Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/07/30/blue-tape-for-your-3d-printer.html
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Maybe blue tape will finally find a use it actually works for!!!
It works here. Wears out after a few uses tho.
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i use the normal sized roll for marking ball jars in the kitchen 
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I keep blue tape in the kitchen to close flour and sugar bags, etc. Also labeling!
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I don’t know what blue tape is! Well, tape that is blue, I guess. But you know what I mean.
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yep, roll o’ tape and and a Sharpie Super Permanent are always in the kitchen. I gotta know when i canned that strawberry jam!
How about a sheet of glass from a dollar store picture frame? 9" x 9" is good for most folks. Spray some dollar store hairspray on it, and presto, you have a fantastic build plate setup that can be used for years to come.
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It’s basically masking tape for painters to cover window trim and other things they don’t want to get paint on. The tape is sticky, but comes off pretty easily without really leaving a sticky residue. It seems they sell it in blue and green now as a way to have it stand out from other tapes in the hardware aisle of most stores.
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Oh, you mean “green” tape. Now I know. Thanks.
Except the 3M blue tape works better on printer beds than the green tape (I tried FrogTape). I don’t remember all the details now, but it’s a specific line of 3M tape that is recommended.
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Blue tape is so 2015. Use BuildTak.
Tried tape and hair spray and buildtak, all worthless. Sheet of PET plastic glued down with a glue stick rocks.
FWIW, I’ve had remarkably good results with a sheet of Kapton on the heated bed of my Printrbot. Prior to that, I was using blue tape and school glue on an unheated bed with mixed results.
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Everyone seems to have something that works for them, that they swear by, and nothing else works. I suspect it’s because 3d printing has a bunch of variables across specific printers and slicer setups, and that different methods work best with different combinations of those variables. Things like bed temp, print speed, extrusion temp, cooling fans, etc etc.
Blue tape works well for me, glue sticks work OK for me, never tried hairspray, occasionally I can get just plain glass to work but why both, I just keeps lots of rolls of 2" wide blue tape around, works great.
If I print with a raft I can have a much wider latitude of build surfaces, but it also takes longer.
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FrogTape is coated to keep paint from wicking underneath. That’s the primary purpose of most of the colored tapes (blue, green, white, they all “mask” off portions that you don’t want to paint with a low tack adhesive.
I work a lot with 3D printers, and so far we have settled on the following three setups (ordered from best to worst), but this is only for PLA:
- plate glass with a bit of hairspray (cheaper is better!) on a heated bed
- plate glass with Kapton tape and LOTS of hairspray for printers with no heated bed
- painters tape whatever color and a dusting of hair spray for machines that can’t be fitted with glass
But as noted above, there are so many variables, it’s akin to magic.
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I don’t understand how they justify charging $20 or $30 for those sheets when you can buy 5 of the inch and a half rolls for the same price. That’s what I use on my 3d print bed. 1 roll has more tape on it than 10 of those sheets.
(I’ve been told that spraying a layer of hair spray on the glass provides enough stick to keep the print on but not so much that you can’t get it off.)
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Has anyone tried an aqueous mixture of assorted salts and sugars in low concentration along with collagen and various unbranched polysaccharides?
Eye of newt might actually work; if applied evenly.
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After trying all of the aforementioned build interface methods with great frustration, PEI sheet stuck down to the heated aluminum build plate with 3M double stick has worked for me for every material I’ve tried except for TPE (ninja flex).
PETG@95c, ABS@110c, PLA@70c, TPU@room temp all stick really well to PEI.
PEI never has to be replaced. You can scuff it with a skotch bright pad to renew the surface. PEI is available at Amazon for about $20 or so, and some sellers bundle it with the 3m adhesive to hold it down.
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I recommend build Tak it’s like a think blue tape but come in a giant sheet that has andhesive on the underside and extremely cheap…print stick good to it and easy to remove will last you years …just look it up you want not regret it.
