Adhesion improver for 3D printing recipe

Since I bought my Ender 3 I have been looking for a hairspray with the minimum odor. I hate the cheap perfume smell floating around in the room where I make things.

I first try the most famous 3D printing hairspray in Spain: Nelly. It doesn’t smell too much, but it does.

A second try was for Mercadona’s “Fuerte” one. It smells better and adhesion is quite good.

I felt very good with this last one, but after some more printings… the room smells like a granny hairstyle contest.

After thinking a lot on it I found a solution. Some years ago I played with pine resin to make a homemade soldering paste. Though the results where satisfying, I stopped using that substance because once diluted in alcohol, when the dissolvent evaporates it remains a surface extremely sticky. That is exactly what I want now for my printing bed:  a sticky surface.

Pine resine
Finished adherence improver

Today I’ve tried the first formulation with very good results:

Ingredients:

  • 50 grams of Ethylic Alcohol 
  • 3 grams of pine resin

The recipe is quite simple. All you have to do is follow the next steps:

  1. Make powder a couple of resin stones (1cm side each one).
  2. Pour the powder and the alcohol in a small bottle, close it and stir until the resin dissolves completely.
  3. It’s done.

Put the resulting liquid into a spray bottle and you have a ready to use adherence improver that doesn’t smell at all.