I’m printing a part that is about 4" long ad 0.3" wide from 2.93mm ABS with the tip at 230 C and bed at 85 C. The 1st part warped, the second part printed perfectly, and the 3rd part printed with excessive warp as shown here. The sides of this part should be flat on the table, but I ended up holding them in place with painter’s tape just to get the whole part to print.
I’m printing with all layers at 0.2mm including first layer and I haven’t found the brim to help at all.
I feel that it won’t matter what adhesive/sheet I try, because of how severe this part is warping. I’ve tried to use the elmer’s purple glue stick on the bed - but when I tried to print on that area, the plastic just slipped off.
-Is there a proper procedure for adding glue/adhesive to the bed, such as applying, heating, cooling, printing?
-From reading forums, it appears that the best answer for this is to enclose the TAZ4 in a box of some kind. Has this actually solved warping issues?
-Has anyone tried printing sacrifical material or multiple parts to cover more of the bed surface?
Take a blanket and wrap your printer and try it, make sure it doesn’t bind any moving parts. If it solves the problem, you have a ambient temp issue solved by an enclosure. Otherwise you need to consider options for better bed adherence.
I am in the middle of evaluating BuildTak surface. So far Abs sticks well, a few times I need a brim if it has sharp corners, otherwise not. There are still tricks with it, just no glues required yet.
Are you printing onto PET sheets? Blue painters tape? PEI?
What’s the surface you’re printing on?
Yes - enclosing the printer makes a gigantic difference with ABS. Ambient temp around entire printer needs to be at least 85F degrees or higher. Mine is usually around 90-94 degrees.
Have you tried Lulzjuice?
When you’re printing, is your fan on or off?
Brim always helps me. I like a 5mm brim width.
You might also try increasing your first layer height. Go up to .3 and try that.
In the past I have also designed into the part file very thin corner “pads” that I can break away after the print is finished.
Like a 1 inch diameter circle “pad” that’s a 1/10th inch thick on each corner. But ever since I started using the brim feature I have found the need for those isn’t necessary.
Another issue might be your z height in the home position.
You may be starting the first layer with your nozzle too far from print bed.
Many thanks to you all for the advice. I did create the ABS Juice, spread it around and that made the part stick very well. Just to be safe I also increased the bed temp to 90 C and also added some circles around the ends of the part to give it more surface area. The sacrificial circles/loops were just under 0.10" high and were easy to cut off after printing. I will be making them a big bigger next time to avoid having them so close to some of the part.
I did have one issue - I used a towel over the whole unit, but it put just enough stress on the filament feed line and the filament ended up cracking off inside the extruder. I was about 50% into the part when that happened, but live and learn. Be careful if you’re going to wrap in a towel or blanket…
