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There is filament residue on my glass bed that is so thin that it wont come off. I have had residue buildup for over a year now and none of it has come off. This residue appears with both the PETG and the PLA filament I have. Is there anyway to remove this residue?

Filament residue on bed

X Builder
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  • Have you tried using cleaner/polish for a glass cooktop? It's really good at getting rid of all sorts of residues on glass without scratching it. I've never tried it on this though. – Kat Oct 21 '20 at 18:04

4 Answers4

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I would try a single edge razor blade at a low angle used as a scraper. If you can't feel the blade catching in the residue, it probably isn't an issue.

If you must get rid of it you don't have good choices of solvents. Maybe you can burn it off by placing the class in an oven through a clean cycle. With luck the hearing and cooling won't break the glass.

If you can't scrape it off with a sharp razor blade, I would just let it be.

cmm
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  • Take care that you don't heat the glass so hot that you lose it's planar surface shape. Also take care not to change temperature too fast. – Perry Webb Oct 21 '20 at 11:26
  • Heating the glass in a oven clean cycle is a very risky move considering the 500°C temperature, but the good point of the answer is the other one: if a razor blade cannot scrape it, it's probably not a problem for printing. – FarO Oct 21 '20 at 12:45
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Heat the bed to around 90 °C and then scrape everything off with a metallic scraper, like the ones used to fill gaps in walls. No need of a super sharp one, since the plastic will be very soft a that temperature.

If you have a razor blade and a proper handle to avoid cutting yourself, you won't need to heat the bed to more than 40 °C, since you dont want the plastic to be too soft.

FarO
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  • Heating the bed to 100 °C so that the PETG was soft and scraping off with a putty knife worked for me to remove a 1st layer. – Perry Webb Nov 04 '20 at 19:05
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Maybe you could put your bed at the max temperature and print a large square of 1 mm onto it using a higher than normal temperature for that filament, maybe this bonds the residue to the new print. Let it cool down and pry the print off or remove while hot.

0scar
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  • I wouldn't do this with PETG. Some have reported pulling chunks of glass from the bed because of PETG adherence. You want to get good adherence to the residue, but not the glass. – Perry Webb Oct 21 '20 at 11:24
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    @PerryWebb I have used glass for a long time, the chipping is probably on low quality glass (I heard people are using cheap mirror glass or dollar store window panes of picture frames), never had an issue with chipping on proper borosilicate glass. If you pull it warm, chipping won't be an issue as the filament will be soft. The idea is to get the filament to bond better to the residue that the residue to the glass. Near glass transition temperature would ensure that. – 0scar Oct 21 '20 at 12:10
  • @Oscar True, that might explain reports. Glass not meant to take heating could develop cracks during the bed heating. Anyway, PLA is probably safer to use. PETG might only result in more residue. Note: PETG doesn't seem to release as well after the bed cools down like PLA and ABS. – Perry Webb Oct 21 '20 at 12:53
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It's probably not practical, but what would be ideal is to put the glass from the bed in an oxygen plasma asher used in the semiconductor industry. It would probably be difficult to get a used one large enough, since your bed size probably matches state of the art wafer sizes.

What would be even more practical is for someone to develop an oxygen plasma cleaning torch that wouldn't overheat the glass (https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/FINAL-REPORT-U-.-S-.-Department-of-Energy-Plasma-of-Hicks/fc32a874806de71f1d10f2d979d3a74e2bb7c0d0?p2df). Plasma cutting torches already exist.

Perry Webb
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  • I agree, it's not practical. – FarO Oct 21 '20 at 12:43
  • More of thoughts for developers than for people printing right now (build a printer with the oxygen plasma cleaning torch next to the hot end). Right now it probably cost less to buy a new glass bed than to use plasma cleaning. – Perry Webb Oct 21 '20 at 13:00