Reaching out to the community for anyone familiar with printing with ABS with HIPS as support. Really hoping this post can stay up for long enough to give those who are familiar an opportunity to add to the overall knowledge here - making a better community building. Thank you for any time you can give.
I am unsuccessfully trying to setup a print profile to print ABS using HIPS as an interface support layer. I have printed with these two materials in the past on an X1C, but after two weeks of attempting to setup a profile on the H2D I am at a loss as what to do next.
Here is an example support test print showing the failure:
So I continue to test other filament settings and am getting a little better results, but still not near what I am looking for. I noticed there is more separation between the filament and support layer on one side, and it appears to be air flow from the internal heater. Will continue to explore closer.
First change that greatly impacted the print quality, admitting I did not think to check for this: there is a separate print speed setting for the right nozzle from the left nozzle. This was preset to print like PLA, far too fast for ABS and HIPS. After some adjustments to the right print speeds (set at the same as the left), was able to get the top to print like this:
Followed suggestions from the video above and disabled the external air coming into the printer and was able to improve the contact surface of the support layer as below. Still a small curl on one side, which appears to be on the right side where the heater fan is blowing. Will attempt locating a setting to disable the heater fan next.
After closer inspection of the filament cooling settings, I noticed the “Fan speed for overhangs” was still at 80%. Put it down to 20% to be the sam as max fan speed and that seems to have really helped with the outside rim of this test support region.
(1) Print speeds are specific to the nozzle in Bambu Studio. Ensure print speed for the nozzle you are assigning the filament to matches the print speed of the filament. The auto assign will change nozzle assignments for the fastest print time - as it doesn’t know the print speeds for different filaments.
(2) Although the Bambu ABS preset has the auxiliary fan speed turned off - the same logic needs to apply to the main fan speed. Turn the fan speeds down on all settings for both the ABS filament profile and the support filament profile (tested both HIPS and Support for ABS - same results). Started to see better results when fan was 30% or lower.
(3) External air intake to the printer will greatly impact ABS and needs to be turned off. This setting is particularly difficult to find. See this video for help: https://youtu.be/g9PLEOnWtyM?si=yywrUwXL4QWiPmwP.
I am satisfied with having a default ABS and ABS Support (HIPS or Bambu Support for ABS) profile to start from and tweak to get the best results. Hope this post helps others.
you sir, are my hero of the week!
your results of your research was spot on and my abs prints look suddenly almost as smooth as pla and the usage of the bambu lab hips works flawlessly.
thank you!
Thank you for sharing this! The main reason that I wanted the H2D was to be able to print ABS with HIPS support, and so far, it has been a nightmare. Looks like I need to get serious on diagnosing this issue to get useful parts
