Plate Lab - Glass Fiber based Building Plates - Part V - DIY FR4 Plate

3D Printing + Plate Lab

I made these tools to fabricate some of my own plates. These 'tools' are made using wood, some PETG bits and pieces, and a router. These made it a little easier to assemble a plate (but there's still a lot of room for improvements).

Plate Lab - Glass Fiber based Building Plates - Part IV - Crap & Danger

3D Printing + Plate Lab

3240 can be anything. And stuff sold as FR4 can be outright crap.

So, there's the enterprising Chinese entrepreneur who sells very old FR4 on Amazon... It may once have qualified as FR4, but not today. These plates were old, ugly, damaged, full of scratches, and definitely contain formaldehyde, bromide, and probably tons of other halogens.

Moral of the story: made sure you know what and where you buy!

Plate Lab - Glass Fiber based Building Plates - Part III - Textured Surfaces

3D Printing + Plate Lab

There's surprisingly little understandable explanation of the impact of texture on adhesion and release on print beds... But we can reason it through. (And steal from the real scientists 😇)

Obviously, texture also applies to PEI, Polyurea, and in fact, every other plate!

Plate Lab - Glass Fiber based Building Plates - Part II - (Surface) Materials

3D Printing + Plate Lab

For a change this is all about the surface (of building plates, yes, but ain't it great to be superficial for once?)

I've split the previous page in two, as it was starting to confuse myself, and moved all the material stuff in here.

Plate Lab - Glass Fiber based Building Plates - Part I - The Basics

3D Printing + Plate Lab

This is a boring page. Skip it if you don't care about the materials used in your glass fiber / carbon based Building Plate.

Still with me? Okay. Here we go... Remember: everything in this post is about using glass (carbon) fiber based materials as build plates.

Plate Lab - Building Plates Letter Soup - From Engineering to PEI to PEZ to Lightyear to Garolite to FR4...

3D Printing + Plate Lab

Engineering High Temperature Smooth Textured PEI PEX PEZ PEY Cryogrip SSS Polyurea FR4 GS10 TK99 Honeycomb Cube Wham Bam Lightyear...

My god! It's enough to drive one crazy! So, I've ordered a few different ones, and have been scouring the Internet for more information. And to be perfectly honest: it's a confusing mess.