First time printing a foaming filament. Spectrum ASA Ultrafoam to be specific. I’m maximising the expansion at 270deg.
I ran the Flow Dynamics, Coarse Flow Rate and Fine Flow Rate calibrations and I’m not really worried about the surface quality, it seems good - I have also seen videos where people simply wipe off a hairy surface when a foaming print finishes. So I dont think this is completely ‘abnormal’.
However, this is not ‘hair’, it seems to be dragging filament across the bed while it is still extruding.
I’m guess its not ‘extruding’ its still ‘expanding’ out of the nozzle. Maybe I should only print one part at a time with this filament?
I dont want it to trigger the spagetti detection. I also dont want to turn off spagetti detection because the first time I tried this, it got into a big spagetti mess further up the print and the AI caught it for me.
Hi, yes that’s the general recommendation I’ve read on most foaming filaments. The less movement w/out extruding, the better, since it will keep oozing for some time. I’m not familiar with this particular filament though. But you may get some tips from the BL wiki page about their ASA Aero filament: https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/filament-acc/filament/asa-aero-printing-guide
The distance between the parts is quite large and one of the reasons for your issue. As mentioned above, printing one at the time wil help more. If you really want to print both together, reduce the distance dramatically. Don’t worry about the brims crossing.
What about retraction? I’m using the right nozzle because that’s what my AMS HT was connected to, maybe the left nozzle with a very small retraction (1-2mm) would be better?
First thing I noticed is they don’t talk about adjusting the flow rate at all, based on temperature. Every other foaming filament I’ve seen has to adjust both (including ASA Aero), reducing flow rate as temperature is increased. Reducing the flow rate would help with stringing, though I don’t know how that affects the rest of the model with this particular material.
They do mention “increasing retraction” to help reduce stringing. But doesn’t say what to set it to in the first place… I’m a little surprised foaming filament can be retracted at all, but I see the ASA Aero does use it by default, and I had good luck with the little bit I’ve tried so far.
Also I think their printing speed recommendation might be a little on the optimistic side…
I’ve printed ASA Aero on the Engineering plate with some light glue stick, which worked fine (besides not loving glue in general). Stayed away from the textured PEI due to the warnings. And of course not the super-tacky… so that didn’t leave many options on my H2C… lol.
I actually just got a Glacier plate yesterday, so that’s good to know! Haven’t heated it up yet. But yea was hoping that would be a glue-free Engineering alternative for smoothness.
Did you try lowering the plate temperatures? Spectrum lists a pretty wide range there. That looks pretty sticky tho… did it damage the plate at all?
Also just recently got a Darkmoon satin/CF plate, so maybe I’ll try that instead (the “satin” side is essentially smooth PEI with some kinda magic-sauce coating). So far I’ve printed Siraya PEBA Air on both sides of the DM, and that worked fine, though there’s a line somewhere between sticking w/out warp and the bottom layer getting kinda “rubberized” from sitting on a hot plate for a while, and being harder to remove (on larger prints). The foaming PEBA is like a fine open-cell foam rubber, gets quite flexible, so not really quite the same as the foaming ASA. But they also recommend staying away from textured PEI on that. Pretty cool stuff though!
I just fell down the Spectrum site rabbit hole… wow, they got some very cool sounding filaments!
Yeah, I bought 4 rolls of ASA kevlar by accident, put the wrong one in my basket! Dont know what to use it for so havent tried it yet. Id love to see a youtube comparison of its properties against CF, but couldnt find any. I also have their ASA glow and ASA fire retardant. Really looking forward to mixing ASA types in prints for different things.
The plate is not damaged, all good, just super sticky. But im hoping to mix regular ASA275 and Ultrafoam together in the same print, so once I finish dialling this in fully, I might just have regular 275 touching the plate. The ultrafoam does need to be super-dry, I had already dried it, but put it on to dry a second time for 24hrs at 80 deg in the AMS-HT. That helped. My chamber is at 60deg and my bed is at 80deg.
I generated the attached (Im not able to attach a document) with Claude. Might be useful to someone else.
And again in case anyone needs this topic in the future. The bambu glue stick is better for this than the magigoo. Comes away cleanly with the bambu glue stick. This is at 270 degrees before optimising flow.
Looking good! So that’s near “max foam” for this stuff?
I’m also curious if you’ve tried it at minimum temps and if it really “behaves like standard ASA 275” like it claims on the tin (or Web site). I noticed you mentioned mixing it with regular ASA 275.
One of the things I’m interested in, and playing with, is mixing/varying densities in the same print. It’s relatively limited of course since we can’t control temperature with modifiers (and have to hack in g-code to even control it by layer), but I like the possibilities. If it really works there might be a nice new slicer feature in there somewhere (eg. adjust temperature by part/modifier).
Also, about the kevlar ASA… I saw that on the site and was like… oooh, what could I use that for? But didn’t come up with anything (yet)…
Yeah. They say 280 is max. I did a print at below foaming temp. It’s fine but definitely not the same as normal ASA. Different texture and in my very unscientific opinion, ‘feels’ weaker. They also seem to have a Medical ABS filament which they say is rated for food safety…
- I have also seen videos where people simply wipe off a hairy surface when a foaming print finishes. So I dont think this is completely ‘abnormal’.
They also seem to have a Medical ABS filament which they say is rated for food safety…