So, I just started printing with ABS and ASA a couple of weeks ago with my fully enclosed (ARC enclosure) P1P.
I designed and added a 2 fan active ventilation system that vents directly outside to eliminate the noxious fumes from printing with these filaments. Both fans are controlled by chamber fan settings.
This setup sits in my home office, so setting the chamber fan to “off” is not an option for me. I value my health. I think running it 20% is about the minimum needed to keep the fumes flowing outside.
What tips and tricks can you offer to minimize the “fuss factor” with printing in ABS and ASA and not get corner warping?
To be clear these are some of the high (recursive) fuss factor techniques I have seen discussed but want to minimize:
Preheat the chamber with the bed plate at least a 1/2 hour before printing
Letting the part cool for an hour before removing
Printing with a brim or raft (obviously the part clean up is a pain)
I am not opposed to one time fuss applications (device upgrades), but I want to minimize repeated “fuss” for each print.
Is there a magic bed plate out there that works best?
Active heater?
I’d like to hear your creative ideas to overcome the warping.
I’m curious to know about this more. Funny enough, I was coming to the forum this morning to start a thread asking what people’s tips/tricks and setups are when it comes to printing ABS.
I’ve printed ABS a decent amount, mostly without issue. I don’t get warping so much as occasional troubles with bed adhesion. It’s been plaguing me a little more lately, and I’m trying to think about what changed in my setup to cause this non-friction.
I print ABS on my P1S with the textured PEI plate. I’ve been upping the starting layer to 100 (stock being 90). I’m not sure if that’s making a difference, but it seems like things have been going a little smoother since I started doing that.
I keep the P1S enclosed. Usually I’ll preheat it a little at least, but haven’t been so diligent to make sure I do it 1/2 hour before printing each time. I have an anycubic airpure filter I use for filtering, but I’d like to upgrade this to a bento box or something of the sort.
One other thing I do is… I keep the ambient temperature in my print room on the warmer side. Closer to 75-80f. I find in general when I have a warm ambient temperature, that overall, printing goes a lot smoother and with less errors.
I’m most curious what print plates people use. If they’re going all stock, or if there’s a 3rd party plate that just nails it. Does anyone print ABS on the engineering plate? The smooth pei plate? What’s the magic trick up your sleeves?! It can’t just be hairy arms up there!
I print almost exclusively with ABS. Some parts pretty much max out the size capabilities of the bed. 12.5" part corner to corner. These size of parts are the most prone to warpage.
Parts with high wall counts and/or thick top layers are most prone to warping. Avoid or model in relief cuts where possible.
Where possible slice problematic parts to print per object vs a plate full of parts printing a full layer at a time. This seems to keep the individual part temp higher as they print and reduce warping.
Lower layer heights seem to be more warp prone. Avoid sharp corner transitions where possible.
Bambu ABS seems to warp less than other brands of ABS but be aware that it doesn’t acetone vapour smooth. Parts need to be dipped to smooth. Bambu ASA seems to have more warping and adhesion problems than Bambu ABS.
Add a brim/mouse ears to long parts with a 0 object-brim gap.
Make sure the plate is squeaky clean. Dawn and hot water. The Smooth/High Temp PEI sheet seems to have the strongest adhesion, followed by the Textured Plate. I don’t use glue.
Preheat the chamber for warp prone/large parts.
Set the bed to 100/120c
Home the bed
Turn on the Aux fan to blow across the bed
Wait till the chamber temp (X1C) or stand alone temp display (P1S) hits 50c
Avoid opening the printer door unless it is an emergency print intervention.
I use the stock Bambu ABS profile. Chamber fan is off to keep the chamber temp as high as possible. I use a stand alone Hepa filter and the room air is exchanged via a HRV.
Once the print completes I don’t seem to find the cooling rate affects the finished part. Removing the plate and flexing the parts to removed or letting them cool overnight in the printer seems to yield the same parts.
Any white haze from the bed on the bottom of the part is removed with a stiff bristle brush.
So, taller layer heights (ie. 0.28) help mitigate warping?
I tried preheating my chamber with the bed lowered and I could only get it to about 42 after a half an hour or so. Being that it’s a P1P with an ARC enclosure it’s not as air tight as a P1S or X1 might be.
I am contemplating adding an active heater to it to keep the temps up and still allow my active ventilation. I like not having to mess with filters honestly. My ventilation system just works and it works very well.
The last ABS print I did, I used the stock high temp plate with hairspray. It still had slight warping at the corners but it was better than my first attempt. I didn’t like the blotches, though.
I haven’t experimented with larger layer heights but I’ve found some models seem to warp more with lower (.08-.12) heights. Generally I print at .2 as a base line and then experiment with lower layer heights.
As a reference, my P1S doesn’t have a problem getting to and maintaining 50c while printing.
Looking at your print I can see I couple problem areas.
It looks like you have 6 walls? This will cause warping. Try printing 2-3 walls and reinforce with modifiers where you need it.
Curling in the corners normally is solved with sorting adhesion issues and/or by adding a brim. I would suggest trying to print directly on the stock high temp plate without any additions. I’ve found this plate to have the best adhesion of all of the Bambu plates for ABS.
Try turning on “Only one wall on first layer” at the bottom of the Quality tab. I find it both looks better and seems to bind the bottom and wall layers better.
Ideally if you can print on a textured plate it will give your part a really nicely finished side. Example.
It only looks like the bottom layer has 6 layers because of the “concentric” pattern I chose for it. I don’t know why it looks like 6 as it was sliced with 3.
So you just told me about a an option “Only one wall on first layer” that I never really noticed before. Funny thing is, I often use a modifier for the first layer to do exactly that. A single wall on the first layer really helps multicolor text or pictures look better.
Thanks for showing me the shortcut!
I think I am going to end up building a heater for my P1P to heat the chamber faster and keep it at 50c even while the chamber fan is on.
So, on a whim, I tried one of my PER texture plates (the ones that transfer an image to the bottom of the print) with same ABS that was warping at the corners (@ 100c):
The results are amazing.
No warping at all.
I ran my chamber exhaust fan at 20% and the chamber stayed about 38c for the print.
I did use a slow printing profile though. I am not sure how much that played into it.
Once the plate drops down to about 50c, the part doesn’t even stick at all.
I’ve tried experimenting with the following plate types (@100c with a fresh soapwash and IPA wipe):
Generic PEI Textured (w/ mouse ears): Great ABS adhesion
Generic PER: Great ABS adhesion
Generic H1H (holographic): Good ABS adhesion
Generic PET (carbon fiber pattern): bad corner curling
Biqu Glacier Pro: Corners warped
The Biqu Glacier Pro was a real disappointment. I heard good things about from a youtuber and dropped $35 on it. It seemed to perform decently with some smaller parts I tried on it, but corners warped on the larger prints.
I’m just not sure what application I should use this plate for when the textured PEI plate seemed to outperform it with ABS.
Yesterday I ran several ABS prints through. Been finding that making sure I give it some time to pre-heat, seems to help a lot. I also tried the smooth pei plate, and that worked pretty well. Although I’d worry about the wear and tear on the plate itself.
I have one of those fancy pattern plates from Amazon. Might have to try that and see how it goes. Otherwise I just wrote it off as a meh gimmick.
This is something I realized when printing PC. I had perfect prints across the board, until one day… I opened the door mid print, and it caused the print to warp and fail.
Overall, I think my higher room ambient temperature helps when it comes to heating and maintaining the chamber temperature.
Do you have a link to the part that warps for you on this plate? Would be curious to try it on mine to see if I get the same results. I haven’t really had any print issues on my Glacier Pro plate, though I can’t remember if I’ve printed anything that’s prone to warping.
Thank you for sharing the model. The print came out without any apparent warping. I used Bambu black ABS, adjusted bed temp to 100c like I normally do for ABS, and heat soaked the chamber to 50c. I’ve only cleaned this plate one time when I first received it, so I haven’t done anything special to it. No glue was used. Have you maybe tried the other side of the bed yet to see if it improves?
Very interesting.
Well, my P1P just won’t heat up to 50c.
I can get it up to about 42 and it ends up printing around 38. This might have been the difference.
Also, notably I did not use Bambu ABS.
I will wash the plate again and give it another shot.
Yes this is printed in ABS. It’s the header for ericthepoolboy’s 22RE Motor. I’ve printed most of his models. One of these days I’m going to start a thread about them.
just stopping by let you know that i’ve been lurking around this thread, and today i made some prints in ASA-CF, which i had never used before, and i must say they turned out really great. I followed the advice here of letting the heatbed pre-heat the chamber for a while before starting to print, use the engineering plate at 100 degrees (can’t understand why bambu discontinued this plate, i quite like it) and the print came out really clean!
printed two in a row and no lifts or any printing issues whatsoever - also after drying the filament for a few hours straight from the package there was absolutely no stringing either, despite the geometry being tricky
very happy with this filament, not only the properties are great but it looks pretty great too! will certainly become my go to for when i need stronger / more heat resistant parts
I print a lot in eSun ABS+ and ABS HS, as well in QIDI ASA Pro.
For all of them I disable the fans at all. And I preheat the print plate for about
half an hour at 100°C, usually II reach about 43-45°C with it.
Then I start printing and also let it cool of in the printer with closed door.
Take some time.Did not see any warping or lift from the plate.
I use the structured print plate from Bambu but as well other chinese brands
and use 3D Lac as separation helper to get my print from the plate.
I print some ITX and Deskmini PC cases but filament spools as well.
CF filaments usually said to warp less. I would definitely turn off the
fan. You can start it after the part is cooled.I thing filters that cleans the air
inside the printer makes more sense when printing ASA/ABS. As if you push out the warm air, cold air is sucked in from outsdie and will cool the chamber.
I’m surprised to see people shy away from glue/adhesion promoters for ABS/ASA. Any reason in particular? Personally, I would never risk an ABS/ASA print because that material adheres so poorly without glue.
