PEI sanding or alternate cleaning method?

I’m about 2 months into hobby printing - I just switching from my first kilogram of PLA to my first kilogram of HIPS.

The changeover was fine - there was a fine tutorial on [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpT5j2pZVeQ[/youtube] by the folks here at Lulzbot. The PLA was a little tough to pull out, but it worked.

The HIPS seemed a little gooey-er than the PLA. (I used the stock profile for Cura for fast HIPS.) After my first print from the HIPS roll finished, I used the tool to lift the plastic off of the bed. The pre-printing frame was a little bit stuck, but I pried it gently off. My test print came off easily without residue.

The concern is that the pre-printing frame still has lightly visible traces of plastic on the bed. Is this too early in the lifecycle of the PEI surface to consider the light sanding (2000-2500 paper) mentioned in the manual?

I used #0000 steel wool on mine… took out the marks I had from a failed auto-levelling.

Did the steel wool seem to have a lasting effect on the bed? Do prints stick to it more often now?

Thanks for the suggestion!

If anything, I have an issue of prints sticking too well. So yes, it’s had a positive effect. Infact, I’ve had to increase my Z offset by 0.1mm to decrease the first layer from sticking so much and making it hard to get prints off. It hasn’t had any negative impact with printing in ABS or PLA.