As I mentioned in my last post, I ordered the Titan last week as part of the Prusa i3 Upgrade Kit and it arrived today along with some sheets of 3M 468MP adhesive I had also ordered recently from Digi-Key (despite also mentioning in that same post that I was worried about messing something up). Just in time for my birthday tomorrow, too. A shout out to Dan, Lawson and the E3D team for their awesome service and getting this to me so quickly, and thanks for the sweets! Boy, I can’t wait for the weekend. I want to install it right now but I don’t want to do a rush job, either.

Earlier this week, my PEI had arrived with a single sheet of the adhesive and I took an evening to install it. I went slowly and ended up with a very nice end result with only a few very minor bubbles in the adhesive that I broke with a pin and then smoothed out. It was glorious! But then, it was also short lived.

As it turns out, I mistakenly thought the PEI only had a protective sheet on the shiny side as was the case with most tutorials that demonstrated it’s installation (the film on that side was obvious with wrinkles, overlapping the edges, etc.). That, and even after scoring the sheet, breaking pieces off and using my nail to test for a sheet on the matte side, I honestly didn’t think there was one. I was wrong. Very wrong.

I didn’t know just how wrong I was until I brought in a piece of the scrap PEI I trimmed off of my final piece to work because my colleague wanted to check it out. He noticed the edge had a few plastic bits but I thought it was some pieces of the 3M covering still left over. Nope. It was another protective sheet.

The frustration was real. I stewed on it all day and took to reddit to see if my botched installation could be redeemed. The general consensus was that I was pretty much boned and the only positives were that a) I’d at least get to keep the PEI since now only the protective sheet is bonded to the adhesive and b) The adhesive should come off easily since it hadn’t been on for even a day yet. It wasn’t all bad news but it was still a setback and an embarrassment on my part. Oh well, time to suck it up, Evan!

That night I checked out a few links provided by some redditors over at /r/3DPrinting and between an eBay link and Digi-Key, Digi-Key won out by several dollars (with overnight shipping, too) so I ordered 2 more sheets of the adhesive from them. That stuff smells like blue tape but much stronger. I dunno why but I kinda like it. Diesel exhaust, too. Yeah, I’m weird. Moving on!

So this weekend, I’ll go back for round 2 at installing the PEI and start work on wiring up the new Titan. I’ll be sure to take pictures along the way. I can’t afford a good video rig ATM so I’ll only have stills for now. I’m hoping to take a video of the Titan printing once everything’s dialed in though.

Stay tuned!

– E