Why doesn't PLA stick to heated bed?
I have a basic Creality Ender-3 with a black rough bed cover. I'm printing with PLA.
After assembly, I printed 3 or 4 small toys sliced by Cura with basic settings. All were printed very well!
However, after that, extruded filament would not stick to the bed. I tried the following:
- Bed calibration with A4 paper (each corner with a tight nozzle to paper and repeated calibration again)
- Once raised up the bed temperature from stock 50 to 60 °C
- Washed the bed with a soap and water (and dried)
- Sprayed with a hair spray
- Changed the filament
Nothing helped so far.
What else can I try?
Not all hairspray brands work! Have you tried glue stick, wood glue, etc.? Have you tried larger first layer height? Slight over-extrusion on first layer, higher first layer temperature, etc.?
I think you may have used the wrong substance to clean your bed. Try using Isopropyl Alcohol (IPA). You may have left some residue behind from the soap, which is now interfering with adhesion. When that is done, ensure you've gone through the steps for bed leveling again. It's amazing how much of a difference proper bed leveling makes in adhesion. If it still doesn't work, post some pictures up of your results, which will help tremendously in getting you a better answer.
As an addition to Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2's answer, I found that when using hairspray, some brands of hair spray add some sort of ingredient that gives it a sort of a glossy finish which makes the print not stick to the bed. The stuff I use is 3DBilby's 3DLack which can be found here. It costs quite a bit but gives very good results. When cleaning the bed, especially when using ABS, a stronger solvent like Acetone works as well.
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Content dated before 7/24/2021 11:53 AM
Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2 3 years ago
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