Pro Tip: I love this PEI bed for my Ender 3.
Pro Tip: I love this PEI bed for my Ender 3.
I have a heavily modified Ender 3 Pro, and have had good and bad times with the buildtac bed (I've replaced many times). I've tried some PEI beds and had mixed results, but I got this one 2-3 months ago and over ~20 prints it's been just fantastic.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B38R478Y/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Amazon link, but not affiliate. Posting because the previous PEI build plate I got was the worst thing ever.
I ended up getting the 410x410 for my Ender 3 a few months ago since I built it out with the Ender Extender kit. I also like it, and the only times I have problems with adhesion is when my filament is wet.
I live in Colorado which is pretty dry, so I don't have too many problems with wet filament, or at least the problems I have are a much smaller vector than others seem to have. I always try to store my filament in a bag with the drying packet, but I usually don't even really close it that well. But I'll also just leave filament on my printer for weeks between uses. I always feel like some of the difficulties I have might go away if I was more fastidious about filament, but I seem to do good enough.
But, I've also done all sorts of upgrades to try to get more reliable, without really being good about keeping my filament happy. Upgrades: Sprite hotend, CRTouch, upgraded steppers (went through a bout of really bad layer shift I couldn't track to anything else, and the steppers fixed it), Klipper, upgraded mobo.
I have the same one and can attest to its greatness.
Oh, a textured PEI plate? Now that's something I haven't seen. On my own printer I tried the much-hyped G10 PCB material as a bed, and when that didn't work very well I got a PEI sticker to put on top of it, but mine is smooth. I might have to give this a shot though, thanks for the info!
You might look at PEX too. I got spring steel plate with it and PLA sticks perfectly and leaves a mirror-like finish. It sticks so good that when I swap filaments and push some through manually with the extruder 50mm up off the bed, the little stringy bit coming out the extruder sticks to the build plate pretty solidly. I have both textured PEI and this smooth PEX and think they both have their purposes depending on what you're printing. The textured plate leaves a really good finish for light diffusing material for example.
My original Creality glass bed was absolutely perfect. I would test new filaments by printing a calicat at 50% (so the little fit that stick to the bed are only 4mm square) and I expected those tests to stick perfectly. Then after 3 years of use the coating wore out and I got a new one from Creality -- it was horrible!!! Absolutely nothing sticks to it, even large prints were getting a lot of curl. I don't know what they changed but it was really disappointing. That's why I ended up playing with the G10 and PEI, and even my smooth PEI bed doesn't have the adhesion my original glass had, so maybe I'll have better luck with textured PEI.
Textured PEI is amazing. Got one for my Genius Pro (one side smooth and one side textured) and it’s great. Almost exclusively use the textured side.
I'm trying to figure out these magnetic plates. My Ender 3 Pro came with a magnetic sheet built in, but I can't tell if the bed itself was magnetic or if that sheet on the base plate was the magnet part. I have another bed attached right now so I can't easily pop it off to see if anything sticks to the base.