Magigoo PA Review

Magigoo PA is worth considering if your nylon prints keep lifting from a compatible print bed after you’ve sorted out the filament’s settings. It’s a liquid adhesive made for nylon, with a useful promise: hold the part during printing, then make removal easier as the bed cools. The tradeoff is a higher purchase cost than an ordinary glue stick, plus a coating and cleaning routine.

I’d try it for a persistent nylon adhesion problem. If your current glue stick already holds the same parts reliably and lets them come off cleanly, there’s no compelling reason to switch.

Check Magigoo PA against your nylon and print bed

PA stands for polyamide, commonly called nylon. Magigoo PA, also sold as Magigoo Pro PA, is intended for both unfilled nylon and nylon reinforced with carbon or glass fibers. Unfilled nylon has no added reinforcing fibers; the PA formula covers both kinds. Magigoo Original targets other common printing plastics and shouldn’t be treated as an interchangeable bottle.

Magigoo lists glass, PEI, BuildTak, powder-coated flexible plates and Kapton tape as surfaces for PA. PEI and BuildTak are coatings that form the surface your print touches. That list doesn’t mean every filament sticks equally well to every plate, or that the adhesive guarantees protection against damage.

Check the exact filament and plate instructions before buying. A useful example is Polymaker Fiberon PA6-CF20, which replaces the PolyMide PA6-CF name found in older compatibility lists. Polymaker identifies it as the same formula, apart from a possible shade difference, and specifically suggests glue stick or Magigoo PA for adhesion trouble.

Its current technical sheet calls for a 40–50°C bed and room-temperature chamber. Polymaker’s wiki also warns against going above 50°C and advises keeping chamber doors open. Don’t copy a much hotter nylon profile simply because it uses Magigoo PA. Follow the instructions for your particular spool.

Your plate can also make the purchase unnecessary. Prusa’s Special PA Nylon sheet is designed for printing compatible nylons without added adhesive. It has its own cleaning rules, including no alcohol or acetone. A general adhesive guide doesn’t override those restrictions.

What to expect from Magigoo PA’s hold

Magigoo describes PA as gripping a heated bed and releasing after cooling. That addresses the bottom of the print. Warping—the curling or lifting that happens as a part cools unevenly—also depends on the material, shape and printing conditions. Stronger bed adhesion can help, but it doesn’t remove every cause.

A PA-specific hands-on report from 2020 shows why the whole setup matters. Early nylon attempts still detached with Magigoo PA. Later, the reviewer reported two days of successful printing with four nylons on a modified CR-10 V2, using an Ultrabase surface, a 270°C nozzle, a 50°C bed and no part-cooling fan. The filament hadn’t been dried, and the prints had visible moisture-related defects.

A contributor to the same report printed PolyMide CoPA on a modified 4Max Pro with Magigoo PA and Ultrabase. The parts included a 20 mm open box with 1 mm walls, a printer’s filament-feed arm and a cable tie. That setup used a 270°C nozzle, 50°C bed and 25% fan.

These are useful examples of PA holding nylon parts, but several variables changed, and there was no controlled comparison against glue stick. Small-part success also doesn’t establish performance on a large, flat housing. Treat those temperatures as historical test conditions, not settings to copy.

Reddit owners also report successful PA use, including with PA6-CF. One nylon user preferred its hold to a PVA adhesive, a common type of water-based glue, but disliked the applicator on powder-coated PEI. These are individual experiences with incomplete settings and repeat counts, so they don’t establish a success rate or a recurring applicator fault.

Before changing adhesives, check bed leveling and the nozzle’s distance from the bed so the first layer makes proper contact. Follow your filament’s drying instructions, too. If the material calls for an enclosure, PA doesn’t replace it.

For parts that still lift, a brim may help: it’s a removable border printed around the base to give it more contact with the bed. Magigoo suggests 20 mm for some prints. That uses extra material and needs trimming, so it’s a tradeoff rather than a requirement for every part.

Applying Magigoo PA and removing your print

Start with a cool, clean bed. Remove the previous adhesive and loose debris; use the plate maker’s approved method for grease. Water is the specified cleaner for Magigoo PA residue. Don’t apply PA while the bed is hot.

Shake the bottle, then turn it over and press the applicator tip against the printing surface. Pressing opens the valve. If you need to help the liquid flow, squeeze gently while the tip is pressed down. A hard squeeze can push the applicator out and spill the contents; it isn’t the answer to a blocked tip.

Spread a thin, continuous layer over the area where the part and any brim will print. Check for missed patches. You can go across the wet coating in the other direction to smooth it without dispensing more adhesive. You don’t need to cover the entire plate for a small part.

For larger prints, Magigoo recommends a second coat after the first has dried. Keep both coats thin. That’s different from leaving a thick puddle under the part, and more glue isn’t automatically better. Let the coating dry as the bed heats before printing.

When printing finishes, let the bed cool before trying to remove the part. Cooling should reduce the hold, but don’t plan around a guaranteed release temperature or a fixed number of minutes. Neither is established for every PA filament and plate combination.

If the cooled part remains stuck, Magigoo’s PA instructions recommend adding a small amount of water and slowly working it beneath the part. Give the water a chance to loosen the adhesive instead of forcing the print off. Follow your plate’s removal instructions, and keep water away from the printer’s electronics.

Once the part is off, wipe the cool surface with a water-dampened cloth. The appeal is straightforward cleanup with water; the inconvenience is having to allow for cooling, removal and cleaning between jobs.

When to clean and reapply Magigoo PA

Start by cleaning the bed and applying fresh PA before each print. The PA instructions call for wiping the cool bed clean after removal. Printer maker BCN3D also recommends reapplying after every print, although that advice covers the Magigoo family rather than a measured PA coating lifespan.

Magigoo’s broader manual also allows some reuse. It says a coating used with most nylons can be reused until visibly damaged, while still recommending a fresh application before each print, especially with reinforced nylons. Those statements describe possible reuse and the maker’s preferred routine. They don’t give you a guaranteed number of prints from one coat.

A PA6-CF owner report describes long use from a single coating, but doesn’t provide a counted series with consistent parts and settings. That isn’t enough to budget for five, ten or any other number of successful prints per application.

I’d use a fresh coat for a long job or while diagnosing adhesion trouble. Reusing a layer introduces another thing to question if the next print lifts. If you do reuse it, inspect it after removal and clean it off when it’s visibly damaged. Don’t assume that successful reuse with Original and PLA predicts what PA will do with nylon.

Keep the bottle upright, capped and out of direct sunlight. A clean applicator matters, too. If dried adhesive blocks the tip, the manual suggests wetting it with water rather than squeezing harder. There’s no sound basis here for promising a bottle yield or a cost per print.

Weighing Magigoo PA against a glue stick

An ordinary washable glue stick is cheaper to buy than a bottle of Magigoo PA. That doesn’t tell you which costs less per successful nylon part: coating area, consumption, failed prints and removal effort all matter. Without comparable measurements, claims that PA pays for itself after a particular number of jobs are guesswork.

Glue stick is a credible first option when your filament maker allows it. For Fiberon PA6-CF20, Polymaker names both glue stick and Magigoo PA as ways to address weak bed adhesion. That supports trying either; it doesn’t establish equal results or make PA the winner.

The reason to try PA is specific: your approved glue-stick routine isn’t holding your nylon parts reliably, or removal remains awkward. PA is made for nylon and comes with instructions for cooling the bed and loosening stuck prints with water. It still requires careful application, and easy cleanup doesn’t mean there’s no cleanup.

If glue stick already works, keep using it. A comparison showing that Magigoo Original beats a glue stick on another plastic doesn’t prove that PA improves your nylon results. Nor does an enthusiastic PA owner report tell you how it will behave with a different plate or a larger part.

For frequent nylon printing on a compatible Prusa, the Special PA Nylon sheet is another option if you want to avoid applying adhesive. Check its filament and printer compatibility first. Prusa still notes that some nylons may need a brim or smaller parts, so a dedicated plate doesn’t remove every limitation either.

If you buy PA, judge it with a part you already know: keep the filament, plate, part shape and settings consistent, then compare corner lift, removal effort and cleanup over several prints. Include cooling time in that judgment if you need to start the next job quickly.

Magigoo PA makes the most sense when nylon adhesion is a persistent problem and your exact setup supports its use. Its drawbacks are the higher upfront cost and the work between prints. For a workshop already getting clean, repeatable results with a cheaper method, it’s an optional experiment, not an essential upgrade.