No label defined (Q44427)

This is a replacement for the plastic conveyor that comes with the makerbot thingimatic ABP. Simply it replaces the plastic conveyor with a strip of Titanium foil. Titanium foil may be difficult for the average person to find, but it is available for purchase online and the results are worth the initial investment. Other high strength metal foils like zirconium or tungsten would probably work similarly. It seems to last nearly forever too, I've run several hundred prints on the same small strip of metal without any noticeable wear. Titanuim foil is an ideal platform material because: 1) Unlike aluminum foil it does not normally crinkle and maintains a smooth flat shiny surface unless deliberately creased. It it actually somewhat springy. 2) It is flexible like a sheet of paper and rolls smoothly through the mechanism 3) The coefficient of thermal expansion is much lower than plastic over the temperature ranges used, therefore although the plastic will adhere nicely when hot, when both are cooled the plastic shrinks more than the surface beneath it and pops right off. 4) It is physically extremely tough and will survive a lot of abuse 5) It is chemically inert and immune to solvents The titanium build surface is immune to solvents, and this allows a unique sort of raft-less printing. Essentially what you do is use waste plastic dissolved in acetone to rapidly paint on a thin film that helps the first print layer stick. This has the key benefit of conserving useful material and saving the time needed to print a raft. I've had a great deal of success with this using ABS plastic, never tried it with any other plastic. So far using this technique my prints have shiny smooth bottom surfaces and no warping or pre-mature detachment or slumping type defects. I've never had to abort a print due to a failed first layer and it's pretty much my main method now. If you want to print normally with a raft, the film is not needed and the raft adheres very well to the metal. EDIT: It seems like other people have used the scrap plastic-acetone method before on metal build platforms, didn't realize that when I came up with it. As far as I know this is still the only metal build surface that rotates and functions like the original conveyor belt though.