How to get your abs prints to stay stuck

[DavidF]

Im surprised how many time I hear people having trouble getting thier ABS prints to stick to the bed so I figure I would post something up showing how I get my abs prints to stick to the bed.

1 Make sure your machine is well calibrated. Your first layers are the most critical, having gaps causes you to lose a fair amount of adhesion.

2 The right tempatures. Extruding the filament too cold or to low of a bed tempature can cause adhesion troubles as well as layer bonding problems. Drafts may also cause layer seperation.

3 Prepairing the print surface. The print surface should be clean and dry, wipe it down with alchol or acetone and apply your favorite bonding agent some perfer hair spray but I use abs juice which is made by dissolving some abs in acetone to a thin glue likes consistancy and wiping it on with a plastic spreader. This gives the best possible bonding imho.

4 Print speed. While the rostock is an incredibly fast machine (ive printed at 120 mm/sec) sometimes its better off to slow things down a bit 30-40 mm/sec is plenty fast.

So what can you expect by following the above Tips?
[img]http://i1102.photobucket.com/albums/g446/davidflowers1/Mobile%20Uploads/20150206_003859_resized.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i1102.photobucket.com/albums/g446/davidflowers1/Mobile%20Uploads/20150206_112015_resized.jpg[/img]

How about spending an hour trying to get the frickin print of the bed, stabbing yourself, ripping a chunk out of you glass, blood, swearing, and an over all feeling of "You gotta be shitin me!"

[DavidF]

not one chuckle?

[Eaglezsoar]

not one chuckle?

It's worth more than one chuckle!
Thanks for the great pictures! Did you notice you have a chunk missing from your glass?

[DavidF]

not one chuckle?

It's worth more than one chuckle!
Thanks for the great pictures! Did you notice you have a chunk missing from your glass?

I was afraid people missed the punch line after the pictures....LOL

[Captain Starfish]

Welcome to the club of "Where can I buy borosilicate discs?".

ABS seems to walk a fine line between insufficient and overenthusiastic bed adhesion, particularly on the bigger prints.

Personally I suspect that you reach a linear size and temperature differential between head, bed and cold zone between where the mechanical force required to hold the abs stretched out exceeds that of the glass. Mine didn't crack during removal, it let go during the print.

A raft seems to be the go, if you're patient enough to wait for just the raft to print. Seems to act as a bit of a shock absorber for the print.

Sucks to see though, flip that plate over and she'll be right for another little while.

[KAS]

Damn, I noticed the chunk out of the glass right a way but i completely missed the blood...

[Nylocke]

I had a similar thing with a regular sheet of glass on my Ultimaker when I was using ABS juice. That time the part came of the glass relatively easily, but there was this weird crunchy stuff on the bottom. After I cleaned the glass with windex, I noticed this long thin chunk where glass was missing.

A time before that, I was printing a larger part in Nylon on some glue stick. During the print I heard this large *CRACK* sound, but I couldnt find anything wrong, so I let the print finish. When I went to take the part off the bed, I found the glass in around 13 separate pieces. Part turned out fine though, and it got a fair amount of use

[DavidF]

well thankfully there is two sides to the glass. Well its been a year and a half now so I guess I cant complain. still sucks having to buy another plate though. Maybe I should order 2??

[Nylocke]

I got PEI and it pretty well protects my glass. I'm still searching for something real good for Nylon, recently been doing glue on the back side of the glass, but I think Michael uses a cast Nylon sheet, might look into that. Should eliminate all cause of glass cracking

[joseph]

Sooooo,

I should stop drinking the ABS Juice while I print?

[Durandal]

I've been having very good luck with Uhu glue stick and a 100C bed with a raft, base lines 1.5mm apart and a .4mm nozzle. It's enough to stay stuck, but lets it come off relatively easy when you want to.

[gestalt73]

Aw man, I feel ya.

I've completely shattered two plates, and chipped a third just like that. Large flat parts are definitely a challenge.

Elmer's Glue stick + thin ABS slurry is awesome.

The lesson learned for me is for large parts, remove them from the build plate immediately while they're still hot.

I use a thin blade paring knife, and a rather sharp and thin paint scraper to help separate parts.

[Shizuma]

The lesson learned for me is for large parts, remove them from the build plate immediately while they're still hot.

I've always found the opposite to be better, when the print/bed was still hot shy of taking a razor blade to pry the part off it wasn't budging at all, however once the bed has cool it takes either no effort at all as the part is already completely free of the bed or tiny bit of effort to pop the part off, that's with just using purple Elmer's glue stick though, I never use ABS juice or anything since I haven't had any issues with just the glue stick, at least not since building an enclosure around the build chamber.

[RocketMagnet]

Personally IME so far with a large contact patch you'll only ever need a glue stick with a correct Z height, speed and temps etc.
Worst comes to worst with a glue stick you can take off the a cooled build plate and soak it in a tub soapy water which will dissolve the glue but I've only ever had to do this with PLA not ABS which for me always either pops off on cooling or just a gentle tap with a spatula at appropriate points.

If your ever in that situation again could be worth dissolving the ABS part off with Acetone rather than damage yourself and the build plate

So seems like you need to consider your adherence technique based on the part contact surface area so only use ABS juice a brim or raft for smaller parts and something less aggressive than ABS juice with large contact areas... though it's more complex if your printing multiple different parts simultaneously and you'll have to go with the worst area or split them...

[Toysrme]

never had a problem with ABS.
i just use the purple elmer's glue sticks like it says in the manual cut to 80-90c & then drop the temp after the first few layers. every once and awhile i just toss the build plate in the dish washer; comes out perfectly clean! (PVA doesnt get on with water)


when a part is being stubborn coming off i just pop a paint scraper under it. comes off every time as long as it's a sharp motion.

[hax0red]

Had the same problem with my Mini Kossel(glass purchased from Ultibots.com) and ABS except I wasn't using anything but heat and mine cooled, popping loose overnight and that's when I saw the big chunk stuck to the bottom of my part which wasn't very big IMO. Piece looked just like yours.

I have since flipped the glass and move on to using Kapton when printing with ABS which helps the parts stick even better now with exception to PLA. I have to peel the Kapton back off to use PLA but it sticks great on plain glass heated to 80-85C first layer and 65-70C for the rest. Really loving the Sainsmart imported PLA vs the now overpriced Hatchbox I used in the past.

[img]http://i62.tinypic.com/n3vn61.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i57.tinypic.com/24653c4.jpg[/img]

[kevinbragg]

never had a problem with ABS.
i just use the purple elmer's glue sticks like it says in the manual cut to 80-90c & then drop the temp after the first few layers. every once and awhile i just toss the build plate in the dish washer; comes out perfectly clean! (PVA doesnt get on with water)


when a part is being stubborn coming off i just pop a paint scraper under it. comes off every time as long as it's a sharp motion.

Is this the "purple" glue stick? http://www.cvs.com/shop/household-groce ... uid-494181

Or this: http://elmers.com/product/detail/E523

I'm finally printing large parts, and hairspray is not holding well enough... =/

[Shizuma]

Is this the "purple" glue stick? http://www.cvs.com/shop/household-groce ... uid-494181

Or this: http://elmers.com/product/detail/E523

I'm finally printing large parts, and hairspray is not holding well enough... =/

I use the second one on mine, works far better than the hair spray did, with an enclosed build chamber the only time I ever have any sort of adhesion issues with ABS is because I let it go too long without cleaning the build plate and re-applying the glue stick.

[Durandal]

Yep, I only go about 5-6 prints without removing the glass and cleaning. Always apply the glue cold too, applying it hot makes the surface lumpy and affects the 1st layer quality.

[Toysrme]

ya that's what i use. honestly i would advise learning the bed heat & how much you can print without warping. print yourself a seriously large raft & print so you can see at what point warping really becomes an issue.

on big footprint ABS or nylon prints the corners can still come loose. everything people say is true. the heated bed has uneven temp. a small metal plate can help that. without one i found that on big prints if you over-shoot the bed temp by 5-10*C and then let it fall it will hold better. blocking airflow to bring the chamber temp helps large/tall ABS prints a lot. you can also print an overly large, slow first layer that really sticks well. too often i think we get in a hurry & don't have good bed adhesion to start with.


kapton tape+PVA holds ABS like a champ too if you're only printing ABS.

[kevinbragg]

Is this the "purple" glue stick? http://www.cvs.com/shop/household-groce ... uid-494181

Or this: http://elmers.com/product/detail/E523

I'm finally printing large parts, and hairspray is not holding well enough... =/

I use the second one on mine, works far better than the hair spray did, with an enclosed build chamber the only time I ever have any sort of adhesion issues with ABS is because I let it go too long without cleaning the build plate and re-applying the glue stick.

I found the second one works great for prints which use only 1/3 of the SeeMeCNC heated bed... once I go beyond that I had to use the "ABS Juice" method... it works very well! (ABS suspended in acetone)

[Toysrme]

ya, to really drive it home tho. if anyone *really* wants to get ABS to stick, lay down some kapton tape on your bed. the grip is tenacious.

[Neptune]

I've found that applying the Elmers glue stick to the bed when its cool works better than when its hot, sticks to the bed much better.

[pstenabaugh]

As newbie I tried something different today.... I turned the heated bed OFF, when it was cool I applied some 'Scotch' brand blue painter's tape on the glass (actually over my old glue bed). I then wiped down the top surface of the tape with 99% IPA and when that dried off I applied 2 layers of Elmer's glue at 90 degrees, letting each one dry. I then proceeded to print the shark.

I have been using Elmer's glue so far and it does work ok, but the bed heat is important with that stuff, and I have some issues with bed heat as you will read below. I think I have to spend some money and get myself a thermocouple to see if I can get an accurate temperature reading around the bed area.

The tail section of the shark lifted just a bit, but the rest of the print stuck REALLY well. I actually had to remove the tape and the print at the same time then peel the tape off. There was a bit of glue residue on the print but that just washed off with warm water.

I had a strange thing happen though - the shark print split horizontally exactly 1/2 way (in thickness) from the tail to about 50% of the length. i dont think this would related to the print sticking issue since the bulk of the print was stuck really well.

I am now doing another test with a 10mm raft around the shark to see if that helps. With the shark print now completed, the shark has split again horizontally, and the raft did not prevent the tail from warping..... oh well, partial success. The raft was a train wreck also, it wasnt solid, it looked like a piece of worn out window screen, so I have some settings to change there - someplace. The splitting of the shark could easily be a flaw in the shark model, having done exactly the same thing twice, in exactly the same layer. When I printed the very first one last week, it was ok though, so this is a head-scratcher.

My whole point in doing this experiment is to see if I can find a substitute to using a heated bed for printing ABS, and likely other filaments as well. On my brand new Rostock V2 the heated bed is warped into a convex saucer shape by a significant amount, being high in the center by about 0.050". The glass plate is also warped in a cylindrical shape, so that helps take out some of the heated bed warpage, but in the end my heated bed system is a train wreck. So to resolve the warping issue I have setup the heated bed as per the manual and I have installed some brass shims of varying thickness under the glass, held in place by the binder clamps. The end result is a fairly flat glass plate that allows me to get the Z0 etc adjusted pretty well. The down side to that idea is that i have now introduced some air gap between the plates, which I think is now giving me some heat transfer issues. Now that i have the glass fairly flat, I am still going to calibrate it with a dial indicator, but I had to print myself an adapter first, which i did earlier today.

If I can successfully and repeatedly print ABS without any heat then I can consider removing the warped heated bed and replace it with something flat like maybe some MDF or maybe just a heavy piece of plate glass about 1/4" or 3/8" thick.

Has anyone had issues with warped heated beds? Are there any out there that are known to be FLAT?

If had a flat heated bed I would also consider putting a thin copper or brass plate, or maybe a piece of copper covered circuit board material, on top of it to help distribute the heat, then put some Kapton tape on the metal surface.

Pete
(Calgary)

[VAXHeadroom]

ABS will split like that on large prints because it shrinks. The lower part is being held in tension across the print bed, but eventually the top half will exert enough pressure that it will pull away from the lower half splitting the part. The industrial machines heat the entire build volume to relieve the stresses as the part builds and then lower the temperature slowly so that the stresses in the part will be relieved. Our little hobby machines don't generally do that because it's expensive and complex to do.

PLA will not split like that because it doesn't shrink nearly as much, and for that reason I switched to PLA almost exclusively.