First off, Im a noob to printing with this printer and everything I have done so far has been culled from a lot of sources on the net.
I did all of the safety upgrades, better power supply, 2 mosfets, one for the bed and the nozzle, soldered the wires to bed.
I did a few nice to have upgrades, all made with the monoprice mini, ( which is a total workhorse BTW),
Anyway, I’ve also hooked up a Rpi 3 running Octoprint, with the standard software that came with A8.
I’ve been using PLA on the A8 and wanted to try ABS, as it’s supposed to be able to do that, except it didn’t. To make it work well, here’s what I did.
First off nozzle temps had no issue, but the bed would only get to 105, once I put a towel on it the pulled it off right before the print, almost immediately is cooled to 103 or 102 and nothing stuck.
Printing on masking tape, nothing special, just cheap 2 inch masking tape.
First thing I had to do is get the bed temp up.
I went to my local hardware store and bought some pipe insulation, self stick with about an 1/8" foam and aluminum covering. Also a roll of Aluminum tape.
Took my bed off, lined the whole bottom with the pipe tape then a layer of tape to cover the joints, being careful to notch where the metal connections and LED is.
Once put back together, it had no problem reaching 110 all by itself even with a fan running in the room.
While I was doing this, I made a slurry of abs and acetone, no recipe although I’ve seen many out there, just guessed really.
Also, once the bed was at temp, I made sure it was level again, as it turned out it was not.
I let it cool down, the used a paper towel paint brush to put a coat of the slurry on the bed, just enough to tint it the color of the slurry, (I used blue ABS, so there was a tint of Blue).
That was it, used a wide brim and everything can out great.
I just ordered some PETG as I read it’s the best of both worlds…
I hope this helps someone having issues printing ABS
