Printing with ABS - how many people use it and issues?

Snapmaker 2.0
1

Ok, so I’m going to start with the fact that 90% of my printing is with ABS, why because I have a business printing and my customer requires ABS and Low-flammability ABS (UL94-V0 to be exact) parts, plus I print a bunch of car parts and recently I’ve started printing a gun stock with ABS-pro filament.

So far I’ve had great luck printing PLA, this isn’t a complaint about that or about the machine in general, just issues that I’m having with ABS and seeing how many others print with it and if they are experiencing similar issues.

Now when I get to ABS I find that the snapmaker build surface doesn’t work, ABS won’t stick to it even after printing with PLA on the same surface. Has anyone else had a similar issue? I’ve switched to glass and Magigoo which works well on all my other machines.

Second thing that I’m finding is more worry some…ABS as we all know requires a heated enclosure, well to print without warping, especially with the UL94-V0 material which has a higher melting temp and needs a hotter buildplate and even worse for ABS-pro.

What I’m finding is that the machine gets too hot inside an enclosure, so much so that the linear rails and more specifically the stepper driver controllers built into the modules are overheating, shutting down causing axis shifts…that is bad. Yes I know I’ve modified my Y-axis (currently the dust covers are off so they should be cooling better than covered) but I’m getting X-axis shift with a brand new module from Edwin (previous one was doing the same thing because of a missing heat transfer pad)

Now, with this said, I don’t get this issue with PLA (did a bunch of 70+ hour prints) and the cabinet closed or open, because PLA doesn’t get the cabinet so hot, ABS on the other hand is getting the cabinet to around 40 degrees (which is great for ABS prints IMO) but the steppers are all getting hot to the touch, like burning to touch, I don’t have a temp gun or I’d get the temp. Unfortunately with my large ABS prints with the cabinet open in an attempt to keep the stepper controllers from overheating, I’ve had 3 failures due to warping, so it needs to be closed.

Unfortunately I’m at my wits end, my other printers all have separate stepper controllers with cooling fans that aren’t located in the hot enclosure, something I don’t see happening in my A350’s case.

Just wondering if anyone else runs ABS, if they’ve run into similar issues with heat in the enclosure and the steppers overheating.

2

How much do you heat?
I have printed a lot of petg with 85°C Bed and 250°C Nozzle and got a max temp of the X-axis of 55°C, I guess. - I wrote it somewhere else in the forum, measured with a voltcraft ir thermometer.

3

80 bed (max for luban) and 230 nozzle, haven’t gotten around to hooking up SD3 profile and printing with that to get higher than 80 degrees for the bed(also cause I use SD3 on my makerbot 2x), maybe I’ll try another print and read the stepper heat with a handheld laser thermometer from work

4

also the ABS-pro requires 100 degree bed and 255 nozzle, low flammability ABS is 90 degree bed (minimum, 100 is better) and 240 nozzle, but on the A350 so far I’ve only done regular ABS

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5

If your not afraid of moding the linear rails you could potentially remote mount the stepper drivers. It might take a bit of wiring to do so, but from my understanding of how the modules are set up, it should be possible.

6

I usually avoid ABS, but nevertheless I had successfully printed with it on the A350 with enclosure.
I didn‘t ran into your temperature problems, most probably because the longest print time with ABS was about 1.5 h. My Raspberry Pi‘s inside the enclosure (RasPi 4b for octoprint, RasPi 3b for an additional camera) got throttled, since it got quite warm inside. I used 100 degrees C bed temperature and enclosure closed, fan off. With Verbatim ABS and eSun ABS+ the stickiness of the print sheet was no problem.

7

The X Gantry gets the hottest right?

Reverse the enclosure fan, take the end caps off the rail, and rig a flexible hose to push air thru it from the fan? By the time it comes out the far side of the rail it hopefully won’t cool the interior temp too bad…?

I don’t suppose there’s room to actually put a supplemental heat sink or spreader on the stepper drivers?

8

Yeah I’ve had some of my linear rails apart, its possible but a wiring mess

9

X gantry yes, but all of them do (Z the least cause they don’t move like X and Y) putting a supplemental heat sink on the stepper might work to remove some heat, think I’ve got a big heat sink somewhere around my printer room to try that out.

10

Maybe flip the vent panel upside down, and vent from the top. See if that helps with heat build up… I have just started to print with ABS, so I’ll see how it goes… Is there a way to monitor the stepper motor temps ? I hope these temps are not a problem, as I am also keen to try out ASA… which is similar in temps to ABS, but supposed to have better strength and UV resistance…

12

I printed eSUN ASA at extruder 235 and bed 80.
Fast Benchy

eSUN-ABAFastBenchy
eSUN-ABAFastBenchy1141×1334 371 KB

Z Tower Filament Guide, raw and finished.
ZTowerFilamentGuide
ZTowerFilamentGuide3024×4032 2.68 MB

ZTowerFIlamentGuideFinsihed
ZTowerFIlamentGuideFinsihed4032×3024 2.91 MB

13

Looks like you sprayed something on the build plate…also have you tried anything long print, say 24 hours? I was over 24 hours into a 70 hour print when I had X axis shift due to a stepper motor controller overheating. Wish I had a laser thermometer at the time to get internal and stepper temps.

14

I use 3Dlac on the build plate for better adhesion for everything(basically like Aquanet).
I did a large print to help find issues that needed dialing it that was over 24hours and didn’t get any overheating(observed some corner curling and layer splitting that I need to sort out).

15

Rather than move the stepper motors, could you “drill” a hole in the end plates and mount a pneumatic nozzle to each end, then plumb all the ends to a path so you could push cold air into one end of the circuit and have the hot air leave the rails (and therefore the steppers) at the other end?

It would need to be closed from the perspective of the enclosure - to prevent debris from entering the rails, and to prevent cooling the things you want to keep hot - but it would be open to the outside of the enclosure.

I don’t have an actual image of what I’m describing, but this half-closed marine engine cooling system shows the idea pretty well: https://www.cpperformance.com/images/halfclosedsystem.png

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16

That could work but I think you would want to at least filter the air you are pushing through the rails, after all you wouldn’t want a bunch of dust building up inside them. And it would, just look at any computer case that has been running for more than 2 months :slight_smile:

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17

An air outlet slightly smaller than the inlet world create positive pressure, reducing the chances of dust and debris getting into the rail from inside the enclosure.

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19

I’ve got here because I ran into the same issues. My attempts to print ASA wrapped after only 45 min. Enclosure and different PEI tape solutions tested, heat bed up to 95°C. The overheating electronics were not on my mind… yet.

20

I have an A350.

The specs say the max bed temp is 70c

Are you saying I can go beyond this? I accidently did with cura and quickly ended the job. It was set to like 120 (an incorrect variable was used) and it had gotten to about 86 when I noticed it.

How high can I go safely?

21

Per this: https://support.snapmaker.com/hc/en-us/articles/360022560054-Why-is-the-relationship-of-the-maximum-heated-bed-temperature-of-the-three-models-A350-A250-A150-

The limiting factor is not safety, as much as the bed is too large to heat up with the given wattage. You can go as high as you can, but if you use an M190 wait for temp command it may never reach the commanded value.

You’d have better luck using something like:

M190 S70 ; Wait until it hits 70
M140 S110 ; Then yolo
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22

on the website SM claims you can get up to 100 on the A350 after about 30 minutes of heating… I doubt you will get much over that without modification.

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