Cleaning Build Plate

How often should one clean the build plate with Alcohol?

Also I set my temp on the build plate for 110C when printing with HIPS. However, it never gets hotter than 85C. Is that an issue?
I have had problems with filament not sticking properly to the build plate.
Thanks

You shouldn’t need to clean/resurface your bed very frequently. If your bed isn’t able to heat up past 85C you will want to check your heated beds heater and thermistor to see if there is anything that is causing it to not be able to heat up. Are you using a Taz or a Mini? The resistances are different depending on the type of printer. Your bed not heating all the way is most likely the cause of your poor bed adhesion and resolving the one issue will resolve both.

I am using the Mini.

With the printer turned off and unplugged disconnect the heat bed from the wiring harness and test the bed for the proper resistance.

The smaller wires are for the thermistor and should read around ~100k at room temperature. The larger connectors are for the heated bed heater coils and should read 5.3ohm. You will need to measure across the two large white wires that go into the heat bed to measure the heater. Then you will have to measure across the two small red wires to measure the thermistor.

As it turns out the bed was capable of heating to 110. However, the new Cura program had 85 built into it for HIPS. Tech support were able to reproduce my problem and correct it by going to Custom and then Materials and changing the bed temp to 110. I hope that means they will be changing the variable setting for HIPS. Otherwise I need to make the change every time I print using that filament.

In CuraLE under Settings, Materials go to the bottom and click Manage Materials. Find HIPS and click Duplicate (you can’t change the default). Find the new duplicate (under Custom), make the changes you want, and then use that instead of the default HIPS.

Hey, thanks so much. That makes a lot of sense. Will do that on the next print.
Jay

I have cleaned my bed and getting better results. However I think the STL file has a lot of problems with it. I opened it in Silc3r program and it found and repaired a lot of them but I still have bad prints with a lot of strings as though the filament is not sticking properly to the bed. I did some prints of a known good STL and it printed just fine.

What else can I do about repairing the stl file other than Silc3r?
Thanks
theater_seetings.stl (400 KB)

Although we are straying off-topic, I use Microsoft’s 3D Builder (available from the Microsoft Store) to repair .stl files. I repaired yours and attached it.

Note that repaired or not, the .stl file isn’t causing the stringing (or build plate adhesion). It is, most likely, your slicing settings.
theater_seatings.stl (510 KB)

Thanks

I am currently printing so can’t look but how do I find the slicing settings? And what should I look for? It will finish in about an hour or less.

The print screwed up so I shut it down.
Here are the setting for Quality
Layer .18
Initial Layer .425
Line Width .5
Wall Line .5
Outer Wall .5
Inner Wall .5
Top/Bottom .5
Infill .5
Skirt/Brim .5
Are do I need to change Shell or Infill?
These setting were there, I didn’t alter anything.
Using HIPS from ESun that I purchased with the printer

At some point in your 3D printing career, you will find that the “Recommended” Print Setup in CuraLE (or any other slicer) isn’t going to give you “Ideal” prints. The solution is to click on “Custom” and after the initial shock of seeing so many things to tweak, you will find that there are usually only a few settings that need to change to fix a majority of problems.

If you have a lot of stringing, lowering the printing temperature and/or increasing the retraction distance (both in the Material section) can help. In the Build Plate Adhesion section, each of the four types available in “Recommended” have parameters that can be tweaked. I rarely use “None” and most often use “Skirt” increasing the line count to 3 and the minimum length to 750. I find this gives more time for the filament to settle into a stable stream (and if you are having problems here, you need to cancel and keep tweaking). If the print has a very small footprint, I change from “Skirt” to “Brim” (again increasing the minimum length to 750).

If you are still confused, take a picture of a failure, open a new topic, tell us what you have tried and someone will usually provide you with suggestions as to what to try next. BTW, you can do the same thing with LulzBot’s support. They are available by phone 24/7 and also respond to emails 24/7.

In light of your response while I was writing mine, I don’t have any experience with HIPS but Google found https://rigid.ink/blogs/news/how-to-3d-print-hips-filament-and-it-s-not-just-a-support-material. My suggestions may still stand but I think a new topic is in order as the current topic title doesn’t reflect where this topic is currently going.

Thanks again. I will look at your suggestions and then photo graph my results. And open a new topic. Also using the file you fixed.