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.
