Why Kapton rocks
I have never been a big believer in using kapton tape as a heated bed surface. I never saw much benefit, and whenever I used it I ended up cutting it or scratching it very easily trying to get the parts off.
When I use blue tape I generally heat the bed up to 90-110. I print the part, and then as soon as it is finished I pry it off with a chisel. This ends up with a lot of damage to the blue tape, but it is pretty cheap to replace, and easy to pull up a single strip at a time.
The turning point for me came when I tried to do the same procedure on my kapton bed. The adhesive simply wasn’t strong enough to keep the tape on the bed and it ended up bending and lifting and tearing. I knew that was not supposed to happen, so I stopped and looked at what I was doing, and realized that the point of kapton is that it loses grip as it cools. That means you need to cool the bed in order to get the part off! I feel silly admitting that it took me so long to see I was being impatient.
Now that I have that figured out I print, cool, and then generally I can snap the piece off fairly easily. I wipe the surface down with nail polish remover on a cotton ball before every print. Sometimes I still need to get the chisel out and put the tip under one edge of the piece, but once one corner pops free, the whole piece is free. No more prying from every corner.
My one complaint is that I only have 1″ wide kapton. 2 or 3″ would be much nicer. I’ve also been meaning to get some PET tape with a high temp adhesive to test against.
Polyimide film(Equivalent to Kapton) is a synthesized by polymerizing PMDA and ODA in strong polar solvents through the process of forming film and imine treatment at high temperature,which possesses excellent physical chemical and electrical properties,atomic radiation resistant,solvent resistant,low and high temperature resistant,it performs successfully in the wide range of temperature as low -269℃and as high as +260℃. Because of its unique excellent properties,it is the most ideal choice in many applications.
—Polyimide film applications: Electric parts,Mechanical components,Electrical insulation,Heat
resisting pressure-sensitive adhesive tape,F46(FEP) tape,Insulating lining,composite insulation.
—Polyimide film FN(FH FHF) is the general polyimide film that is coated or laminated on one or both sides with Teflon FEP fluoropolymer. This kind of tape is not with adhesive performance at the normal temperature,the temperature should reach 300℃ in order to be adhesive.
—Polyimide film product supply thickness: 0.0125mm-0.2mm(0.5mil-8mil)
—Polyimide film product supply width: 500mm-1000mm.