Experimenting with ABS

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charles.yates
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Experimenting with ABS

Post by charles.yates » Wed Jan 27, 2016 11:41 am

Having a few spools of ABS kicking around, I thought I'd see how it fared on the M2 - end results aren't really too bad considering I'm using the box the printer came in for insulation.

This is a print of Adalinda: The Singing Serpent sliced at 0.3mm and printed with some transparent ABS I picked up on banggood.com. Cooling turned off, bed of 110, extruder of 250.

Got a few more prints which I'll add to the thread down the line if anyone is interested.
Attachments
2016-01-27 08.48.19.jpg

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Jules
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Re: Experimenting with ABS

Post by Jules » Wed Jan 27, 2016 1:18 pm

Turned out excellent! (Kind of hard to see with that color.....no cracking at all?) :)

charles.yates
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Re: Experimenting with ABS

Post by charles.yates » Wed Jan 27, 2016 3:32 pm

Nope, no cracking, lifting or curling with that one - other prints have been more problematic, but that was surprisingly stress free, especially considering the size.

I printed it quite slowly (around 75% initially, but when I went to bed, I dropped it to 50% as I didn't want to wake up to a broken print :)).

jsc
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Re: Experimenting with ABS

Post by jsc » Wed Jan 27, 2016 7:58 pm

I've found that it's not entirely absolute size which causes ABS issues, but also geometry. Long straight runs, like in a box, are the worst. The dragon is made up of small, nearly circular islands through much of its height, and the body is compact and the perimeters broken up by all sorts of curves.

charles.yates
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Re: Experimenting with ABS

Post by charles.yates » Wed Jan 27, 2016 11:19 pm

Hmm - not so sure about that :).

Same filament, same settings.
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2016-01-27 22.50.05.jpg

charles.yates
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Re: Experimenting with ABS

Post by charles.yates » Wed Jan 27, 2016 11:53 pm

And some time later....
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2016-01-27 23.50.31.jpg

jsc
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Re: Experimenting with ABS

Post by jsc » Thu Jan 28, 2016 12:48 am

Well, your tray is certainly boxier than the dragon, but it also has some design features that make it far from the worst case scenario.
The various indented segments break up and shorten the linear runs, and it's not a solid box so you're not dealing with infill strain across the whole volume.

Here are some techniques people have used to combat warping through geometry:
http://hackaday.com/2011/11/15/a-techni ... 3d-prints/
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:58469
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:168352

I think many of us, myself included, have "solved" warping through the expedient of "don't use ABS." Your prints look great, though.

charles.yates
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Joined: Sat Dec 19, 2015 9:12 pm

Re: Experimenting with ABS

Post by charles.yates » Thu Jan 28, 2016 12:03 pm

jsc wrote:Well, your tray is certainly boxier than the dragon, but it also has some design features that make it far from the worst case scenario.
The various indented segments break up and shorten the linear runs, and it's not a solid box so you're not dealing with infill strain across the whole volume.
True. I would expect a number of problems with other prints for sure.
I think many of us, myself included, have "solved" warping through the expedient of "don't use ABS." Your prints look great, though.
Well, I have a bit of it, so I'm keen to make use of it :).

Next up was a Minion Dave Keychain - printed on his back, with support, levelled (via repetierHost) and sliced at 0.2mm. Otherwise same settings as above (except I'm gravitating to a nozzle of 245 degrees rather than 250).
2016-01-28 11.36.45.jpg
And with the support removed:
2016-01-28 11.46.49.jpg

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insta
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Re: Experimenting with ABS

Post by insta » Thu Jan 28, 2016 4:04 pm

The clear stuff is a lot stickier than regular ABS, I guess the gratituous lack of butadiene helps in that regard. It makes ABS behave a lot more like PETG -- much more flexible and less warping.

Try it with real, opaque, natural-colored ABS and you'll be missing the clear stuff and pining for PETG :)
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charles.yates
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Re: Experimenting with ABS

Post by charles.yates » Thu Jan 28, 2016 9:35 pm

insta wrote:The clear stuff is a lot stickier than regular ABS, I guess the gratituous lack of butadiene helps in that regard. It makes ABS behave a lot more like PETG -- much more flexible and less warping.

Try it with real, opaque, natural-colored ABS and you'll be missing the clear stuff and pining for PETG :)
I've never tried PETG - on my todo list though :). This clear filament hasn't been my favourite (will move on to the others later), but I've managed to squeeze a few odds and ends out of it - had a fair amount of abject failures too.

Like this one - I was trying to print all 3 of the chairs from Three 1:24 Windsor Chairs in one print, but each time, one of them would break and it would be a wonderful game of domino toppling following... sigh.

It's a little stringy, but I did get it to print 1 of them at least:
2016-01-28 21.23.15.jpg
I had to turn the fans on for this one because of the bridging going on, but I tweaked the settings in slic3r in an attempt to turn it on during the bridges only. I've made better prints with other filaments of this one, but it's a tricky and slow print (speed set at 50% for this one).

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