Welcome to the SeeMeCNC Community

Have a particular interest printing in ABS for its resilient physical and heat properties, as well as the various finishing options available.
Do a lot with hobby rocketry where the capabilities of ABS are interesting: http://www.bpasa.com/

Started 3D printing with a stock Rostock MAX Nov. 2015 and found that same material support required a lot of cutting and sanding to remove support, and then the supported surfaces were very rough.

Top two pictures are a carrier/cover for a small (Keyfob sized) 808 #16 video camera. Intended to be mounted on the outside of a rocket for cool onboard flight video. Many of these videos are posted on my rocketry website link above. The 808 #16 is a good value at about $40 without SD card, capable of 720p 30fps video.

I have used carefully applied yellow masking tape to successfully hold these cameras to the side of rockets up to 350mph, and buildups of fiberglass past 1100mph. Hoping to print ABS shells that let me do this as another option.

Bottom pic is a spinning flying saucer that I later flew, after a lot of cutting and sanding to remove all the underlying support.

Later purchased and installed two Bondtech QR filament drivers and an E3D Cyclops print head.

Found that the Bondtech QR filament drivers calibrated to 470 steps per mm and were very reliable moving filament.

Did not want to give up Z height installing the Cyclops print head, so mounted it into the existing stock stand-offs that came with the Rostock MAX effector plate. To get needed height offset, added slightly longer screws and some extra heated bed spacers. Benefits:

1) Actually gained a few mm Z height capability over stock set up.
2) Extruder nozzle is very near - just slightly below - center of actuator plate, minimizing nozzle position play during printing.
3) Worm screws in cooling block that hold heatbreaks in position are fully accessible above actuator assembly.

> Also observed that Cyclops/Chimera cooling block now has worm screws on its side, not front and back as was previously the case.

Printed the red top-mounted print head mounting plate pictured in the previous post from ABS.
Started with an STL for the Cyclops/Chimera that someone was kind enough to post and modified it for my mount setup, would gladly give credit but couldn't find original post a couple months later.

STL for my modified version is attached.

Hey Delta,

So far all of my ABS+HIPS prints have been brittle.

I'm still holding out hope that a large enough priming tower would help, but so far no luck.

I suspect that no matter how much priming you do, some HIPS gets mixed in the chamber with the ABS, but I'm not ready to call it quits yet.

I print with the natural HIPS, and no matter how much I prime, the hips support still takes on the hue of the ABS plastic, which suggests strongly that there is mixing.

Which is a shame, because in spite of doubling the print times, I REALLY REALLY want it to work.

Went with a PC Molex connector to connect print head heater and thermistor to printer.

This allowed for an easy switch from a single E3D Volcano head, pictured below, to the Cyclops now in use and pictured in previous posts. Keeping in mind that the Cyclops, like any single extruder head, also has only one thermistor and heater.

The Volcano, with the "Eruption Pack" of 0.6mm, 0.8mm, 1.0mm and 1.2mm nozzles allowed for easy experimentation with nozzle sizes.

The pictured red flying saucers (150mm diameter, 24mm central motor mount) were printed with 0.8mm and 0.6mm nozzles at a variety of settings.

0.8mm nozzle benefits - compared to RS MAX stock 0.5mm:
1) much faster print
2) stronger part
3) more reliable printing process (less likely to have a bad first layer start, due to thicker first layer)
Disadvantage:
1) Rougher surface due to thicker extrusions

As the 0.8mm nozzle was already creating a rougher surface than I wanted, did not try 1.0mm and 1.2mm nozzles.

Did find that I liked the balance of properties offered by the 0.6mm nozzle, with all of the effects noted above, but in moderation.

>> So when I switched over to the Cyclops, purchased a couple extra of the standard (and only available for purchase) 0.4mm Cyclops nozzles.
And then drilled them out myself to 0.6mm. First bit broke off inside a brass nozzle and made it unusable.
Used 3in1 oil to lubricate the second attempt and successfully drilled out a stock Cyclops nozzle from 0.4mm to 0.6mm

Have been using that successfully for the last month.

Gestalt73, you raise the toughest issue with this set up.
When using HIPS + ABS in the Cyclops, preventing the HIPS from undermining layer adhesion in the ABS part is a significant challenge. After printing 20+ parts at different settings, I eventually did come up with settings that provided strong ABS parts using HIPS support. (some good and bad parts in pic 3)

Taking the experiments one step at a time, at each extreme condition:
> Parts that were printed with ABS only, even with the HIPS sitting loaded in the printer but not used for a given print job, were very strong and had no layer adhesion issues at all.
> Parts that were printed with ABS and HIPS support with the tiny 0.2mm retraction recommended by E3D, and had no wipe tower, had terrible layer adhesion for the ABS parts and could easily be crushed by hand. (pics 1 and 2)

Settings that eventually allowed for very strong ABS parts printed with HIPS support with E3D Cyclops:
>> Please keep in mind that I am using a very long Bowden set up, tubes are about 3ft from filament drivers to print head. Shorter Bowden or direct drive setups should start with much less retraction.

Using MatterControl slicer
Nozzle size 0.6mm (I drilled mine out to this - use your actual)
working with 2 to 4 layers top, bottom and sides as desired
Infill 0 to 40% as desired
First layer 0.4mm, all other layers 0.2mm (adjust for nozzle size)
print head speeds and temperatures pretty close to stock (220C, lower temps would not extrude, higher temps made no obvious difference)
heated bed 70C (Elmers purple glue stick for adhesion)
heated chamber 50-70C
skirt: 2 loops
raft: expand distance 10mm, air gap 0.1mm (always use raft and wipe tower if using ABS+HIPS, without big raft wipe tower frequently detached from heated bed)
support material: HIPS, grid, spacing 5mm, 50%, interface layers 1, X and Y distance 1mm, air gap 0.3mm (less gap may result in HIPS bonding to ABS - see pic 5)
wipe tower size: 30mm (friggin huge - see pic 4)
Retraction: length on move 6mm, length on tool change 8mm (only use these if your have long Bowden tubes, otherwise Cyclops will require cleaning out. speed 60mm/s, extra length on restart 0.1mm,
>> Adjust minimum travel length requiring retraction to what makes sense for each print, goal is to minimize ABS retractions while also minimizing HIPS drips on ABS part

Some folks have posted about problems with filament back flow and jamming with the Cyclops.

A couple times when I went too far with retraction, beyond even the very high values noted in the post above, one filament or the other would stop feeding through the Cyclops.
Each time turning the Cyclops up to 280C temporarily was enough to get things flowing again.

No doubt the very capable and expensive Bondtech QR extruders help keep filament moving.

Thanks for sharing your settings, I'll take a look and see if I'm doing anything different.

I don't think I tried a prime tower as wide as 30mm, but I'll try to set up something tonight to try it out.

The two settings that seemed to be essential to keeping the HIPS from undermining ABS layer adhesion were:

1) Very large wipe tower, 30mm on a side, any less and the ABS structure was weak. It should be possible to reduce the large proportion of sacrificial material by printing multiple parts at the same time, have not tried this yet.

2) The most retraction that could be used reliably used without having filament feed problems with the Cyclops, with my long Bowden tubes 30X to 40X more than recommended by E3D. Also optimizing minimum travel requiring retraction for each print job as noted above.

Varying print head temperatures, speeds, 0.4mm/0.6mm nozzle sizes, and a few other settings did not seem to affect ABS layer adhesion with HIPS support in the Cyclops.

One challenge setting up the E3D Cyclops in the Rostock MAX is updating the firmware.

E3D and some other references recommended using the Repetier 0.92 online configuration wizard. Despite several searches, never found details to answer the very many questions in the wizard for the RS MAX/Cyclops.

Instead, started with with a configuration.h file for Repetier 0.91 found online for the Chimera http://forum.seemecnc.com/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=7532 in the RS MAX and modified it for the Cyclops. (Removed pin changes and references to second extruder). Worked like a charm, file modifications:

#define NUM_EXTRUDER 2 line 49
#define EXT0_TEMPSENSOR_TYPE 8 line 187
#define MAXTEMP 295 line 575
#define MAX_DEFECT_TEMPERATURE 295
#define UI_SET_MAX_EXTRUDER_TEMP 295 line 1240