Adimide (registered trademark) in general is a technological approach for successful 3D printing (FFF / FDM) of structural parts. For structural parts, the easy-printing materials like PLA and PETG will often not meet the physical requirements. The more interesting materials like Polycabonate and Polyamid tend to be more challenging when printing,  even more, if printed with 100% infill.  To be here successful, one needs a balanced system of tested filament material, extrusion system, adhesive improver, and printbed. The Adimide project tries to establish such balanced systems of tested filament materials, adhesive improver, extrusion system and printbed in order to enable makers and professionals to print small and medium sized load-bearing structural parts. The engineering part, the structural analysis and design of those parts,  is covered by our engineers at structural.de  The first result of this research, beside a comprehensive filament test, is Adimide #1. This is a bed adhesion improvement for 3D printing  (FFF / FDM) with plastic filaments. The bed adhesion of the first layer is vital for the success of a 3D print. Whilst PLA shows good bed adhesion on most available buildplates, other materials like ABS, PETG, PMMA, Polycarbonat and Nylon does not adhere to the buildplates so easily. We had some problems with bed adhesion especially with Nylon, but also with ABS and PTEG in large parts and 100% infill printed parts. Then we tested some commercially available 3D glues with rather limited success. Since we normally research technologies for glass and metal constructions and have already some experiences with structural glues, we did some experiments and developed our own adhesion improvment and called it Adimide #1. After using the adhesive for almost all of our prints in our 3D lab, the success surprised even us, and we decided to make Adimide #1 available also for other makers.

Adimide #1 consists of different non-toxic polymers dissolved in Ethanol. The liquid can be poured or sprayed onto the buildplate and evenly spread with a plastic spatula or a fine cloth.  Adimide dries in a few minutes - most times during the regular heating time of the buildplate -  and creates a thin clear non-sticky layer. Now, the buildplate is ready to print.

Adimide #1 works surprisingly well on BuildTak and Glass fiber or Carbon fibre expoy plates sold by www.ahltec.de. Naturally, Adimide cannot reduce the warping properties of the plastic, but it can improve the adhesion between the printed part and the buildplate. As long as the adhesion stress is larger than the warping stress, the print will work.  We are surprised how well this works. We print our Nylon parts with a wide brim/skirt with at least 12 loops in order to increase the adhesion area. The effect on glass printbeds is not bad as well, but not so convincing like on epoxy plates.

Adimide #1 does not only improve the bed adhesion  - it enables you also to print with lower printbed temperature. This is especially important for materials with 100°..120° recommended print bed temperature, which is not easy to maintain on every printer. Depending from the model geometry, the filament properties and the buildplate, even prints on cold buildplates are possible. Just test it and save energy! When you intend to print technical materials like Nylon more often, think about working with a buildplate made from GR4 (Glass fiber reinforced expoxy); Garolite (US, UK)= Pertinax (Germany) or Carbon-Fiber Epoxy plates. You can obtain those epoxy plates custom-sized and even perforated at www.ahltec.de.  Both materials, glass-fiber or carbon fiber epoxy plates, are (in our opinion) fare better than glass. BuildTak is also surprisingly good - when you have already BuildTak on your buildplate, just keep it and add Adimide. But keep inminde that BuidTak is sensitiveto higher temperatures and may be destroyed if the nozzle is to close to the buildplate. Using Adimide #1 will help you to print with ABS, PETG, PMMA, PC and Nylon much more hassle-free than before. But keep in mind - bed adhesion and warping is originally a filament property, or in other words- a filament problem. Some filaments warp so much and adhere so little, especially when the model is larger or printed with 100% infill, that you can actually print it only at perforated boards. So, please do not expect wonders from adhesion, better use the good filaments. Adimide #1  works perfectly when printing BASF Ultrafuse 316L metal filament onto BuildTak at print bed temperatures of about 100°C, using an decent brim around the printed object.

Seperating the printed model from the (cold) buildplate is quite easy. A proven tool is an Opinel childrens knive. We just slide the Opinel knive under one corner of the brim and seperate the model slowly from the (cold) printbed.

After printing, you can just wipe the buildplate with an ethanol cloth to spread the Adimide #1 evenly. Adimide #1 shows only little residues on the printed object, which can be cleaned by ethanol. After two or three prints its better to put on new Adimide #1.

When you want to print PLA or TPU (Elastic material) which quite often sticks to the printbed almost too well, you can clean the buildplate before with a cloth with ethanol very easily to remove all Adimide #1.  The cloth cannot be washed afterwards, because Adimide does not dissolves in water.

Adimide #1 made printing ABS, PETG, PMMA, PC, Ultrafuse 316L  or Nylon a lot easier, but still not as easy as printing PLA. We are nevertheless very happy with the results up to now and started selling Adimide #1 for a first test at www.ebay.de (100 ml bottles) in February 2019. Please use the engine search engine of ebay for the 100 ml original bottle with the Adimide snail!

Safety advise: Adimide #1 is non-toxic, but dissolved in Ethanol.  Highly inflammable! Keep out of reach of children! Do not drink!

Impressum: Adimide c/o  hpl structural / structural.de - Frank Heyder - Neue Grünstr. 26 in 10179 Berlin, Germany, Phone: +49 30 78 77 63 46  Mail: post@structural.de

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