I've been 3D printing for about a year with a vendor crippled enclosed printer( XYZ Davinci 1.0A). They want you to use nothing but their 3X overpriced underquality filament and have DRM Chips in the cartridges that limit the max printhead and bed temperatures that can be used. The firmware also has some similar limits set so if you hack the cartridges to use temperatures outside their "preset allowed range" it will intentially underheat and produce horrid results. So this severely limits my ability to get the print head and build surface to the optimal temperatures for adhesion. Once the warranty is up, I will be flashing
Repetier firmware on it unlocking the full potential. For the time being, I have been having fairly good luck with hacking the cartridges to reset the length and using HatchBox PLA and Inland ABS with the Stock XYZ PLA/ABS or lower temperatures. (actually have to use lower temperatures for HatchBox PLA than XYZ PLA)
What I have printed on so far with these limitations:
Plain glass/ glass with glue stick:
The print bed is 8"x8" heated glass so that helps some with the adhesion. The original XYZ blue ABS cartridge that came with the printer actually did fairly well printing directly on the glass, but had horrible layer adhesion. Started printing 3DLabprint parts with XYZ Clear PLA, and it didn't do too bad on plain glass, but needed glue stick applied on longer runs. Really wish I could find more of the stick that came with the printer because it has worked much better than the Elmers glue sticks with PLA. I had really bad experiences with some of the other XYZ cartridges and horrible response from XYZ in getting replacements. Totally gave up on their products at that point and have been playing with other Filament since. Most ABS filaments need more heat than the printer will let me choose and have had bad adhesion to the bed and layers. I got lucky with this spool of Inland ABS black that I'm using now.
Build Tak:
After having miserable bed adhesion results trying to print ABS with various glue sticks, I decided to try Build Tak. This stuff sticks TOO good even with my limited temperature settings. It was almost impossible to get some prints off without damaging the Tak. Even after several months of printing, there is still some remnants of a failed bright green PLA print that has been printed over numerous times. Unfortunately, I really butchered the sheet up this week when I made a mistake setting initial layer height to 0 and the infill created a really nice pattern across the whole bed. Tried so hard not to butcher it up removing the print, but in the end, it just was not worth the effort to spend hours trying to clean it up so I went ahead and pulled the Tak off.
Blue Painters Tape:
Had a pack of 10 8x10 sheets of blue painters tape, so figured I would give it a try. Managed to get two or three small ABS prints in on a sheet, but when I started printing things as large as the print bed that took a long time to print, It ended up scrunching up and coming up with the print. The scrunching allowed parts to shrink more than I was experiencing printing with the Build Tak, so not wanting to have to redo all my parts to compensate for this new shrinkage, I decided to move on to something else. Also was not keen on the idea of having to change tape often since I've been doing a bunch of large prints lately.
PEI:
Found a sheet of this that was on the Open Box shelf at the store. Can't imagine paying list price for this stuff. But maybe after I print on it for a while, my mind will change. Only time will tell. With the bed leveled correctly, this stuff works really nice. Got two 4+ hour ABS runs in last night hitting all four edges of the print bed with no lifting. Running the bet temperature at the recommended 85C for ABS. After the bed cooled down, the print easily released with no issues. It is not as forgiving as the Build Tak is. Proper leveling and getting the correct amount of squish on the first level is key to this material working good. Finish is almost as smooth as glass.
Cheers!
LitterBug
Edit: Got a 12hour edge to edge ABS print in last night and again it was absolutely flawless running PEI at 85C. Seems to be very picky about proper squish, but if you take the time to get perfect level and squish, it is a very nice material to print on.
