Forget about PEI beds - we've got PEY now!

Thanks to Private Internet Access for sponsoring this video! Check them out at piavpn.com/Toms3D Is there anything you found on Aliexpress that piqued your interest? Let me know below! You can get the printbed I showed in the video from AliExpress: H1H (Holographic lines) go.toms3d.org/H1H PEY (Holographic circles) go.toms3d.org/PEY PET (Carbon Fiber texture) go.toms3d.org/PET PEO (Polygon texture) go.toms3d.org/PEO (The names really seem to have nothing to do with what material they’re made from, they’re just different textures as far as I can tell.)

All of these PE(random letter) print beds are just marketing terms. All of these are Polypropylene material, their whole adhesion comes from texture, unlike with PEI. Those have been in multiple discussions on r/3dprinting in the last year and someone made a mass spectrometer analysis on them somewhere.

I'm gonna hold out and wait for PEZ

I have the 'carbon fiber' and wacky geometric ones. I used to hate them until I discovered you need to print a little hotter (50c) and lower your Z by -0.04 (I use the 'Textured PEI' bed slicer setting with my Bambu, which does this). It provides more adhesion and squish into the bed pattern. The other thing is washing the heck out of it with dish soap right before printing. I've had consistently better results with all materials washing with dish soap. Your mileage may (will) vary.

Forget about 3D printing, these are perfect for what I'm looking for. Been on the edge between getting holographic foils or tapes, as substrates for silicone molds. But these are just perfect for casting silicone molds. I'll just 3D print the outer edges of the shape/mold and without even separating them from the build plate I can just pour in the silicone. Awesome find, thank you, and yes at least the PEI back of these will still be useful for conventional 3D printing.

Got a PEY holographic star plate off Aliexpress recently. Had to crank up the bed temp to 70 to get decent adhesion. It's pretty subtle in normal non studio lights but a lovely touch imo.

SO GLAD you covered these. I've been seeing them for a while now and have always been curious about them!

I printed a tabletop game console enclosure a while back. All the visible surfaces were bed facing. Some of those patterns would look great in that application! Thanks for showing these.

Thomas, your video of these print surfaces really caught my eye so I purchased several different ones for my P1S, MK3 and K1 and they do work well and I I can say they look really nice. I didn't have any adhesion problems, but I normally set my print beds to 70C for PLA, PETG, ASA filaments. Thank you for reviewing these.

Thank you for sharing your findings. I do a lot of user-facing textures and find that these will be useful in introducing some variety!

Great video! Sometimes it's so hard to pull the trigger on things like these, and it's so nice that you tried them out first.

I think these sheets are a nice addition. Nothing essential, but it can make stuff stand out a bit.

The micro-texture, more than the material, seems like a real promising idea. Going from an incidentally produced and carefully controlled surface texture to one that can be designed. These are different materials so it can't be a 1 to 1, and the holographicness seems like it would be material specific based on viscosity and molecular size, but I can imagine normal materials with non-holographic circular patterns doing a better than random job of resisting forces in all directions, and long parallel or near-parallel grooves or really high aspect hatching could be really good on long thin parts, to increase the hold strength perpendicular to the long axis. I'd really love to see normal printbed surfaces with "engineered" micro-textures rather than artistic ones.

Sounds perfect for two dimensional prints, like wall decorations. Thanks for the video Thomas!

Hey thanks for taking the time to do this video man.

Huh, bout time there were actual "beds" for this effect now. About a year ago in printing groups the rainbow reflective pattern of the print at 1:20 was the craze. People were gluing down a form of vinyl onto their PEI bed for the smooth reflective effect. One person used window-blocking film with a stained glass appearance to create it.

I really did not expect the textures of these beds to transfer so well, and even be shiny and stuff on the part. Neato

It's been a good 5-6 years since I've 3d printed. I watched Tom back then, and I gotta say the quality of the videos are still 10/10, but your new "Rizz" in front of the camera makes this much more fun to watch a full video!

I've been working with these alternative beds for a while and agree with Thomas' points. I have products that benefit from these textures, but there is a price to pay on bed adhesion. The texture has lasted for hundreds of prints. On the plus side, I found the plain PEI side to be good quality and these are cheap enough to experiment with.

I literally just got one from Temu in the mail today. Can't wait tonsee how it prints.