ABS stuttering/bubbles from TAZ 6

Very new to the game, apologies in advance if I do not provide the correct info or understand terminology.

I’ve been tasked to produce prototypes for some cosmetic components. (Think rounded cylinders, compacts, etc).

To answer any questions of what I did:
I’m currently using a taz 6, abs. The rocktopus printed great but I can’t seem to get anything very clean otherwise.
Using the newest version of cura and updated the firmware. Measured the filament width with calipers and input that in the settings. Hit print.
The location of the printer is in a garage that can get a little drafty. I’ve got an old laptop that is dedicated to the machine and a suspicion is that it is not enough to be running with the machine? Also using a mac? Going to switch to pc today

It seems to produce bubbles/bumps sporadically. And I can see the extruded stutter midway.
Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated.


That’s probably overextrusion… Try setting the feed rate/multiplier to 95-97%.

Unrelated, the sagging at the base can be somewhat corrected with some cooling. ABS is generally printed without any cooling due to shrinkage. And we all hate shrinkage, am I right! Anyway, try around 50% fan only on those initial layers. When you hit the straight wall, turn it off. (experiment with fan speed). That should help.

Just remember, with ABS, Cooling = weak layer adhesion. Cooling too fast = shrinkage (but is directly correlated to area, meaning, bigger surfaces will shrink more).

The part you display here would probably not suffer from horizontal shrinkage simply because it has very little area.

If you were to print a large box, for example, you would likely see corners peeling up within an inch height of print, if the room were too cool, etc.

ABS is becoming an out modded material due to newer, friendlier materials with similar preferred characteristics. Look at materials such as ASA, PETG, etc.

P.S.
If these are display only, non-functional. You should REALLY consider PLA. MUCH easier to work with and you’ll get way better edge definition.

Another possibility for these print issues is that there are mild errors to your model that are causing slicing issues when Cura turns it into G-code. Have you tried reprinting the rocktopus to see if it exhibits these issue now as well? If so this could be settings or mechanical if you try to print the rocktopus and it comes out just fine I would check your model for errors before making setting adjustments.

Thank you everyone for your responses. Would have thanked you all much sooner but I don’t think I’ve set my notifications on.

I work for a cosmetics startup, and being in such environment, I was not able to systematically test each solution to actually figure out the issue.
Having said that, the issue is back again oddly enough (after a brief stint of not being able to get my material to stick to the bed which was solved with a combo of some hair spray and closing in the z-height)

Below is what I had done before to fix the issues…

  1. cardboard enclosure to keep things warm
  2. a newer laptop (the stuttering made me think that the cpu did not have enough resources to be communicating with the printer)
  3. Tried using PLA
  4. Checked and inputted filament width with digital calipers

Will be trying to mess with the multiplier rate and using an SD card. My suspicion is that the wall thickness of my object was designed at 2mm and the printer is having trouble with filling in the small space.
Below is a link to the video of what I am talking about.

https://vimeo.com/271385476