Does anyone have some good tips for ABS warping during prints on the FF Creator Pro? I have tried a ton of different combination of settings (Currently using Simplify 3D), glass plate, hairspray, kapton etc… My prints are sticking great! And the build plate is level (PLA prints perfect). But I cant get the warping on my ABS prints dialed in. Any help is appreciated.
Hey @turbotux, moving forward make sure to add the /FlashForge 3 tag, so that the entire community gets notified of your post.
Hope you’ll get this sorted in no time Cheers
Is the printer fully enclosed?
Hey buddy. Only way i could get round warping was to warm up and completely enclose printer. Using Simplify as well with a 1st layer height of 57% to ensure a solid stick. Alternatuve is to put tabs on your models to ensure edges dont lift during the print. Hope this helps.
When I print with ABS on my flashforge I have to make my own acetone/abs combination to act as a glue of sorts to put on the glass bed. Put some acetone in a glass jar and throw some ABS scraps in and mix it up until it starts to stiffen up some. Just carefully pour a thin layer of the mix onto the plate where you’re printing and heat up the bed to about 110C.
This works for me pretty well but you’ll have to play around with the mixture to get it right.
i have the same problem, somehow the performance of abs is really bad while pla is perfect.
I print ABS on an FF Creator Pro almost exclusively. I don’t have any issues with warping after the following techniques were employed.
I also use Simplify3D for most of my slicing, but I use a 90% first layer height, and usually around a 60mm/s base speed. Also make sure your bed is perfectly leveled… that first layer is affected a lot by an improperly leveled bed.
Good luck!
I’ve had luck with taping up the carry handle holes on the side panels (top installed, front door closed, 110C) , and pre heating the bed for a while to heat the surrounding air in the enclosure. If worse comes to worst, a raft works (drop bed temp to 90C for rafting). but involves some sacrifices on finish on the bottom of a product.
Watch out for printing too hot though. There is a PTFE (same stuff as Teflon brand) tube inside the hot end as a heat break. It chars at >240C. The higher the temperature the less time it takes. Plus if it gets that hot farther up in the hotend you’ll increase the likelihood of having a really nasty jam. I stay at 230C for ABS.
ABS is designed to warp. Well, actually it was designed to shrink when it cools to release from injection molds, but it causes warping in our application because of the temperature gradients. The bigger the part, the more likely it warps. So it’s a challenge. The recommendations here are good. You want to keep the compartment warm.
I’ve tried a bunch of different things on the bed and I was able to make kapton with slurry work and clean kapton by itself, but I’ve had the best results with PEI as the bed material. It’s nice because it works best without anything else on it. Just cleaned with rubbing alcohol every few prints. Still have one warp occasionally though, but a lot less than before and with a lot less fuss.
And I usually use “brim” in either Slic3r or Cura when printing ABS.
Good to know about the charring temp on the PTFE. I haven’t yet had any jams at 250C - but I could probably get away with less. The brand of ABS I’ve been using was having major layer adhesion issues with anything less than 245 or so, so I hopped up to 250. Perhaps it’s time for me to find a new brand!
Good information on the inner tube in the hot end, i just did a 26 hour print at 250c… I’ll need to take apart my hot end and check to make sure that tube didn’t melt.
Also, what does the “brim” setting do, is there an equivalent in Simplify 3d?
I’m not sure if Simplify 3d has it since I haven’t tried it yet. But I would guess so since it has everything else. Brim is some extra perimeters on the first layer that you peel off after the print is complete. In Slic3r you set its width in mm. In Cura you tell it how many perimeters to do. I’ll attach a pic of what it looks like in Slic3r preview. It’s the green banding.
You may be fine since its not certain what temperature the end of the PTFE tube is getting nor what the actual temperature limit of that tube is really. But I thought I’d pass along the info since we’re getting up into the limits for this machine at > 240. I’ve recently bought an all metal nozzle and tube from Micro-Swiss that I haven’t put in yet that should remove at least this limitation. My goal though is just to see if I can get it to extrude PLA faster and smoother so I can crank up the speed without losing so much quality.
Try Buildtak. My Creator Pro came with something similar to it already installed. ABS sticks to it as well as anything else you can find, and there is no mess as with glue-stick, hairspray, etc.
Different brands of ABS will be more prone to warping than others, but ABS curling on long and thick parts is simply a reality that you’ll have to learn how to work around. In many cases you can redesign the part to minimize or eliminate the problem. Using a brim also helps. (Yes Simplify 3D has a brim - In the Additions tab, check the box “Use Skirt/Brim”. Set the Skirt offset from part to 0.0mm, and set the number of outlines)
When all else fails, just print with PLA! I’ve printed huge, blocky PLA parts on my Creator pro which almost filled the printbed in both directions and were over 4 inches thick. They took a whole pound of PLA to print (26 hours) and were a bear to get off the printbed - but NO Warping!
Does anyone know what the ideal ambient temperature for printing ABS is? I am considering installing an enclosure heater with a circulating fan similar to a convection oven to stabilize the temp. I’m not sure what specs on the heater I need will be though. - Thanks - Phil
Ideal temperature is 80c, BUT at that temperature you may be risking damaging/shortening the life of your steppers. With just the bed as a heat source you can only get internal temps up to around 50C, so anything above that would help.
