I’m in need of a little help. In the picture you can tell I’m having two problems. But i think it’s one problem causing both to occur.
Ok so I’m printing ABS, temp 245, bed temp 105. All other parameters are set to default. How do i stop the edges of my print from bowing up? And the strange thing is that it usually happens only on 1 or 2 sides of the object. You can also tell I print with a boarder (which i though would help prevent these things from occurring) so I’m at a loss. I also use Elmer’s stick glue before print.
Any suggestions would be sppreciated.
Thank you.
ABS likes heat . . . most times, one prints it at 212 C (extruder) and 90 C printer bed). As for the warping, I find printing on a raft fixes that problem, but you have to sand that surface down. The cracks themselves are also temp related, and I find fixing them is best done with acetone (brushing it on) and then putting it through an acetone polish afterwards. Another method is to use epoxy instead of acetone (which might make it that much stronger).
I expect that you mean you print your ABS at 245° C, but that’s trivial to your troubles.
If your printer is not enclosed, you’re delaminations are being caused by excessive cooling rate, that is, it’s cooling down too fast for internal stresses to work out gently. If you can enclose your printer, the cracks will lessen but might not be completely removed.
With respect to the bed release, consider a larger border also called a skirt or brim. Increase the perimeter count to ten or even fifteen and maybe run two or three layers. You’d have to cut it away with a sharp instrument, but you’d get decent results overall.
Temperatures are a crap-shoot in general. Xenormorpheus suggests 212° C, while I use 260° C, but neither figure has any real meaning, as it’s the numbers my printers use, not necessarily the temperature at the nozzle.
If you’re using 245° C, you could afford to kick it up another five or ten degrees to see if that helps reduce the cracking, but keeping the outside air away will be of great benefit.
I have a partially enclosed printer and still add a cardboard shield to keep airflow to a minimum and temperature at a higher level. Even now, with winter here, it’s TDCold in the hobby room and I have to avoid ABS builds until the sun returns.
Ah, I have an enclosed printer, so an open one might need things a bit hotter. But that aside, I do find printing ABS on a raft corrects the corner warping problem.
Yes, both of these are caused by the fact that ABS shrinks significantly as it cools. You’ll have to keep the print warm until it’s complete. That means you need a heated chamber. Something as simple as a cardboard box with a 100W incandescent bulb will help immensely, but may not eliminate the warping for this print. I’ve read that you need 55°C in the chamber to really solve this, but the box and light bulb won’t get you there.
Please note the obvious fire hazard in that suggestion. Take precautions or build something more permanent. Also, make sure you don’t have any PLA or other low temperature material in your printer’s structure. A heated chamber can cause them to fail.
Could probably get away with making a fiberglass enclosure or clear acrylic.
A heated enclosure is just a cardboard box overtop the printer with a ceramic heater inside. A better approach may be to print the object in layers less than the destructive delamination height. A border around the object just gets the filament warmed up to a constant smooth temp, so the object does not have first layer deformation from uneven flow. Uneven shrinkage with 3d printed parts is an unfortunate reality because there is no underlying structure that keeps the parts shape while cooling.
So in my experience I’ve found that 0.1mm layer heights are too small, stick to 0.2mm and higher. Make the bottom layer 0.3 or 0.4mm, that will help with warping. ABS is really particular with temperature, it took about 5 trys to find the bed temperature. Too hot and the bottom layers will be soft, too cold and it’ll warp. 98c was the right temp for me, this resulted in the bottom layers being just below the glass transition temp of 90c.
Printing too slow will cause cracks too. Need at least 20mm/s. Too high of a hotend temp and the plastic degrades, too low and it won’t bond.
Cooling fan must be off except for bridges. Fan speed for bridges should be very low.
Additives in the filament can cause it to warp more, or absorb moisture. Dry the filament before use.
Almost every time I have this issue my bed is not level. I run an open printer, no enclosure and so far all my ABS issues have been resolved with a more thorough leveling of the bed. I can get away with less of a level using PLA but ABS needs almost perfect bed leveling to avoid this issue
Try spreading some Magigoo [ https://www.amazon.com/Magigoo-Pen-All-One-Adhesive/dp/B01N2JGTWJ/ref=sr_1_1?s=industrial&ie=UTF8&qid=1514951265&sr=1-1&keywords=magigoo ]
No amount of bed adhesion can fix this. All that curl at the bottom will go right into delaminated layers. The pics show adhesion that’s already sufficient if the warping can be brought under control. @Stephanie_A was right to mention the cooling fan. That looks like a lot of warp for a print that size.
For the bottom picture try leveling you print bed
@Jacob_Morel The bed goes through a leveling check. So the level of my bed is good. But thanks for you advise.
Put my two Cents in here now too:
I’ve initially encountered similar problems and I know ABS is sometimes a tricky material to keep adhesive to the bed. Maybe buildtak or a better bed material would help. ALSO: Try to keep the object cooling fan off for the first couple of layers. For me I simply unplug the 12V fan power but you could set it up in software, too. By doing so, you help the material thermodynamically stick better to the bed instead of creating a heat seap through the object cooling fan. Maybe that helps.
@BlameItOn I’ve read the fan might be the culprit also, so i’ll give it a shoot and see how it turns out. Thanks everyone.
A couple things, 145 C? seems kind of low for ABS temps. 210 to 230C is average but check the MFR’s recommendations on the their filament temps. You have curling and layer separations, so your nozzle might be too far from the bed. Try printing a smaller test print at a closer distance. This all works for me when I have this problem. IF that doesn’t work, you might try a diff brand of filament.
@Jeff_Tucker Interesting, will try.(Also I think I messed up, I’m printing around 245, I believe. thanks for the correction. Cheers.