First printings from ABS

It seems printing with ABS is nothing easier than printing with PLA. We are experimenting with the correct hotendThis is where the plastic actually melted. It is part of the extruder which contains the pusher and the barrel as well. and bed temperatures during the weekend. The temperatures suggested by other site are a bit high. So far we got the best results with 210 Celsius for the hotendThis is where the plastic actually melted. It is part of the extruder which contains the pusher and the barrel as well. and 85 Celsius for the bed - the suggested temperatures were 230 and 110 Celsius accordingly.

The second thing we had to set is the height of the bed. Based on our experience, the ABS is much more sensitive to the perfectly set bed height than the PLA. We made lots of failures trying to adjust the height by a fraction of millimetre. After half a dozen try it seems we reached the best setting we can achieve.

And a third problem arose which we couldn't solve so far. The sides of the resulting objects are warped. It was a problem sometimes with PLA too, but we couldn't make any object without this defect with ABS so far. According to this article on the official RepRap site it seems the object is too cold. We still not fully understand what does it really mean, but elsewhere we read that warping problem could be caused by the too fast cooling of the object. We have three cooling fans on the printer, because it is necessary for the PLA printing, but maybe it is too much and we should remove a few of them. We will definitely try that, because we really don't have any other idea.

To summarize the weekend: printing with ABS is nothing easier than printing with PLA. But sooner or later we will be the masters of ABS...