Does ambient temperature make a big difference to how well ABS sticks to a heated bed? This was “printed” at about 21°C, 215°C extruder, 110°C bed. I have a feeling I get better results with a slightly warmer room.
21°C is warm enough to get ABS to stick. Are you sure the top of your bed is actually 110°C? To get that I set the temperature measured underneath the PCB to 130°C.
215°C sounds a bit to low, i usually print ABS @ 245°C. What does make a huge difference is the distance of the head on the first layer. I try to really spread out the first layer as much as possible, often enough only 30% first layer height.
The environment only makes adifference for me if there is a certain airflow over the printbed, this can lead to the print warping very easily and getting unstuck.
215°C seems pretty cold for ABS - i print mine at 245-250°C to get every last bit of interlayer adhesion out of it. With the bed at 120C (IR measured), the Kapton’s adhesive usually gives in before the ABS peels off the Kapton.
(Keep in mind that due to tolerances in the thermistor’s resistance and the resistor network on your control board, the actual temperature can have a significant offset from the displayed one)
Yes the ambient temperature is important you need to avoid temp. changes. You can use like Thomas suggested the kapton adhesive tape or a special Lac for the bed It will make the piece adheres better… Good luck!
I already have Kapton tape on that bed. I’ve tried upping the extruder temperature to 235°C, with no noticeable difference in adhesion. I didn’t realize the bed temp measurement could be off by so much, though. I’ll definitely try to boost that, but I’ll need insulation under it for that, I have just barely been able to push it to 120°C.
Depending on the hot end, 215 may be too low; and certainly you can get better first layer adhesion with extra heat . If you printed straight from the gcode and did a wait-for-bed-temp at 110, it’s possible that your glass was not fully heated - so you get less adhesion because its colder, and because the glass could still be expanding as you started printing, breaking the adhesion. WIth an open printer, you will develop a convective airflow that could bring in much cooler air to the bed, which makes this worse.
Does the ambient temp matter, or is it fluctuations in that temp that matter? I’m waiting on my printer to ship still (gotta love kickstarter, it’ll get shipped eventually, maybe) but my plan is to put it in my server room, it stays a pretty consistent 68f.
The warmer the room is the better 3D printers work.
The traces in the pic look as though you could be a little closer to the bed on the first layer. They’re not very squished.
Rafting helps, to when this happens
@Jason_Scott - generally, it’s better to keep the printers toasty (within reason), rather than cold. But all things equal, I’d rather have a constant environment than a warmer but wildly varying one.
Make sure of:
- Level build plate
- Distance from extrusion tip to build plate is minimal (1 or 2 post-it notes with noticeable friction when sliding b/w tip and plate)
- Level build plate
- Avoid drafts
- I set the build plate temp at 115 - 117 °C
- Extrusion temp set at 230°C
- I see no noticeable variation to 1st layer sticking with ambient temperatures ranging from 15 - 30°C.
- Level build plate
To improve leveling. I had to move to thicker glass. I am using 4.5mm glass from a picture framing shop. That increases the time to get the top of the glass to temp. I usually manually bring the bed to temp, and after it has stabilized a bit, then I set the hotend to proper temp. This helps my patients on waiting for the glass to heat up. Granted I have only printed in PLA so far.
I built an enclosure for my solidoodle 3 and it made a BIG difference in all of ABS prints. I will not print ABS without an enclosure.
Also try a little AquaNet hairspray on the glass, it will help you ABS “stick” to the platform.
@Joseph_Chiu I think your suggestion is an important one: the bed glass won’t have had as much time to reach temp in a slightly colder room. I’ll try placing the printer in a big cardboard box and let it preheat for a while for next print.
@Dale_Dunn @3dpod_3D_Printing_Se I did level the bed and set z home with a piece of 80g paper and measured a printed .1mm brim to as close to .1mm as my Nonie scale .05mm callipers could indicate.
I bought one of these too. It is not very good at all. You will waste a lot of time trying to align it and you will waste a lot of PLA and get very frustrated! Just buy a Makerbot or Cube or one of the famous brands that prints properly without any adjustments and messing around. Save yourself the headache. Trust me.
@Hannes_Lilliefeldt , trust the machine’s output more than measurements taken at the limits of your tools. The traces on the glass should be a little squashed, and they don’t appear that way in the picture. Traces right next to each other aren’t even in contact.
Also, did you level the bed and set Z home with everything hot?
He is already have good bad level as i can see from the 1st bad layer - thats means one of the bars is not leveled right
@Dale_Dunn I know those traces look really off in the picture. I have measured single layer height, levelled and calibrated as mentioned and earlier prints have been much better. The sudden spaghetti print on a cold morning was specifically what prompted me to ask the original question.