I am looking at a used Mini at a local auction house. I’m not able to hook it up to test anything, but I was able to inspect it and found the print bed has a gouge. I assume this is from dragging the nozzle against the bed. The gouge is probably a couple of paper thicknesses deep and reveals a purple color material underneath.
Is it likely this would cause problems with the heater functioning? If the heater still works, could I place a sheet of PEI over this and use as-is or is there a way to repair this?
Thanks for any input. Hoping to get into 3D printing soon.
Reading up on this a bit more, it looks like the top surface should be PEI, then glass, then heating element. If that’s the case, it seems very unlikely there would be damage to the heating element and I may just have to replace the PEI sheet. Am I thinking correctly here? Still not sure what the purple color stuff is underneath.
Indeed, you will just need to replace the PEI sheet. You can find a replacement here: https://www.lulzbot.com/products/lulzbot-mini-pei-sheet along with directions on replacing it here: https://ohai-kit.alephobjects.com/project/mini-replacing-pei/
Removing the glue is a tedious process, but doable. The “purple” line you see in the gouge is most likely the color of the filament the previous owner was using. Assuming this is all that was wrong, it may be worth placing a bid.
I hope this helps!
Thank you for the kind reply Brent. Much appreciated!
Flipping the sheet over and using the other side may also be a viable option. The adhesive removal task is as horrible as you can possibly imagine though…