the wonders of lemon juice in the sticking of printed parts

The original discovery goes to Core Storage 's wife, and what a brilliant discovery !



She was annoyed by the fumes of aceton and who can blame her.

I tried it with some reluctance on PLA. I used store bought lemon juice on glass .

and the parts sticked so well, I got to lower the temperature of the heatbed (to 50-55C) . From then on, I never went back to lemonless surface. You really have to try in order to see how well the parts stick to the heatbed, no matter the shape.

No foul smell, just a sweet smell of burned lemon. Sometimes the burned lemon gets a bit brown which sticks to the part, but it can easily go off with a bit of alcohol or water. You dont need to apply lemon juice in every printed part you print. The lemon juice sticks for half a dozen parts.



Time went by and I started having problems with ABS parts sticking to the heatbed. Even when the temperature was up to 80-85C some smaller parts were unsticking from the bed during printing at middle speed (35-40mm/s).

I didnt want to use aceton which smelled bad and ABS already smelled bad when printing. I also didnt want to use hair spray. I dont consider health spray cheap or healthy. especially when heated to 80-85C.

So I said to myself lets give lemon juice a try. The theory behind PLA and lemon juice was that the lemon acid and sugars were bonding with PLA which is starch based. So with ABS those things wouldnt apply. BUT

lemon juice with ABS sticks very well. The brown burned lemon juice sometimes sticks to the parts, but goes of very easy with some water.


I wanted to pester you with the wonders of lemon juice because it really helps solving the problems of part sticking to the heat bed in a very healthy cheap and reliable way

People are using acetone with abs and other chemicals to make parts stick. They may work well but they are definitely not on the most healthy side of things.

So you should try lemon juice and may it become the most prevalent way of helping parts stick to the heated bed.

Have you tried it with big parts or long parts?

I would like to know about at too. I have had good luck with hairspray if the parts are small or fast printing. Anything that takes a while the corners lift and sometimes leaves the bed and sticks to e nozzle.

PLA . Big parts, small parts all stick so well that you have problems removing them from the bed when it is still hot. you have to use force and leverage in order not to deform them

ABS I have less experience with lemon juice and ABS but until now they stick exeptionally well.

Big and long parts have tension problems with abs and the corners tend to unstick a bit but that is caused more by the tention created in the upper more cool layers.

I never had though any "catastorphic failure" of parts completely unsticking from the bed.

I am now experimenting with even lower temperature of the heatbed. 65-70C with 2 medium parts (75mm diameter) and they still stay on bed no problems.

it is easy to give it a try, so why dont you ???

here are the two parts I just printed

Blue ABS.

In the first picture you can see the parts beeing printed.

In the second picture you can see how hard the parts are stuck on the bed. you can see the glass lifting from the heatbed and still the part doesnt dettach.

I don't use a coating of any description on the glass with PLA, I just clean the glass with window cleaner then give it a good rub with a dry tissue. My parts do NOT stick to the glass as such but rather they are held there by suction - I have to cool the bed then slide them off sideways with some force to remove them. I cannot lift them straight up, such is the force holding them down. ABS however is a different kettle of fish....

@waitiki , I had problems of PLA parts not sticking to the bed.

specially with small holes on the first layer and big surfaces that needed filling.

the small holes had the tendency to never stick, the big surfaces tended to pop and become smeared by the passing head.

I was struggling a lot with those problems, and sometimes I had to quit printing big parts with pla. Until I used the lemonjuice that is.

so my biggest surprise was how uniformly and consistently my parts sticked with lemonjuice and thats why I m here with my propaganda army (that and the fact that a sell lemonjuice, lol lol lol)

PS I also have problems unsticking parts from the glass with ABS, so I usually hit them lightly with something heavy and the shock helps the part to unstick.

I have yet t otry lemon juice as I;ve just discovered PVA glue & water 20% pva to water mix... this works really well for me.. but I'll give lemon a squeeze shortly.. do you mean lemon squeezed from an actual lemon or the bottled stuff ?

I'm guessing if it sticks too much you can simply dilute it till you get the best adherence.

Interesting thread!

My try to print on a lemon juice coated printbed was not very successful Heatbed temperature 110°C, extruder temp 240°C.
The ABS did not stick too well and formed to big chunks of a mixture out of ABS and lemon juice. Even my extruder nozzle is now coated with these chunks. Nevertheless it smelled quite nice!

- rapidelectron

I am still into aceton very much. Since I also use it for other things, and to be honest, if my girlfriend would tell me she doesn't like the smell.. She better just go sit in another room

Hi:
The quantity of citric acid in a commercial lemon juice I think isn't enough to be significant in the sticking. It's more plausible that sugar acts as a bonding media.
As soon as possible, we'll give a try to distilled water with sugar with different concentrations and post the results.
Kind Regards

Paranoid
www.2NAND.com

Our first attempt was a complete success. 200 ml of regular water (3/4 of a water glass) with 20g of sugar (about 3 spoons). Heated bed at 95ºC. White ABS 3mm filament. We published a little video on G+:
[plus.google.com]

K.R.

Very interesting. Sugar has been used as a 3D printing medium. Could this be used as a water-soluble support for ABS?

... only if you manage the adhesion parameters, so the ABS won't warp and separate from the underlying sugar surfaces ...

---

Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

very nice, so 1/10 sugar/water syrup



Paranoid Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Our first attempt was a complete success. 200 ml
> of regular water (3/4 of a water glass) with 20g
> of sugar (about 3 spoons). Heated bed at 95ºC.
> White ABS 3mm filament. We published a little
> video on G+:
> [plus.google.com]
> s/PKXRReAidDX
>
> K.R.

a small troubleshooting note I noticed to a friend of mine.

he was applying lemon too thickly and let it dry , so he was actually creating a very thick film of smooth surface and his parts werent sticking.

the funny thing was that his first print after the application of lemon wasnt sticking, but the subsequent ones had no problem (as the first failed layer war roughing up the excess lemon juice)



the whole trick about the lemon (or syrup) surface is not to apply too thickly and to make it rough. for that i use a small knife to spread it thinly and as it dries to rough the surface.