I bought a spool .5kg of the BL Support for ABS Filament and there is a guide in the wiki about how to use it and I’m curious if the wiki article is fairly on point and if there are any other cautionary things not mentioned I need to be aware of.
I’ve built a couple of ABS models that had some pretty large areas requiring support and am hoping this material will help improve the surface finish over using ABS as its own support material. The overhangs cleaned up with a couple of passes with a very fine flat file but hoping this stuff will improve the surface.
{update inserted} I saw your post about using HIPS (BL Support for ABS). Don’t ever bother testing what I suggested below… I tried using PLA as a support for ABS tonight and spent over an hour disassembling everything to clean a bad clog. Live and learn.{/edit}
[orignal post started out as:]
I haven’t tried this, but a couple of YouTuber’s showed how you could use PLA as support for ABS…. (redacted.. read note above)
PLA and ABS is a terrible combination. PLA doesn’t bond strongly, it’s true. But the two plastics have radically different coefficients of thermal expansion and melting temperatures. ABS shrinks about 0.75% as it cools, PLA shrinks about 0.2% as it cools. Particularly for supports around the edges of the print where things cool the fastest, the ABS can “walk” away from the PLA, the supports deform, maybe the PLA peels away. And you print ABS in an enclosed (and heated, ideally) build chamber, which means temperatures at the top of the build chamber where the filament guide tubes are located will be high. PLA will soften on the way to the extruder, and it becomes susceptible to jamming in the extruder.
PLA makes a great support for PETG, but has the same it-might-jam-from-heat problem as with ABS. You need a support material with a melting temp that’s reasonably close to your primary plastic.
If I recall, I inadvertently discovered that PETG can work as a support for ABS. But the best stuff to use is HIPS. Not only does it break away cleanly (when properly tuned), you can dissolve it in d-limonene, so you can use it for supports in areas you won’t be able to reach to remove them in the finished print. And it’s from the same family of styrene plastic as ABS, it has an exact thermal match to ABS, no differential shrinkage rates.
And it’s worth adding, HIPS is actually a great primary filament. I don’t know why it isn’t that popular.
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HIPS as support interface is the way to go for ABS.
The merchants don’t want to sell them maybe because 1 roll of HIPS, as support interface, can last very very long time, hence almost no profit due to cost of stock and warehouse storage. Say, sale ratio between HIPS and ABS is about 1:100 or higher
PETG may work as support interface for ABS if the support is close to the bed which means extruder gear assembly is not that hot at early of the print. Once chamber is hot enough, print head gets hotter and extruder jam is almost inevitable when change filament to PETG.
Based on the replies I think I need to clarify my question.
- Support for ABS is a filament purpose made to generate your supports on an ABS model that has overhangs.
- The question I posted was intended to see if other people had 1) used the material and was there any commentary that goes beyond what the wiki guide says to do.
- The BL blend HIPS is used ONLY at the interface so a half a kilo is going to last a loooong time.
I think the product name leaves a lot to be desired. I’m going to refer to it as HIPS. I primarily buy BL filament and mostly either ABS or PLA so it is not like the stuff is stuck off to the side where one might miss it. I can be slow on the uptake on occasion but only just recently realized that it was a material and not a technique.
BL sells a .5kg spool of what they call “Support for ABS” which I just loaded into one of my AMS and am gearing up to try. I made it a link to send anyone who clicks on it to the wiki page. Of note is that the spool that .5kg is wound up on appears to be a regular sized BL spool. I had sort of thought about your comment about a spool of HIPS will last a long time and so it sort of makes sense that BL would sell it in smaller quantities. The white is a brand new, right out of the vacuum bag .5kg spool. The green is BL ABS and is new minus maybe a meter used off it.
To go to your point about HIPS, here is how BL describe their product.
The main component of Support for ABS is High Impact Polystyrene (HIPS). It is not sensitive to moisture and does not easily absorb water from the air, so it usually does not require drying before printing.
I’m going to give it a try.
I do have a question before I even start attempting the first print.
Is it possible to edit g-code to reflect the printer one has rather than the machine the model was created with? This is a problem for me in general because I have a P1S. This special HIPS model and a ton of other models configuration settings are done on an X series printers. Am I going to have to change the printer and synch my AMS’s for every model out on Makerworld or Printables that was originally uploaded by its creator on a different printer?
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The X and P printers are mostly functionally equivalent. A model that prints well on an X1 should be easily resliced and printed by a P1 (assuming you don’t need the enclosed build chamber of the X1 for the filament being used). But the g-code generated is specific to the machine’s configuration and the slicer that was used. You always need (or more accurately, really, really should) to reslice if you do not have the exact same type of machine.
