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Printing small with ABS


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Posted · Printing small with ABS

Hello,

 

I’m looking for some help in printing with ABS. I am 3d printing a couple of small pieces for BSA motorbikes. The larger of the two pieces print absolutely fine, however when I come to the smaller piece, it does not go too well.

I am printing with an Anycubic viper. Bed adhesion is all good. The supports print well, it all goes wrong when it starts printing the first layer of infill, which I have set to 100%. Which you can see from the first picture. There are some curling of layers and there is also a gap in the seam (second picture). I am not using an enclosure, but, given that the larger piece prints well and the other does not I am leaning to this not being the issue. I have my bed at 110 and print temperature at 240. I have my fan turned off and the print speed at 40mm/s.

Any tips you could give would be awesome.

 

Many thanks

 

Marc

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    Posted · Printing small with ABS
    20 minutes ago, Marc211280 said:

    Any tips you could give would be awesome.

    My main tip to people remains "don't print with ABS unless you have a damn good reason to not print with anything else".

     

    Bigger pieces will print better simply because there's more surface area for what pitiful adhesion there is to take effect.

    That's also why an enclosure would be more likely to help here (it's simply less well stuck down to begin with, which makes it easier to warp), although I'm 99.99% sure it wouldn't fix your problem.

    Though I'm 100% sure I recommend printing ABS with an enclosure because the fumes are poisonous and you can stick a fan in front of your enclosure when your print finishes and you open it to exhaust the fumes.

     

    I think your temperatures are off a bit though, it's been a while since I've printed ABS - I went through a spool trying stuff, found it was way too hard to work with and didn't give me any better results than what I could do with PLA or PETG (depending on what the print required), but I ran it at 255° with the bed at 100°. Most spools of filament have the recommended print settings printer on the side of them. One brand of filament I buy actually comes with a tiny pamphlet for recommended settings for all the different materials they make, obviously things will differ between brands but looking at the tiny pamphlet it says to run ABS at 245-265° with the bed at 80-100° and a speed of 30-50mm/s (so you're fine on that one). The print temperature itself can be a very fine needle to thread, especially with something that warps as easily as ABS: you want it hot enough for maximum oozy stickiness but not so hot it takes so long to cool down it warps in the process. I usually start in the middle of a manufacturer's recommended range and go from there based on my results.

     

    You may want to look at travel speeds though, if the print head does a bit and then zooms off somewhere else it can drag not-yet-adhered filament with it. This also makes your infill pattern important: you want something with as few travels (especially retractions) as possible. In this case I'd recommend Zig Zag, as it works better with small and curved objects than the other good option in this regard (Concentric with Connect Infill Polygons enabled).

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    Posted · Printing small with ABS

    If it's for automotive he probably needs the higher temp material.  ABS doesn't get soft until around 99C.

     

    I agree it's probably temp related.

     

    It's tough with ABS as you need warmer temps to get the layers to bond well.  Your part may look great but if things are "too cold" the layer adhesion is bad: the part looks fine but you can pull it apart with your fingernails.  Or it's almost good enough but has a weakness along layer lines when you stress it.

     

    AT THE SAME TIME you have to worry about printing "too hot".  If it's too hot, overhangs will slump.  And with parts this small they don't have much time to cool before starting the next layer.

     

    Because of all this, the best printers are enclosed so you can have the air temp around 30-50C and you can also have high fan speeds so each layer cools to 100C but not too much more before the next layer is printed.

     

    Because this part is so small, also because your bed temp is nice and toasty, I suspect you have more (much more) the problem of too hot.  I'd crank the fan to the max.  I would even lower the bed temp.  Normally you want the bed well above the softening temp of 99C - this allows large parts to warp slightly and the bottom layers can flex slightly to distribute the forces and keep the part from warping up off the bed.

     

    But your part is too tiny to matter (regarding warping off the bed).  You can printer a little below 99C - maybe even say 90C and as long as the first layer sticks nicely you shouldn't have problems with the layers above warping the part.

     

    So I'd experiment with both lower bed temps and especially higher fan speeds.  With abs I never go below 1% fan.  But for this part you probably want 100% fan.

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