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rbandrewsMost of my prints so far have been with rafts. I got exactly one print to work without a raft, by cranking up the bed temperature higher than you're supposed to and setting the feed rate really high for the first layer. It wasn't great.
A raft, see, is a layer of plastic that goes down before the actual print, that you peel off afterwards. The idea is that it's printed slower and at a higher feed rate, so it sticks to the bed really well, and then the object (made of thinner strands that may not stick to the bed) sticks to it. There are lots of settings for making them, and making interface layers above them to make them easier to peel off, etc.
Well, after stabbing myself pretty good trying to remove one, I finally decided, enough. I actually put in the tinkering time today to make the printer work without rafts. See, there's a screw that adjusts how far up the bed is allowed to go: the bed moves up and down, the screw is mounted on the case, and the bed has a switch that will hit the screw if it goes up too high. The screw thus sets the height of the first layer.
By turning it a little bit, printing the first layer of a Mississippi Queen piece, turning it a bit more, and repeating, I was eventually ably to get it to print a perfectly good object on a normal temperature (90-100 degrees C) bed. Which I'm able to then peel straight off and start using, no cleanup steps or raft removal.
The other thing is, this lets me print stuff with really complicated bases, like gears, without worrying about having to post-process them to make them work.
A raft, see, is a layer of plastic that goes down before the actual print, that you peel off afterwards. The idea is that it's printed slower and at a higher feed rate, so it sticks to the bed really well, and then the object (made of thinner strands that may not stick to the bed) sticks to it. There are lots of settings for making them, and making interface layers above them to make them easier to peel off, etc.
Well, after stabbing myself pretty good trying to remove one, I finally decided, enough. I actually put in the tinkering time today to make the printer work without rafts. See, there's a screw that adjusts how far up the bed is allowed to go: the bed moves up and down, the screw is mounted on the case, and the bed has a switch that will hit the screw if it goes up too high. The screw thus sets the height of the first layer.
By turning it a little bit, printing the first layer of a Mississippi Queen piece, turning it a bit more, and repeating, I was eventually ably to get it to print a perfectly good object on a normal temperature (90-100 degrees C) bed. Which I'm able to then peel straight off and start using, no cleanup steps or raft removal.
The other thing is, this lets me print stuff with really complicated bases, like gears, without worrying about having to post-process them to make them work.
