I am getting white discoloration on the surface of the part that contacts the plate when printing ASA and ABS, see attached photo. I’ve included the same part in PLA on the left for color reference. I am using a textured plate with no adhesion. The printer is basically brand new, only 4-5 prints on it. I am using 100C for the plate temp for the entire print on my P1S. The ASA is Polymaker Polylite and the ABS is Hatchbox. Any ideas what may be causing this or how to resolve it? It’s unfortunate because the rest of the print is beautiful! Thank you!
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I print a lot with ABS/ASA. I find that there is more of a chance of the white haze if pop the part of the plate by flexing it. If you let it cool and pop off by itself it seems to be a little better. I usually don’t have time for that so I pop them off and used a stiff bristle brush (plastic or brass) to give the white area a good scrub. This seems to remove it pretty well without leaving any marks.
Thank you Jon for the reply; for both the ASA and ABS parts I let the chamber cool down naturally to ambient temp before removing the parts and they were not stuck to the plate at all when I picked them up. I will try the brush.
It is normal. ABS when deform/break will have white-ish color at the breaking area. Try breaking a small piece of colored ABS (gray, red, black… whatever) and you will see the same white haze. It’s more obvious in black.
To bring the color back, just heat up that area with hot air station, adjust temperature below melting point, say anywhere between 150C and 220C.
Heat gun does work too, but I don’t know how hot it is, too hot could melt the larger area.or ruin the print.
On ABS case, layer adhension is not that great, so there is partial layer delamintion between layer 1 and layer 2 while it pops itself off the plate.
On ASA case, layer adhension is better, you can see the pattern of the infill, where it shows weakest area.
In general, the white haze shows how the plastic shrink. Isn’t it fascination?
400°F (~200°C) on my hot air station worked great!
150°C was a little slow and let some of the thin part droop a bit before the white was gone.
I had thought about trying with a hot air station but I was nervous to warp the print. After 4 “failed” prints that I tried to stop the white haze I finally googled it. I have a routine of turning on the chamber and aux fan to quickly cool the prints. Turning that off didn’t help.
The last thing I have yet to try is a routine of dropping the temp a couple degrees at a time and waiting a set amount before dropping a few more.