Unresolved What could be causing this odd ABS warping issue?

Hi guys. I recently bought a spool of ABS filament and just today got the chance to try using it. I always print with PLA but have been unhappy with the quality. I used to print with ABS only and noticed it looked much, much nicer than the PLA so that's why I decided to go back.

Anyway, I used some of the ABS slurry I made last time I printed with ABS. It always worked flawlessly, but this time it was just no good at all. I tried with a perfectly clean glass surface but that was no good. Neither was hairspray. All that was with the bed at 100C and the extruder at 235C
I also tried with a cold piece of acrylic but that didn't work.

The images below were what I was getting as a result. Sorry for the poor quality, but you can clearly see the catastrophic warping, if that's even what it is.

Any idea what did that?

 

Usually that's caused by too much heat on the extruder. Try lowering your nozzle temp to like 225 or below. ABS will extrude from like 210 up

 

I'll give that a go now and report back.

 

No luck. I tried adjusting the temp by 5 degree increments from 240 to 210 but the prints were just warping or falling apart. The filament is from a reputable supplier too. I don't mind switching back to PLA but the quality is quite poor compared to ABS. Maybe you guys could point me in a good direction on that front. I mean, the printer is supposed to be able to print ABS and I've had great success with it before. Just can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Is Kapton tape and Elmers glue worth investing in?

 

Could be a case of bad filament.

Tell me more about your print settings? Temps, fan settings, speeds, etc.

I find just straight hairspray on glass is plenty good. But throwing some kapton tape on there can help. That doesn't really look like normal ABS warp. That's more the print is getting too hot and moving around

 

I would be in complete agreement if the corners weren't warping. If it had warped in that way with the bottom planted firmly to the print bed I'd imagine it was bad filament, but surely it's a temperature thing that I'm missing.

I print with everything at 30mm/s (but have been noticing the slicer calculating the print time as if it was printing at 15mm/s. It does that randomly for some reason). I've tried with the fan off totally, or on auto after the first layer.

Temperatures tried:

Extruder: 240C. Bed: 100C
Extruder: 235C. Bed: 100C
Extruder: 230C. Bed: 100C
Extruder: 225C. Bed: 100C
Extruder: 220C. Bed: 100C
Extruder: 215C. Bed: 100C
Extruder: 210C. Bed: 100C
Extruder: 235C. Bed: 0C

Adhesives tried:
Hairspray on all the above temperatures.
ABS Slurry on all the above temperatures.
Acrylic with extruder on 235C and the bed at 0.

I've tried it with a brim, but it still lifts.

Could you tell me what material you use? And maybe your basic settings?

 

How about a picture of your first layer?

I typically always print at 230C though sometimes I bump to 235 but that's not as critical. 100C on the bed

You always want the fan off for ABS. You don't want to be cooling it at all and the hotter the environment the better to minimize thermal variance in the part

My favorite ABS is a brand called Prototype Supply. I buy it from www.toybuilderlabs.com. I haven't come across a better ABS.

Try turning your print speed up to like 60mm/s and try and block any air drafts from hitting the print.

If I had to guess the issue right now is your first layer is too high and you need to reduce your Z offset

 

I'd get you a picture but it's pretty late here and I don't want to wake the house by turning the printer back on!

The first layer is very well pushed on to the build plate. I actually thought about raising it up a bit because it was so crushed in. I'll look in to those guys, but since I'm from Ireland I'm not sure what the price will be like!

Thanks Mike. I'll pick it up again tomorrow and hopefully crack it!

 

Yup. 30 for the spool, 50 for the shipping. Can't pay that unfortunately

 

The ambient temperature is room temperature. The printer has its own room so air circulation is not an issue. There's nothing causing a breeze or anything.

I just did a little more testing and watched the printer until the warping started to occur. I noticed that when it put down the first layer, one half was perfect and the other had lots of little bumps in it. You can see that in the pictures below (Sorry for the potato quality).

Once it got the first layer down, I watched until it began warping the shape of the cube. I noticed that little lips were forming in the corners of the cube, getting worse and worse as it rose up. Not sure why that's happening and the picture quality is bad but hopefully you can see the little bumps in each corner of the cube.

 

No I haven't. I've tried extruding from 0.9 to 1.1 with no different between any in terms of making it better.

 

Ok. I did the extruder calibration based on that video. When I told it to extrude 100mm, it extruded 86mm. I went to change the settings in the eeprom but to be honest I'm not sure what to put where. The guy in the video just ended up with a single value, but there are x, y, z and e values.

 

Ok. Sorry for the ignorance! Just to be 100% clear;

#define DEFAULT_AXIS_STEPS_PER_UNIT {80,80,2560,723.38} // default steps per unit for RoBo 3D R1
#define DEFAULT_MAX_FEEDRATE {500, 500, 5, 25} // (mm/sec)
#define DEFAULT_MAX_ACCELERATION {9000,9000,100,10000} // X, Y, Z, E maximum start speed for accelerated moves.

It's the bold one that I'm changing to the following value: 723.38 * 100 / 86 = 841.13

Changing it in the Repetier Eeprom editor and then hitting 'save' wouldn't work?