Dear all
I need a filament which is heat resistant up to at least 100°C, therefore I have tested ASA and ASA-CF. ASA-CF is even much better in that regard.
Now, I printed with a spool of ASA-CF, which was opened a few months ago. I did dry it for several hours @ 70°C. The print has extremely poor layer adhesion and very high brittleness. Completely useless.
What is your experience with ASA-CF?
The part was printed on H2D with default settings (60° chamber temperature).
Here are a few pictures:
ASA doesn’t have great layer adhesion anyway, but those prints look like it was very wet still. It shouldn’t be frosty looking like that.
Try weighing the spool with a precision scale (at least tenths of a gram resolution) and then drying it at the rec 80°C until it stops losing weight and try the print again.
Standard way to increase ASA/ABS layer adhesion is to crank the nozzle temperature, start dialing it up imo. Maybe make a temp tower and break it to see if there are any nearby threshholds.
Adding 20-30% strength to not a lot is still not a lot, but more is better eh
I will give it another shot after another 8h drying.
30% increase of 0 strength is still 0.
I don‘t have a scale with that precision (it is on my wish list), but 8h should be enough.
I bought Bambulab because I want at least ok results without tweaking.
I have two digital scales, the small one measures to 0.1g, the larger one to 1.0 g. I use the larger one for filament because the spool does not obscure the display and 1g accuracy is good enough. I dry filament until the weight does not change in an hour. Record the weight of a dried spool before storage, if gains more than 2g in storage, re-dry it.
The problem with drying for a specific amount of time is that the amount of water to be lost is unknown and so is the rate of moisture loss. Filament will likely be dried too little or too long.
Don’t ignore the 80°C drying recommendation either and you will also have better results.
This is not tweaking and has nothing to do with buying Bambu lab… Poorly stored wet filament will not print properly on anything.
Not sure about drying, but a few comments:
Unknown purpose, so if you can provide details about environment, impact requirements and so on, then community may suggest a better alternative.
If you just need a high temp with a good layer adhesion, then ASA-CF is not the best material to start with. Look into Nylons and PAHT.
General suggestions based on those images:
Not quite true. I print a lot of ASA and CF materials. Bambu’s ASA is literally the worst in my printing experience.
ASA-CF is the cheapest solution for >100 degrees C. PA6 is better, but the surface quality is horrible. PPS or PEEK are way too expensive.
Can you dry for too long? Honestly, measuring the weight every time you dry is completely impractical. You might do that once to get an idea for the required time. But you don‘t want to do that all the time.
The filament was stored @ 50-60 % RH. My AMS has constantly <20%RH, but obviously 4 spools is not a lot.
Building a dry cabinet for 50 spools is a project on my list.
So what’s you expectation? Be cheap and do better than anything else? I don’t know how much you know, but does look like you are quite new to that.
Start with figuring out what characteristics are important. You can’t have all and be cheap.
If your expectation is that “I bought H2D, I bought ASA - why it doesn’t look like PLA basic and why it’s not as hard as granite” then you are in the world of pain.
Judging that your are not super close with filament drying procedure - I would take a guess that you didn’t dry it. Nylons prints terribly when they are wet. You know when they are wet? All the time. I don’t even start a print with PA6 without it being dried before and then stored in a sealed container with <10% RH.
So …
you don’t need to go fancy - get a cereal container, drop some desiccant bags (or loose silica beads) and you are all set on that. Cheap and realiable.
Keep in mind that desiccant does not dry filament. It just can’t - all it can do is to keep the filament dry.
Not even a comparison.
ASA and ABS are cheap because of how common they are. This is called the economy of scale. They are mass produced because they work.
I think the point is to do something fancy. Why follow like sheep when you can do something great. A closet with a dehumidifier is the best storage. Why would you buy 50 to 100 cereal containers when you can do that.
Cereal containers are a waste of money (my opinion).
I would need too many of them. And if I want to use a spool after a few months, I can still not be sure, that the filament is dry!
Either you have a solution where you are sure, that it is dry. Or you must dry it anyway before a print…
Sure thing, but keep in mind the context of the discussion about not being able to figure out ASA properties…
It’s like:
I can’t print a part straight … buuuuuuuuuuuuuut I’m going to figure out and print a drybox cabinet for 50 spools.
What, you don’t like cereals? 
Hey Avocado, I really don’t have a clue on what is wrong with you.
I did post here because I wanted to get experience from other users with ASA-CF. If you can not add any value, why do you post anyway?
I know very well, that ASA needs to be dried. I have done that for more than 8h before I printed. It is possible, that this was not enough, but not all people are stupid.
You brought that point into discussion.
“On their list”. I read that as an idea for the future, not the main point. I think they are capable of thinking of two things at once.
Saying “dry your filament” is always a good recommendation, but at the same time it is a cop out answer.
@T_guttata share your print settings. Everyone wants to focus on drying, so lets look in another direction. I will attach a 3mf with settings I use when I get some time.
Well, as I said, I have used Bambu ASA-CF default settings (chamber temperature 60°C). Did not even look into all the details. I will do some test prints after some additional hours of drying. If it does not get better, I will have a closer look and try a few other things.
My requirement in this case is primarily heat resistance. A friend of mine used a lot of PA6 for creating gears. He showed me some example parts. The surface quality is ok for structural parts but just not acceptable for what I need (claddings / panels). That’s why I went with ASA-CF.
I tested the difference between ASA and ASA-CF, and the difference is huge.
You will not see that in the data sheet. I put a part in an oven @ 120°C. The ASA part deformed heavily. The ASA-CF part did not show any deformation at the same temperature!
That is very hot. Even if the CF part is not visibly deforming, it is loosing a great deal of its structural integrity.
Why did you choose 120C for that test?
Default settings are almost never optimal
Default settings must be ok and the base for further optimization. Bambulab usually manages to get the default settings right.
I did a high temperature test to find out, what the max temperature is without deforming. I have parts with little mechanical stress. And I hoped that ASA-CF would be ok (which was the case).
If I need to go higher, next option is PA6. But as I mentioned before, I am not ok with the surface quality. I don’t need a cheap filament, but I will not pay >$100 for 1kg. So far, I have not found another option for 120°C other than ASA-CF.
Ok, I did print some sample parts (ASA and ASA-CF from two different spools): 10x3x40mm. I broke these parts across the layers.
According the Bambulab Filament guide, layer adhesion should be roughly double for ASA-CF compared to ASA (9.4 vs 4.9 kJ/m2). I found the opposite. Regular ASA needs significantly more force to break the part compared to ASA-CF!
