Printing ABS On Ultimaker

[magicxman 0]

My project requires me to print purely on ABS using Ultimaker but I cannot find enough information to use ABS on Ultimaker. Furthermore, do need pre-heated bed mods or I can just print with raft on blue tape? Please advise.

[joergen 2]

My project requires me to print purely on ABS using Ultimaker but I cannot find enough information to use ABS on Ultimaker. Furthermore, do need pre-heated bed mods or I can just print with raft on blue tape? Please advise.

Abs is very similar to PLA in some regards. Temp is about 30C warmer, but the temp is more important to be proper, otherwise you don't get adhesion to the previous layer... And this is different between different kinds of ABS. A good ballpark is 240-250C.

Packing density is 0.96-0.98, definitely not the completely wrong 0.85 cura is suggesting. Kisslicer and slic3r work nicely with flow adjustments of 1.04-1.06.

Since ABS warps more than PLA, you kinda need a heated bed (around 115C). I have no experience with rafts. In regards to cooling, you need less cooling than PLA, I have set my fan to 25% max (for outlines only). A heated chamber (sealing your UM with bubble wrap) seems to help as well, but I have no experience.

Other than that, there is google, and the google UM group. Thee is so much info about this subject, that I find your claim that you can't any info somehow bogus.

[magicxman 0]

Thanks, Joergen. I did managed to find info about ABS on ultimaker but nothing much about the actual print settings but more on how to change to heated platform and etc. I guess I need to try it myself and learn through experience as there is no quick setup guide or some tutorials where I can follow. BTW, I am new to 3D printing and have not upgrade my platform to heated one, maybe will do in future. I think the advise given by you is very good for me to use a guideline. This is the kind of information I need. If anyone can tell us their experience and techniques on printing on non-heated bed, either using raft or not, it will be good. Thanks a lot.

[phanc60844 0]

I'm in the same position but I need to know before buying the machine exactly what i need to print in ABS. I've had a look round but there is no difinative answer for this. The specs for the machine say that it can handle ABS but if you need to mod it to a heated bed to do this then suerly the machine is being missold?

[mrjohnk 0]

I recently bought my Ultimaker a few weeks back. I have since equipped it with the heated bed and have been printing ABS in the last week. ABS certainly has its own properties that are different than PLA, but once you get used to it, it is a nice material to print in. I wouldn't mind to share a working ABS Cura profile, but mileage may vary. I'm finding out that each plastic supplier has slight differences in the products they sell. Even different colors from the same vendor can need different settings for speed, temperature and other factors.

Today, I removed my Kapton tape (or polyimide tape if you prefer) from my glass platform and started printing directly to glass. Initially, I didn't have a lot of success. I tried naked glass, sanded glass and sugar/water coating solution, but none worked well. I just completed a print using glass sprayed with aerosol hairspray. This worked well. I needed to turn the temperature of the heated bed down from the usual 115 degress to 75 to keep the hairspray from smoking and burning, but it worked well and held the part securely. I've yet to remove it from the glass, but at least it printed well.

-John

[fluxline 0]

i hope your not spraying the mist with the glass still in the UM, I think in the long run that could start to gum things up with all the aerosols. I've also printed small, and even large but thin objects using hairspray on a cold glass with PLA. Works great, and lifts great. It's best for the thin objects to leave the fan off for the whole print.

[mrjohnk 0]

I have a plate of glass that sits on top of the heater that I can remove. It just has four bulldog clips that hold it tight to the MK1 heater. It makes it easy to remove it, spray it and put it back. While the hairspray did work for one part, it wasn't all that reliable for subsequent parts. I'm back to using the yellow polyimide tape again.

-John

[magicxman 0]

I will like to print using ABS but till now, still don't know where to start. I am still practicing and fine tuning my PLA prints and not sure should go the direction of setting up heated bed for ABS print. Can anyone point me to the direction of which is the best setup for heated bed as from various posts in Google groups as well as blogs, some says aluminium bed is better than glass bed while some others mentioned otherwise. I do wish that we can have official Ultimaker heated bed upgrade. Meanwhile, really good if everyone can post their setup and settings for ABS printing in this post.

[mrjohnk 0]

I've detailed my setup on the Google group, but essentially, here is a summary of the high points:

MK1 Heater

24V, 400W power supply bought from Ebay

14G or thicker wire, high temperature silicone insulated

18V relay connected to the heated bed port on the UM control board

100K EPCOS thermister from Ultimachine (very inexpensive)

4.7K through hole resistor (see wiki about this)

healthy amount of polyimide tape (AKA Kapton tape)

borosilicate glass top, covered in polyimide tape

small bulldog clips attaching glass to heated bed

I used the tape to attach the thermister to the bottom of the MK1 heater. Use a lot of tape over a wide area since you really don't want this part coming off and causing a run-away heater. The tape is also used to provide strain relief for the heavy gauge wire connecting to the relatively small soldering spots on the MK1.

I did have to fabricate some adapter plates that transition from the holes in the MK1 heater to the spring holes in the Z-stage on the UM. I just used some aluminum strip that I bought at the local hardware store. It is probably 20mm wide 3mm-4mm thick (estimated). It is mounted to the edges of the MK1 heater to extend the length as the heater is slightly smaller than the original acrylic footprint. Then, holes are drilled in the aluminum where the original spring loaded screws mount to the Z-stage. This allows me to continue to use spring mounted adjustments to set the level of the heated bed too. Also, I did mount my heater sideways so that the wires came off the side of the board instead of the front or back. Doing it this way, I did have to add some shims to the X & Y end stops to be sure that the hot end stays within the bounds of the heated bed since it is a little smaller than the original size of the bed that came with the UM.

Using 24V seems like a great way to go. When I get ready to print, I simply set the heated bed temperature using the "control" part of the Ulticontroller to 115 degrees, then navigate to the card menu and select the file I want to print. the bed easily heats up faster than the hot end and is ready to go without slowing me down. From what I've read, some 12V implementations can take up to 10 minutes to fully heat and be ready to print on. I'm printing ABS at between 245-255 degrees on this setup.

-John

[magicxman 0]

John, thanks for sharing. This is very useful. I have ordered a MK2 thermal board and glass on Ebay as well as PID temperature controller to monitor my control my bed temperature with an external power supply. The reason of doing it independent of ultimaker board is because I am afraid it will disturb my Ultimaker board and causing power drain or to prevent something blow up. I hope this comes out well. Will update again.

[mrjohnk 0]

If you use a relay to control the power to the heater, there will be no noticeable power draw and it would allow the system to control the heater. The draw is about 70mA, so hardly anything. The relay is also very inexpensive and fairly easy to implement.

-John

[magicxman 0]

Thanks John, your method sounds good so I can use the software to monitor the temperature and connect the sensor to the board directly. For the relay to work, it will be an external power source to power up the MK2 heater board. Is this the correct setup? What is the voltage required to trigger the relay?

[mrjohnk 0]

Yes, you will end up with two power supplies. One for the Ultimaker and one for the MK2 heater. The relay will be controlled by the main board. The power supply that came with the Ultimaker is 19V and the relay linked below works well at this voltage.

http://www.findchips.com/avail?part=ALFG1PF18

Below is a small portion of the text I also posted on this subject in the Google Ultimaker group:

As for wiring, It is fairly simple. The heated bed port on the main board (2 wires) connects to the coil side of the relay (2 connections). The positive of the 24V power supply goes to one side of the contact portion of the relay. The positive side of your heated bed goes to the other contact portion of the relay. Hook the negative of your heated bed to the negative of the 24V power supply. Essentially, you are interrupting the circuit between the power supply and the heated bed by switching it through the relay on the positive side.

Of course, you can switch the negative side if you want to as well. Polarity normally isn't too important on the heated bed except if you have an LED that is only working on one way since it is just a really long, flat wire on a circuit board. In my case, I have the MK1 heated bed circuit board with two LEDs mounted in two different direction, so either way you send the power in, it will light one or the other.

-John

[magicxman 0]

John, it is possible that you post a picture of your heated bed setup. It will be great help. Thanks a lot.

[mrjohnk 0]

I have a few pictures of the bed in the following Flickr set. I don't have any pictures of the relay or power supply. In the pictures, you can see the pieces of aluminum that make up the adapter plates on the sides of the heater board. They simply extend the width of the heater and provide holes to mate the heater to the z-stage. One piece of aluminum is slightly longer to protrude past the heater and provides a place for the wires to get strain relief. You can see this where there is a zip tie. It holds up the wires leading to the heater on the right side. The thermister path can be seen by following the blue and yellow wires. The clips on the corners hold the glass to the heater.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8465641@N0 ... 166760275/

-John