RCole
1
I have been printing successfully with PLA for a while now and last night I tried printing with ABS for the first time. I’m using a Lulzbot Taz 5 with the extruder set to 230 and the bed set at 110, fan off. Oh yeah - the ABS plastic I’m trying is from Lulzbot.
The first layer looked good. Good adhesion, but all I got beyond that was small plastic balls. They were everywhere - or would have been if I had not stopped the printer.
I’ve looked through as many troubleshooting guides as I can find - but this problem doesn’t seem to be there.
After cancelling the print, I lifted the extruder and told it to extrude more plastic. It came out as a nice string. So, seriously? What’s going wrong? Any ideas. Wish I had taken some pictures, but I was a little miffed.
Without a picture its hard to say. Has the material been sitting out for a while? It might have absorbed too much moisture.
Otherwise, it sounds like your bed is level and the correct height since your first layer was fine.
I would check your extrusion multiplier (what slicer are you using?). Try bumping it up a bit. Sounds like you aren’t extruding enough plastic.
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Xeno
3
If you read the specs on the Lulzbot ABS page, you can see that 230C is minimal temp,
set it to 240C, and try again 
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RCole
4
Thank you everyone for the suggestions. I tried some other ABS at 230 and it worked, but I got a huge amount of sag on the underside of Marvin (up until the walls were almost vertical). So, now to keep trying until I find the temperature settings that work best (next: 225).
At this point, I am tossing the first free sample of filament that I tried. I don’t have enough to worry about saving it and I am wondering if it was contaminated with something.
I’m using Cura for my slicer. Printing through Octoprint so I can watch the printer work when I’m at home (printer is at work).
Ive found that setting the bed to 95 after the first few layers works the best. 110 was just too hot for the higher layers and I would see a curve on straight up walls.
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