Prints not adhering to your build plate?

One of the most frustrating issues we come across with our 3D printers is the lack of adhesion of some prints to the build surface.  It doesn't seem to matter whether we use glass, perf board (such as on the Afinia), blue painters tape or Kapton tape or hair spray, there always seems to be a print or two that just doesn't want to stick.

After many (and I do mean a lot) prints here's what we seem to have learned from our experiences:

1.  The build plate must be level (pre-heat the plate)!!!  This is one of the easiest ways to ruin a print.  Especially larger prints that take up a larger portion of the build surface.  Here's a tip; keep an eye on the skirt (on some slicing software you have the option of altering how many loops and layers of skirting there are as well as the distance from your actual print the skirt is placed).  If you're not sure what a "skirt" is, this is a line of filament that is laid down outside of the perimeter of your actual object you are printing.  My assumption is that the skirt purges the extruder a little and allows you to see if the filament is being laid down in a consistent manner. 
Keep a close eye on the skirt as well as the first layer of your print to see if the filament width being laid down is consistent.  If it's wider in some places and thinner in others this can be a good indication that your build plate isn't level or flat.

2.  The build plate cannot have any of your nasty finger prints on it!!!  This is especially true for the Afinia perf board.  We have found that wiping the board with acetone just prior to a print can help a lot. 

3.  We pretty much use hair spray exclusively for adhesion on the Hyrel and the makerbots (Hyrel is a glass plate, makerbots are plastic and aluminum).  Interestingly enough, it seems to matter what brand as well (see the pic below).

Our setup with the hair spray happens this way; we clean the surface thoroughly with acetone, let it dry then spray a healthy dose of hair spray all over the plate.  Let it dry then re-apply one or two more times.  It hasn't seemed to hold as well with just a single layer of spray but after a few sprays and dries we have had good luck.  Doesn't have to be re-applied after every print either as it seems to last for quite a few jobs before it needs to be cleaned and prepped again.

4.  Pre-heat the build surface prior to tramming (leveling) and / or printing!!!  Heat does strange things to build plates.  Expansion and contraction, warping can have an effect on how level your plate is.  Obviously, PLA printing does not require this but since we print mostly with ABS it's a good idea to pre-heat the build surface whenever you are preparing to print or when you are tramming the bed.

These are just a few suggestions for keeping your prints stuck.  Let us know if you have any other suggestions we can try!

Hyrel up and running again

So after a long summer break, we started working toward getting our Hyrel System 30 up and running again.  This was not without some very frustrating issues as we had yet to get a good print from the machine.  Luckily, the folks at Hyrel are very attentive to our needs and we had a couple of Skype sessions with them to try and correct the problems we were having.  We have in our posession one of the earlier machines so there were some updates that were needed.  The guys walked us through all of the updates over the weekend and we set about trying to print with the new updates and recipes.

Here's what we got the first time we tried a complete print;

This is a macro LED ring for photography.  the one on the right was an epic failure due to a couple of things.  Sometimes our students get a bit impatient and they like to bump some of the print speeds up a bit too high.  What they found was that the infill print speed was too high and the machine was vibrating so bad that it shifted the print (along with a lot of other things).  We took a look at all of our settings and re-printed the one on the left.

We still have a lot to learn about this machine.  I know it will be able to create some fantastic parts, it's just a matter of asking Hyrel a lot of questions and working through the system.  The bottom line is that this is a very touchy and particular machine right now.  There is so much more the students will learn from this printer than they ever could from some of our other machines.  We have a lot more control over our print parameters and a ton more options in regards to materials we can use and with 4 heads they will learn a lot about multi head prints and how to produce them.

Below are a few more images from the macro ring to show you how the print came out.  Settings were as follows;
Layer height: 0.2 (1.75mm ABS)
Infill at 10% (and set to print very slowly...25 mm/s)
If you are interested in Hyrel print recipes this one was N0.50_Z0.10Hny35
All print speeds were at 25 mm/s (non-print speed was 130 mm/s)
Bed temp. was 70C and head was 240C
Hairspray kept it all stuck to the bed