Help! Ugly Prints!

Im new to the world of 3D printing. I built a Makerfarm Prusa i3 a few weeks ago. I have been starting with PLA and had the printer dialed in perfectly. My prints were beautiful. I figured since it was making great PLA prints I should swap out for some ABS and print out some extra extruder parts for backups. Im having some weird results with ABS. Its printing pretty messy.



Does anyone know why this looks the way it does? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Here's what my setup is: Im printing on a J-head .5 nozzle @ 230 degrees. Bed temp at 100 degrees. .3 layer height. I have a glass bed and use hairspray to adhere the print.

Is the ABS sticking to the bed?

The only thing that worked for me was ABS juice, i.e leave some bits of ABS soaking in acetone for 24 hours i.e until the acetone goes a slightly cloudy colour.

Then wipe it onto the glass using a bit of kitchen paper.

Just wipe it once, don't be tempted to rub it in or wipe over an area you just did, as an ultra thin coating seems to work just was well as anything.

The ABS sticks great with hairspray. Never had a problem with that. Also its super easy to clean up the glass afterward with soap and water. Sometimes I use Methyl Chloride to clean the PLA off of the glass.

My only problem seems to be the first 6 or so layers of a print look real nasty. Only happens with ABS. And my bed is level. I use a piece of paper to measure the distance from the nozzle to the glass when leveling. Maybe thats to close or to far for ABS....

I'm completely new to this as well but I used a piece of paper for the same reason and didn't have any problem printing ABS. Maybe something to do with the heated bed or hot end temperature?

I had my heated bed set to 110 C and my hot end set to 220 C.

I think you may be too low on your first layer looking at how thin your skirt pass is.

this is causing your filament to kinda squish out the sides of the nozzle tip and pull back up as the next pass is layed down.

Generally you want that first layer about 50% of your layer height to get good first layer adhesion.

After the first layer is down, drop your bed heat to about 80C, if you stay at 110c for the whole print you will get print distortion from the bed heat.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/05/2014 09:35PM by Dirty Steve.

Thanks Steve, I'll give that a shot. Does the first layer being 50% of of my layer height apply to PLA as well? Im in the process of setting up the auto bed leveling system. That should make things much easier

yes

Also check you extruder calibration and extrusion multiplier. It looks like you are extruding too much filament.
Also, it may be your filament - where did you get it? Some of the cheap brands on Ebay have behaved like that
on me.

I bought the filament from MakerFarm. Its a chameleon color, green when cold, yellow when hot. Maybe it just has weird pigments in it causing issues..