when printiong abs im seeing at most 235 deg at moment while printing it will heat up to higher but when printing it creeps down
I though (that makes sence when others said thermistor settings were wrong but support mocks this
what temps are others getting while printing , and does anyboy else have views ?
I would like to get an answer to this as well. I have not printed with abs yet, but with full fan on and extruding at a high speed the temperature ig diffuculkt to get to 220 deg in my case (but my printer room is also at 10 deg). I really don’t think there is anything wrong in my thermistor setting or location, I think the fan is simply cooling the hotend too much. But I am just guessing. Wrapping the hotend in kapton will most likely solve the issue though.
I’ve set the temperature around 225° to print ABS (may vary with your brand of filament). At the end of the warm up process I’m blocking the fan and when printing I’ve put the fan speed at 30% max.
I have it set at 245 (standard setting). Fan also at standard setting.
The printer heats up to 244 (target 245) and then starts if it maintains it at 244 for a second. It then rapidly declines to 225 while printing.
It seems this does the trick for the ABS. Still strange. It is as if the printer has a hard time making it to 245 if it gets there at all.
I am thinking about a preheat duct, that blocks the airflow to the bed and hot end temporarily, only aiming at the insulator while preheating.
Possibly with a manual switch to disable it before the printing starts.
Until there is a respons to AVRussers thread: http://forum.velleman.eu/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=13299
I think I should also lower to 225 . It would mean the printer is now really trying to get to 265 if you input 245?
That would explain it having a hard time getting there…
I’m currently trying to print colorfabb XT at 250. I’ve waited nearly 20 minutes and the head still hasn’t got there.
This is ridiculous - surely the fan shouldn’t be on full when you need higher temperatures. I’m not sure it will ever get to 250, which I’m sure I remember is what @Velleman claimed it could print at.
Something is seriously wrong. Either they’ve basically messed up the design of the head (i.e. it requires too much cooling, why did they use PEEK?) or the default ABS filament setting should start cooling much much later, or slower, or something.
This printer cannot print at 250. Not practically. If it takes me half an hour to heat the nozzle, that’s not really much use is it? To be honest, 245 is a monumental struggle for the printer. In fact I reckon it takes at least ten minutes to go from 230 to 240.
When printing ABS I set the fan at 30% and it doesn’t cool the head.
To speed up heating you can change the speed of the the fans in the line M106 S165 (start g-code). S can vary from 0 to 255. So 165 is about 65%. Try lowering it to 80.
[quote=“raby”]When printing ABS I set the fan at 30% and it doesn’t cool the head. [/quote]But does lead to any issues, maybe blocked nozzles etc as the filament softens further up the nozzle?
[quote=“raby”]To speed up heating you can change the speed of the the fans in the line M106 S165 (start g-code). S can vary from 0 to 255. So 165 is about 65%. Try lowering it to 80.[/quote]Ok, I’ve put this into the g-code start and will see if it improves the somewhat awful “between prints” time waiting for the nozzle to struggle up to 245.
But this long wait is definitely an issue - I get blackened lumps coming out of the nozzle as the filament has been stuck in there for 20 mins around the 230-240 mark.
Other than that, the initial prints coming out of the Vertex with XT are very promising. If I can crack the temperature, retraction and flow settings then I think the results will be almost as good as PolyMax (my current favourite), which means we might have two viable ABS replacements we can use on the machine.
Early days of course - don’t all rush out and buy these filaments until a lot more testing is done! I’ll post some pics of colorfabb’s XT copolyester prints in another thread shortly.
ATM nothing such happened with ABS and I’ve printed a lot.
About Polymax and XT, are they easy to sand and to glue like ABS?
Your trick worked Raby! It halved the time to heat up. Not tried reducing the fan during printing, but one thing that did make a difference was to disable the head lift option when layer sizes get small, it meant the little round bits on the Lego printed without the stringing.
Not tried sanding or gluing either material yet. But I imagine XT will be very similar to ABS, as it’s a high temperature filament. Here’s a little peek preview of my tests.
ABS doesn’t like too much cooling or it’s warping like hell.
The head lift is paramount when printing very fine structure with the head staying at the same place for a long time, like spires. Otherwise the piece is melted down.
I’m sanding ABS and then I polish it with a cloth soaked with acetone.
The XT looks grainy. Is there a solvent for this material?
ATM it seems the Polymax only exists in white?
[quote=“raby”]The head lift is paramount when printing very fine structure with the head staying at the same place for a long time, like spires. Otherwise the piece is melted down.
The XT looks grainy. Is there a solvent for this material?
ATM it seems the Polymax only exists in white?[/quote]that maybe true, but head lift can also drag and string as it lifts and that was wrecking the tops of the Lego. Better without for this print.
I don’t know about a solvent for XT. It’s a rather odd filament, the surfaces in that photo look much worse than they actually are. The sides of the XT piece don’t look printed because you can’t see the layers. I imagine some people would find that attractive. Personally, I prefer the look of the PolyMax because it looks like it’s been very finely printed!
Yes, I believe white only for PolyMax but I’ll email them and check for you.
As an update to this, I can confirm that XT sands very nicely with wet and dry, as it’s a hard material. PolyMax also sands OK, although it gums up the sandpaper quicker. PolyMax is confirmed as only white for the moment - Aaron at Polymakr said they might try a yellow or orange later.
I’m still not sold on XT though - I can understand it as a replacement for ABS in some contexts, as it’s food safe and odour neutral. It’s not as strong as ABS or PolyMax however, in fact I’d say it’s probably similar to PLA in how rigid it is.
Here’s a soapdish printed in red XT, my apologies for the quality - as we all know phones struggle with fine detail on red objects. This is before any clean up, it’s still attached:
The surface actually feels quite rough. I’m doing another, slightly bigger print in PLA to compare it against today. The XT did detach a little from the build plate on one corner, but you can’t really tell. Pretty good for a 6 hour print, and I didn’t bother disabling the fan for the first few mm so that probably didn’t help. Had to reduce the fan to 40% to get it to print around the 242 mark. I suspect the results might be slightly better if it was hotter, but I’m not really confident about leaving my printer printing for that long at a temp of around 250C with reduced cooling… might work, might wreck the nozzle!?
