ABS Printing Help

Jayesskerr · May 6, 2017

I don't know if this is the right forum, and sorry if it isn't but I am a new Ultimaker owner, and I am having some troubles with the machine... Well, maybe not troubles, but it seems to do some things that don't really make sense to me... Thanks in advance for any help! And sorry for the stupid questions, I've tried the manuals/search engine for the last 3 weeks to no avail... lol

So I get the machine, and I load up some PLA silver into Extruder 1, and some PVA into extruder 2, and although it took some work to get the PLA going, I have managed to get some successful prints. Cool. PVA is a garbled mess, I don't know wtf to do to get PVA to work, it just drags around a stringy mess. Very upsetting, I'd like it to work. I don't know if it's some setting somewhere in Cura that needs to be changed, or what... I guess I will figure it out at some point, but at the moment it seems pretty much un-useable...

Anyways, I gave up on PVA for the time being, and I decided to try some blue ABS. So far so good, I am trying to print a logo in blue ABS, and it seems there are a couple of behaviours that are unexpected;

1) I put some glue down, but the first layer it put down over that was using the silver PLA from extruder 1. Is that normal? Is it the way it should be done? If not where the heck do I change it from doing that in Cura?

2) There is a rectangle up in the top corner being printed. Anyone know why? It's not part of my model... Is it because I am using extruder 2?

3) The blue ABS layers don't seem to "stick" as nicely as the PLA. I set the Built plate temp at about 110deg cel, but as I watch this print I can't help but think that the PLA prints I've already done were a lot less troublesome... Again, is there some setting I am missing in Cura to make this happen a lot easier?

Thanks in advance, guys!

Nicolinux · May 8, 2017

Hi,

the second print core labled "BB" is only to be used with PVA. If you want to print ABS you need to use an "AA" print core. You can either remove the PLA filament from the AA print core or swap the second BB print core with the third print core you have (AA).

The cube you see at the back of the print is the "prime tower". This is used for dual extrusion prints (like PLA/PVA or PLA/PLA or ABS/ABS) so the nozzles are filled properly with filament when they switch during a print.

I'd suggest to stick to the default profiles in Cura 2.5 for now. PVA is not easy to print with, but if you activate the prime tower, you should be fine: