I like the thermal mass of glass for temperature stability, as I’ve found that’s pretty key to getting good print adhesion. But I really wanted to try out PEI without having to stick a giant magnet directly to my heater plate, something I definitely did not trust.
Turns out, you can solve both problems! This was how I did it.
I’ve been using the magnetic build plates with the adhesive magnet for about a year and a half now. I’ve experienced no issues with it up to this point. I’d say it’s worth the move.
You hear a lot about Ender heating plates having flatness issues, and glass doesn’t have that, so that was one of my worries - what if the glass plate is stabilising the flatness of my heating plate, for example? I already know it’s not as evenly heating as would really be best (I brought over another post about that) and so I was worried about losing the heat evenness I’d gained, and also about warping. This lets me preserve that while having the general advantages of magnetic plates.
So that’s why I wanted to try this, and I can say that it’s working quite well for me. But if you don’t have either my flatness or heat-evenness concerns, then yeah, I’d think magnet to the plate would be just fine.
I had a friend whose CR-10s I’ve subsequently adopted… (he wasn’t all that into 3d printing, as it turns out.) when were getting started the glass build surface was absolutely terrible. (I kinda expected it would be. it was basically 1/8" picture frame glass. 3/16" or 1/4" boro or bust.)