People have experimented with a variety of build surfaces on which to print ABS plastic such as MDF, acrylic, painters tape and sandpaper. One of best materials to use was found to be a high temperature Polyimide (Kapton) film while it is being heated to around 100°C. So, for my first build surface I decided to fabricate one with this polyimide film.
Polyimide (Kapton) Film Build Surface
This build surface is simply a .125 inch (3.18 mm) aluminum plate with through holes for eight mounting screws. You can see the adhesive backed polyimide film is not one entire sheet as the largest size I could find it in was 1 x 1 foot (30.5 x 30.5 cm), so I had to cut a few sheets up into sections.
Polyimide (Kapton) Build Base mounted on the Build Plate
Build surfaces mount to the build base plate (the one with the heaters mounted on it) with eight screws, so they can easily be swapped out to experiment with another build surface. For example I have found, as others have, that the polyimide film does tend to wear out over time as the plastic will fail to stick. The next build surface I am working on, will be made of PET film which can be wiped down with acetone if it begins to wear. It is also much less expensive than polyimide film.
The acetone thing works with polyimide too.
Interesting, I will have to try that out then. I was basing this decision off the results of this post by hydraraptor:
http://hydraraptor.blogspot.com/2010/04/abs-on-pet-tape.html
I haven’t had a print stick to PET yet (only tried it on the Makerbot ABP, and I’ve had all kinds of problems with that), so I can’t say that it works *as well* on kapton, but I was printing on kapton with PLA on my Huxley for a couple of months and wiping it down every week or so with acetone made a huge difference.