Draft be gone!

After battling with ABS warping, I finally canned any dream of ever using my living room dining table again, and built a draft shield for the printrbot on it.

It's not the prettiest thing ever, but it gets the job done. Observe the printed filament hole in the cardboard. And with proper cleaning and hair spraying between prints, I finally seem to get bigger ABS prints that are not completely broken from warping. I'm still reluctant to call it without printing some more big parts, though.

On a side note, I ordered some glow in the dark PLA filament today, which should make for some interesting prints. I'm also still waiting for my supply of regular PLA to arrive. The small roll provided as a sample with the printer is running low, hence all the ABS whining. When I get the PLA I will probably play around with it for a while before touching ABS again.

ABS woes and printing landing gears

As I mentioned previously, my printer was having issues keeping the heated print bed at more than 92°C after relocating it to my living room. I fiddled around with a couple of ideas, and realized that the ATX PSU that came with the printer was only 400W.

After slaughtering an old PC, I salvaged a 650W PSU, and installed it in the printrbot simple metal. This helped dramatically with the temperature, and the printer now keeps around 100°C for the print bed.

The ABS plastic is still warping a bit for larger objects though, I'm suspecting that there is a draft along the floor. I intend to play around with various ways of shielding the print area during the weekend.

Anyhow, I promised a time lapse of a print. Here's an attempt at printing parts for a suspension landing gear I'm making for my Cessna 172. Notice how the right leg warps.

Printing ABS on the printrbot simple metal

After dialling in the printrbot simple metal using the sample PLA filament that came with the unit, I thought I'd give ABS a try. I knew from multiple sources online that it would be more tricky than printing PLA, and my first attempts caused some concerns, with lots of warping and prints breaking loose from the base.

There are two important factors when printing with ABS. First of all, the bed has to be at a much higher temperature than for PLA, recommended is at the 100-110°C mark. Now, the bed you get from the printrbot upgrade kit will not reach this. I can get mine to read around 94°C, and this is just fine.

Another important thing to remember is that your kapton tape is going to need some additional adhesive in order for the ABS to stick to it. I first printed using a regular old glue stick, which worked surprisingly well. It did, however, leave a pretty nasty mess on the tape that has to be cleaned up between prints. It's also very difficult to get an even spread when printing, and it leaves some residue on the item. But it works, if that's what you have ready.

One successfull ABS print

The second, and current, adhesive I tried, is hairspray. Yes. Spray for hair. I know. It's downright absurd, but it works like a charm. It still leaves some residue on the kapton, and you do have to clean it with Acetone every now and then, which is some nasty stuff, but it is a lot easier to work with. It also lasts for at least 3-4 prints with pretty much perfect adhesion and no warping, so I'm very happy with it.

Two ways to make things stick

The ABS items themselves feel a lot more solid than the PLA, and it's nowhere near as brittle. This being said, it's a lot more flexible, so if you need a really hard plastic, PLA probably is better. But overall, it seems very much like a better option.

The cylinders are hollow, the printrbot handles overhangs pretty well