Decision making at 0245 should probably be avoided…but…
As I suspected, recent nozzle clog likely due to stepper motor not dropping build plate on one side…double whammy because this was quite a large model and so a drop on the other side actually equates to a rise on the “problem” side (because the plate effectively pivots about the middle).
Edit: The highlighted statement is of course total rubbish, so please ignore.
Anyhoo, I was left with an impacted smear of PETG on my textured PEI plate. It was really jammed into the texture; traditional methods like fairy liquid, IPA, household degreasers not touching it.
So, since I had a spare plate to fall back on (I bought one with the K2+ as you never know when a new toy is going to start behaving like an oil platform and go digging through the plate and I didn’t want to wait if that occurred) I thought I’d get…creative.
The PETG was really jammed in there…jammed in tight…and I needed to penetrate that “seal” if I was going to remove it (assuming what I was looking at wasn’t the aluminium behind the PEI where the nozzle had scraped it). It was hard to tell.
So what’s well known for penetrating sealed systems…?
Yes, I just washed my buildplate with WD40 and a Spontex “metal” scrubber (which feels decidedly plastic, but hey ho).
In terms of removing the residue, it was fantastic. I’d tried the Spontex scrubber with soap, Elbow Grease and IPA, and they hadn’t touched it. But a few passes with a generous but localised dose of WD40 and the white PETG “stain” simply disappeared.
It remains to be seen if anything will ever stick to the build plate again. I applied “Elbow Grease” degreaser to remove the WD40, and standard washing up liquid to remove the Elbow Grease. I used the Spontex scrubber for both so that the Elbow Grease and washing up liquid got into the texture like the WD40 had.
Fingers crossed, but if I hadn’t tried this, I’d have lost the plate anyway…I’ll let you know how printing goes (if it goes at all)!