Glass Bed for Ender 3

What’s so special about using a glass bed on the Ender 3?

I got the one that has a Silicon Carbide coating on it. I use brim, usually, and rarely, if ever, have lifting problems with PLA, Nylon, and PETG. ABS needs different treatment. Made a huge difference for me with bed adhesion issues

Another nice thing about using a glass bed is that they can add to the flatness of the bed. I have found in the past that depending on the printer it can sometimes be easier to get a perfect first layer on glass as opposed to a flex sheet.

Personally I have always preferred PEI coated springsteel plates, the parts stick so well during the print and then just slide off the plate when its done! But I also do run glass plates on some of my printers and they all work great too! Sometimes a little bit of gluestick is needed to help parts stick, but this is quite rare and generally only happens when I print ABS open frame (do as I say not as I do :wink: )

One downside I will point out is that if you plan to print with something like PETG, you will definitely want to use gluestick, I found out the hard way that PETG sticks so well to borosilicate glass that it can actually rip chunks out of it when you pull it off. But I have never had this issue with PLA or ABS.

Happy printing,
Matthew

glass and glue never lifts.

I’m not a fan of glass beds. They do have their advantages, flatness, and a really smooth finish on the bottom of prints being the first two I can think of. However, I don’t like fighting to get parts off a glass bed. Flexible pc build surfaces are the cat’s meow in my opinion! No glue needed!

It’s a trade off.

Glass is flat but prints can stick. Flexible surfaces pop the print right off but if the beds warped so is the flexible surface and there goes your first layer.

It is simply a matter of which you prefer.

2 Likes

I second this,

They both have their pros and cons, ultimately neither one is really so much better than the other one. It mostly just comes down to user-preference. As long as you get a decent quality version of the beds it shouldn’t really matter what type you get.

Thanks,
Matthew

I could never get a print to stick, I was not using glue at the time, so I flipped the glass over smooth side up and started using glue. It is old school (2006) but it works.

Thank you so much.