Airflow Effect on ABS Bed Adhesion

Hello Uppers (is that an ok handle for UpBox owners?)

Anyway,

I’ve been having some issues with raft adhesion using the ABS that came with the machine on some “larger” prints.

I had to apply blue painters tape to the bed or nothing would stick at all, but since then I’ve had fantastic results… with prints smaller than 3"x3" footprint!

My first printer over that size warped at the edges of the raft and totally botched the print. Before I start making a custom profile I am looking elsewhere for solutions. In the manual it says that ABS is greatly effected by airflow. The manual recommends turning off airflow completely for ABS. Has anyone found this helpful?

I have PLA on order and can’t wait to work with it since I think most of my little issues will go away (hopefully!).

Thanks for any advice!

Ok, lets get the simple question out of the way first. :grinning: Are you using the right bed? If you’re printing ABS with a raft you should be using the board with hundreds of little holes in (the perfboad) not the smooth one. If you are using that one and are having problems some photos of what’s going on would help us understand what to do next. (Probably leveling, nozzle height, or material settings.) Usually getting the part off the perfboard requires considerable effort with a sharp scraper.
Cheers, Owen S.

Hey thanks for the reply!

I mostly seem to have solved this issue. And by that I mean I turned off the airflow completely, as the user manual suggest. I also reduced the density of the model so it wouldn’t take so long and start to cool/contract during the print.

I did find that the perforated bed that came with the printer offered ZERO adhesion with the provided ABS. I had to apply blue painters tape to the bed in order to have any adhesion at all. This is working perfectly.

Perf bed works just fine with ABS for me. But I need to ensure that:

  • Ensure that your bed is properly leveled, and head is at the right distance. Check this video

  • Start printing when the bed is preheated to 90+ degrees.

Then I have no problems, even I might run into trouble because the raft is to hard to remove from the perfboard.