Hairspray...
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@arhi Window glass will most likely be toughened. That's bad on 2 counts. Firstly it will chip more easily (as you've discovered). Secondly, the toughening process will cause the glass to distort and it will not be as flat as untoughened float glass. If it was hoticultural window glass then the chances are high that it was hot rolled rather than float glass and not very flat to start with. Untoughened float glass, at least 6mm thick is best IMO.
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It was a big chunky part! As you cans see it did curl off the bed a little but I wasn't interested in a perfect part, just something stiff that I could bolt to the end plates to stiffen that section of the frame up.
The glass and part spun a little on my work top before I removed the part and the glass returned to flat after the part was removed. PLA may not shrink much, but it can do so with significant force!
I'd assumed 3mm, but will check. I was going to phone in an order for some more glass soon. Wanted to checkout some of the local suppliers.
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@deckingman said in Hairspray...:
@arhi Window glass will most likely be toughened.
In some countries, yes. Only one I know that's required to use hardened glass is New Zealand (does not mean there are no other ones, that's the only one I know that requires it). Here in .rs we do not use hardened glass for windows, not even for the roof windows. I made the hardening factory near Belgrade years ago and was supposed to make glass bending and hardening line just when this %$#^#&^_)(&^#*( started so the parts and heaters and blowers and ... everything waiting for the police hour and quaranteen to stop.
That's bad on 2 counts. Firstly it will chip more easily (as you've discovered). Secondly, the toughening process will cause the glass to distort and it will not be as flat as untoughened float glass.
This one is not hardened, but chips too. Hardened one must be wavy as they are heated on the rolers, we move them back and forward in the oven to keep them as straight as possible and then move them to a special table where it straightens before hundreds of kw's of blowers cool it down to harden it.
If it was hoticultural window glass then the chances are high that it was hot rolled rather than float glass and not very flat to start with. Untoughened float glass, at least 6mm thick is best IMO.
Rolled glass is very rare here as rolled glass have those inconsistencies that look ugly so 99% of glass here is "poured" (iirc on top of lead or "hydrargyrum" don't remember the English name Hg is the chemical marking, but I'm not 100% sure) .. windows are not normally hardened... there are only few places in the region where you can harden glass and the largest one is owned by a friend and I help them with their production lines so gathered a little bit of knowledge about it
... they do all the laminates, hardening etc.. thing is you cannot cut the hardened glass, you need to cut it and then harden it. Normally here you go to a glass "shop", and they cut and sell you glass on the spot (like this pieces I used for my printers).Anyhow, I did try the hardened glass and it was way more wavy then visible (according to bltouch and precise piezo sensors). I tried borosilicate, it splits like crazy I had real issues with it, I tried (and mostly used) this simple window not hardened glass (poured, not rolled) and it was best. I tried bunch of "fancy" glasses (metalized, gold vapored, self cleaning...) and they are all not good as they have something mixed in the glass that makes it non stick so even with hairspray it do not work properly. What I did not try is something called "SITAL glass" that's supposedly work even better than PEI but is not available here. It was commonly used in USSR.
Anyhow, as I mentioned, since I moved to printbite I never looked back. If you ever seen printbite it is FR4 material. Thing is there is no exact FR4 material, they make it with number of resins using different processes, they get the same dielectric values but one FR4 can be very different from another FR4 sheet. Jason managed to find the one that works extremly good for 3D printing and tracked down manufacturer and is making these specifically for 3D printing now. I tried so many different print bed materials and this is waaaaaay better then all of them IMHO.
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@arhi interesring stuff. St Helens (UK) should ring a bell for people in the glass industry. Pilkingtons had a lot to do with the development of float glass. Trying to do some work with them at the moment but but the work has been struck down by the lockdown too!
There's potential (/hope!) for a large glass research place to be made in St Helens soon too.
With reference to printbite I have three sheets of the stuff and am slowly getting used to it. Their instructions say avoid the borosilicate stuff as it has very different expansion rates (assuming to the printbite material) and can shatter.
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@DocTrucker I worked with a glass specialist when I first built my printer https://www.richardgent.co.uk/about-us.
I gave them the brief that I needed 400mm x 400mm and it had to be 0.1mm in flatness or better over the entire area. It needed too be able to withstand being heated to around 100 deg C. Those was the only criteria I stipulated but I told them I needed 3 sheets. The type and thickness of glass, as well as any processing were entirely up to them. Their recommendation was to use 6mm thick float glass and have it toughened. They stipulated that it could be heated and cooled gradually but should not be subjected to sudden thermal shock. It subsequently transpired that it wasn't flat enough. So they made 3 more, then another 3, and eventually concluded that the toughening process itself led to the distortion. Eventually, they supplied 3 sheets of plain, un-toughened, float glass and this was indeed flat enough (checked with DTi). Fortunately, as I only gave them the flatness brief but left all other decisions to them, I only paid for the final samples.
As an aside, I thought that having them fine sand blasted might help adhesion - it didn't and was a complete disaster compared to plain smooth glass.
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@deckingman Yeah I can follow the sandblasting thing. We're not looking at a mechanical grip situation like a car tyre on a road, it's more like a vacuum. You can see on the underside of the glass as the parts cool and break away. With sand blasting you'd be relying on the polymer flowing enough to match the full profile of the textured surface with no air gaps. Unfortunately polymer doesn't flow well so the result was likely a far lower contact area with the glass.
The hairspray may just fill up local imperfections in the glass and readily melt when hot polymer hits it.
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@deckingman hahaha I did the same thing first time around with sanding, I asked for sandblasted glass, was not able to get anything to stick
toughening process itself led to the distortion.
yes, all those hardening ovens work with rollers and glass need to be soft in order to harden it... you roll it back and forth on those rollers so it does not bend. if for e.g. you have a motor failure the glass will bend and fall trough the rollers (total disaster to clean machine after that, that's why there's normally 2 set of motors if one fails) ... 4mm glass get super wavy (you can see it with naked eye) and 6mm looks great but if you measure flatness it's not flat at all
..the hardened one could be grinded flat, very very very slowly with lot of water, but the problem is that nothing sticks to that surface
@DocTrucker as I said my knowledge is very minimal there, I know about machines, not much about glass itself ... had to learn bit about temperatures and transitions but that's mostly copying numbers from some tables in some books... I think these guy's do very similar stuff to St Helens only they are not nearly alive as long
.. this for e.g. is machine I built for them the image in the background of that page and taht video -
I am using all sorts of glass. I have a piece of borosilicate glass, 3mm float glass / window glass, and a couple of IKEA mirrors. With a puff of 3DLac they all work great with PLA, PETG, ABS, ASA, TPU, polycarbonate and nylon.
Maybe 3DLac is expensive per liter and way overpriced for what is really is, but so is filament if you compare bulk plastic prices with filament prices. My small bottle lasts so many kilos of filament that I don't really care as long as it works, which it does well. -
@DaBit it's not so much the cost that bothers me, it's the profiteering and mark up that does. It's just not very open source in nature. A common product has been taken, relabled, and multiplied in cost.
Running 3 P3Steel with Duet 2. Duet 3 on the shelf looking for a suitable machine. One first generation Duet in a Logo/Turtle style robot!
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@DocTrucker, @DaBit never tried 3dlac, what is it? watered down pva?
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@arhi Made by a cosmetics company, smells like, and comes in a can that looks like hairspray.
They do do a version with a spray pump but that doesn't appear to work as well by the reviews. Perhaps an operator error issue...
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From other reports here it appears that hairspray with PVA works best.
3DLac ~£10 per 400ml spray can.
Cheap hairspray more like ~£1 -
@arhi It's actually made by a company in Spain. https://www.3dlac.com/our-company/
I met and spoke to it's "inventor" a couple of years ago who, at that time had spent around 1000 hrs on R&D. The formulation is a closely guarded secret and I can't say that I blame him for keeping it that way.
There are very few products that I recommend to anyone, whether that be 3D printer related or otherwise, but 3DLac is one of those few exceptions (and I have absolutely no affiliation with the product in any way - I pay full retail price for it and am happy to do so). .
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@DocTrucker said in Hairspray...:
@DaBit it's not so much the cost that bothers me, it's the profiteering and mark up that does. It's just not very open source in nature. A common product has been taken, relabled, and multiplied in cost.
I stopped bothering ages ago otherwise I have no life. It happens everywhere. Like a can of car wax, motorcycle cleaner, boat rubber, whatever. All $0.1 worth of ingredients, $19.90 in markup and advertising.
Filament is more or less the same story; common plastics like ABS/PLA/PETG are not very expensive in bulk and spinning it into filament is not a complicated or expensive process either once the machinery is dialed in.I might try PVA+IPA, see if it works.
@arhi said in Hairspray...:
@DocTrucker, @DaBit never tried 3dlac, what is it? watered down pva?
I suspect there is more in it than just PVA (they somehow need powerful organic solvents to keep it in solution) although PVA seems to be the major workhorse since it cleans off fairly easily from the glass with water and it turns PVA-milky-opaque when you do so.
I am using the spray pump version, and I am happy with it. A few sprays once in a while and I am good to go. I know it's price is 99% marketing and 1% actual cost, but I like it when stuff just works, and 3DLac on glass seems to do that for me.
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@DaBit said in Hairspray...:
All $0.1 worth of ingredients, $19.90 in markup and advertising.
Isn't everything? I do so much stuff that's hidden by NDA so when I figure out stuff outside of that I like to shout and share no matter how trivial or useless or irrelevant. I understand not everyone is like that and I respect that. Wether they spent 2 hours od 20000000 hours developing that stuff, they figured out that stuff works it is ok they make money out of it. Yes, if I did it I'd tell the World (probably, can't be sure till it happens) but they don't have to.
Filament... well, I'll agree to disagree .. professional wire extruders for 3mm welding rod that's hardly precise used to be very expensive. The precise systems for modern filament are not something you buy in the store, so again time and money required to make it work, you need to amortize the starting cost, the cost of rnd, the cost of running .. when I joined 3D printing community 500g of neutral PLA was 60GBP in UK and I had to ship it to here for another 40GBP, pay 10% custom + 18% VAT on price with shipping + get special import tax to show that it's not some high tech bomb making food poluting stuff .. today I can get it locally for 30eur to chose from 20 brands and 100 colors .. I'm happy if everyone in the chain is making money and having 70% reduce in cost and 100% reduce in hussle
So for that binder, if it's simple, someone will crack it and enter the market and drop the price. If it is not that simple then it's probably ok that it cost that much
I love printbite 'cause no binders are needed, I find all of them messy
and I hate that lot of ppl use binders so they don't have to level the bed. Bed leveling is important skill even with ABL. I have a friend that prints on window glass directly, no binder, but if he's doing large prints he uses hairspray so he can remove the object as it will stick to clean glass better than to hairspray and is impossible to remove
