ABS curling and overhang failures
I'm having issues printing ABS well. It adheres to the bed with no issues, stays in place, no lifting from the base at all. However it wont bridge or overhang without failure. Even with supports under the bridges I'm getting voids and droopy surfaces. Overhangs refuse to print geometric shapes, the angles are all off and it keeps producing little balls of ABS that sit on the surface and start hitting the nozzle. The first layers are perfect, so I don't think it's a live Z issue, otherwise there would be pulling or balling up there, right? Regular top surfaces also turn out clean and smooth, it's just overhangs. I'm printing in an enclosure that's keeping an ambient around 60, nozzle temp of 245, bed temp of 110. I know ABS likes to warp, but in a controlled environment like that it should be working right, and since I get good parts of the print and bad parts of the print, that's even weirder. Printing with supports still gives me poor surfaces and half the time I can't remove the supports from the surface. I tried setting up Cura but couldn't get it all figured out, and I can't adjust the supports the same way with Slic3r Prusa. Oh and I can print the same model in PLA without these issues. Ideas?
Re: ABS curling and overhang failures
I've never tried to print abs on the pei bed, but maybe some of the more advanced adhesives would be worth a shot ? (wolfbite, etc)
Re: ABS curling and overhang failures
I am a noob and we just got our printer last week. I have a bunch of ABS I got cheap so other then the models that come with the printer I have been printing a lot with ABS and the prints are coming out great.
We have been using the Prusa control with generic ABS selected. The defaults were working great until last night when we tried to print a long part ( https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2026895 ) and it warped at both ends ruining the print. I printed it again and turned the speed down to 89 and cranked the heat bed to 115 after the base layer was about 1/8" thick, well we woke up this morning to a perfect part, no warping!
So though I am too green to provide reliable advice, I recommend cranking your heat bed temp and slowing down the print for long parts.
Once the printer started printing the uprights I cranked the speed back up to 100 and everything came out perfect.
HTH!
Cheers,
Jon
Re: ABS curling and overhang failures
I forgot to mention this was printed directly on the sticker PEI bed cleaned with 99% IPA.
Cheers,
Jon
Re: ABS curling and overhang failures
The support algorithm in Slic3r is basically broken, especially for ABS. There's an open GitHub issue with extensive discussion and a workaround someone developed here: https://github.com/prusa3d/Slic3r/issues/102 .
I've not had a chance to experiment with this yet, but chances are you need to tweak with your support. You can also try using a different slicer like Cura, which may handle support better.