Dialing in a filament: Thought Process

Someone named Ian reminded me that I should totally talk about this. Thank you for the reminder!

My ABS comes in tomorrow so this is an opportune time to go over what my brain does before I even start.

1. Read. I try and gather some preliminary info on the base material. Since this is ABS I did a quick Google search and found a couple interesting articles.

https://www.imaginethat-3d.com/how-to-succeed-when-printing-with-abs

https://reprap.org/wiki/ABS

2. Understand the negative properties. All Filaments experience different positive and negative properties but the negative properties are what affect our printing ability.

With ABS it's mainly warping and layer adhesion. It seems I'll need a place where the material won't cool too fast and also a heated bed. PEI seems to be a good candidate for a print surface but the addition of a slurry made from ABS dissolved in acetone can increase my chances of success. I do not have an enclosure but I will attempt to use these techniques to help me keep the prints from warping.

3. Starting settings. I typically base my initial settings on educated guesses. Material says it prints between X and Y so I find the middle temp and start there. I print slower first to make sure the printer mechanics won't be an issue which equates to no faster than 30-45mm/s on perimeters and 60mm/s infil. I choose the highest recommended bed temp and start at 1mm retraction.

Other settings: 5% infill, 3 bottom and 5 top layers, 0.2mm layer height, 2 perimeters, and a small amount of z hop aka 2x the layer height.

These base settings tend to get results with most filaments. It's the observations after the first prints that bring it all together.

4. Observe. I usually print a cube or a cute octo depending on how lucky I'm feeling that day. Without even running an extrusion multiplier test or anything like that I want to make sure it'll print first. No need to dial in the settings if it won't print.

I watch for first layer issues. Live Z, sticking, curling, bunching. I note those and let it continue if nothing catastrophic is going on.

Paying attention to how the second and third solid infill layer prints tells me a lot about the extrusion multiplier. if I see gaps em is too low vice versa.

Watching the layers is somewhat fruitless but I get mesmerized and watch them anyway just in case. After a while I just let it go and walk away.

5. Study. After the print finishes or fails I check the simple things. Did the layers bond well? Was there any curling or warp? Did the part still stick to the buildplate well? Did print turn out pretty or pretty bad?

This step has a lot to do with experience of seeing issues and correcting them in your slicer. I'll definitely go more in depth as I test materials and share the experience here.

6. Adjust. I make small adjustments based on what I notice from the print and stick to only the main basic settings. I'm not dialing in retractions, extrusion and so on I'm just getting my general base good enough to print a successful simple print.

7. Challenge. Once you have a successful easy print it's time to try something like a benchy to correct for other things. Overhangs, details, stringing and so on.

I have methods for all of those that tend to work so stay tuned to visual observations as I test ABS.

8. Repeat steps 5-6 on our more difficult print. Look at your print and notice any major defects and make sure your changes did something positive or negative.

9. Adjust adjust adjust. Reprint things and adjust repeating steps 5-7 in hopes of getting a better base print and making sure your changes are all for the positive. If not pause and make sure you didn't miss something.

10. Tune. Fine tune things now if you're getting successful prints with adequate quality. Do you extrusion multiplier tests. Run something that causes stringing and dial in retractions. Temp towers. Do the those things now since we know the material can print and just needs those little tweaks to make it pretty.

I'm going to pause here. Once I get my ABS in I'll show my failures and observations as they happen vs all words. Eventually once we get a successful profile I can condense what we found into one blog post.

Till then think about these steps above.