temps are good. (I generally run my bed a little hot at 70C.) I do find that with large surface areas that it can be sometimes difficult to remove items from the Kapton and PEI but PEI is super durable and is hard to ruin while Kapton you'll probably rip off the glass.

Just my two cents.

mathisyourfriend wrote:I've printed PLA (on bare glass w/hair spray) on an M2 ordered Feb 2013 and always had nice adhesion. Prints would come off by hand after cooling then going in the freezer for 2-3 hours.

My new (~2 months ago) M2 came with kapton tape on the beds. The adhesion with hair spray is too good (if that's possible). Especially with Hatchbox wood PLA. I freeze prints 2x as long and still practically have to break them off. I'm going to try bare glass again and see how it goes.

Is this normal? BTW, the first layer is nice. Now overly squished, no lip on the bottom of prints.

As someone who just finished a massive print with Hatchbox wood I can tell you its not just on Kapton. I plint on a MIC6 with hairspray and that filament adheres to it like a freaking limpet to a rock. I was only able to remove parts by gradually working around them and slowly prying up a little at a time.

Other PLA pops right off when the bed cools.

I switched to just glass+Aqua Net (a bald guy in the hairspray aisle at target must look funny). Wood PLA popped off just like it used to after a couple of hours in the fridge/freezer. The first layer wasn't as "smooshed" down as with the kapton. I will rerun the Quick Start again with a kaptonless plate and see if this makes a difference.

I had a similar problem after a filament switch, and a long idle time for the printer. The issue was z height calibration. I had skipped running calibration cubes despite the conventional wisdom to *always* calibrate after a filament change. I was "over smushing" layer one. Still at a loss at how a filament change can require a large fraction of a millimeter z height change, but once I ran the cubes and corrected the numbers in S3D, my prints adhered just the right amount.