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.

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

Building a printrbot simple metal

As you tinker with various hobby projects, inevitably the idea is going to pop into your head; it sure would be nice if I had a 3D printer to make this custom part that I need. It is immediately followed by "nah, it's not really necessary", and you discard the idea as unrealistic or find some other reason no to buy one.

Well, I recently had one of those thoughts, but this time, I was unable to repress it. So I plunged into a short, but frantic, period of scanning the internet for reviews, feedback and information regarding the various options, I finally landed on the Printrbot Simple Metal kit. So this week my kit arrived by UPS, and it was time to assemble the printer.

Firefly class

The instructions on the printrbot webpage are detailed and easy to follow, and the estimated time for assembly was surprisingly accurate (down to the minute). Even when combining two step-by-step instructions, one for the heated build platform and one for the printer itself, there were really no places to go wrong in the assembly. Tested.com made a series of build videos . Note that these were made before they updated the assembly instructions.

It is possible to order a pre assembled version of the printrbot for a small addition to the price, but frankly, I found the build process quite entertaining and educational as to how the printer operates. That being said, if you feel uneasy about the assembly process and the tweaking, this printer, or any other in this price range for that matter, might not be for you yet. It seems to be a quite common conception that in order to have your printer operating properly, some level of tweaking will always be necessary.

Now, I'm still in the initial phase of configuring my printer, but it pretty much printed an acceptable object straight off the bat. Using the recommended starting configuration file for slicer, it printed quite decent PLA objects.

Heated bed installation

The heated build platform add on available through the web shop seems like an absolute necessity from what I can see. It makes the plastic stick down fairly effortlessly, with no need for excessive taping between every print as I've seen people do on non-heated printer beds. Only the provided kapton square is required.

Supposedly, the printer should also be able to handle ABS plastic with the heated bed, but so far I'm having a bit of trouble making it stick. the bed doesn't quite reach the desired temperature of 100°C (I can only get it to around 94), and the ABS lets go of the surface fairly easily during the print. I will continue tweaking and trying this out in the upcoming weeks.

All in all, I am extremely happy with the simple metal, and I'm looking forward to experiment with using it for some actual projects relatively soon.

All the parts ready for assembly

The finished printer printing

The first print, without any configuration whatsoever