Tuesday 14 June 2011

Printing Prusa

After several prints using ABS, I can now safely say that this low-powered heated bed is capable of printing ABS parts under some stringent circumstances.

First of all, to reach this performance, I did my best to insulate the bottom surface of the aluminium plate, which so far has involved taping a couple of strips of a few more cotton wool pads underneath, and (I kid you not) stuffing an old worn out cotton sock and a bandana underneath to fill out some of the remaining space. If I had one big piece of cotton wool to fill the whole gap, it would probably work better, but I don't.

So, by pre-heating the bed either by covering it with something insulating on top (slow) or resting a clothes iron on top (fast) and bringing the temperature above 110C, I could print some small ABS parts on the bed, and larger ones with the aid of raft material.


Not all the parts I tried to print so far pulled through with these methods, as I have a couple of parts from prints that were aborted about 2/3 to 3/4 the way through, which while they don't look pretty and aren't as strong, are still fairly functional. I'll probably give those to a friend by hand as freebies some time, to get them set up faster.
A bit of plastic welding with the top section printed might fix that big one.

Still, half the way to a full set and I'm discovering how much of a stink melting ABS can create.

Too tired for captions today. Prolonged exposure to butadiene can't be helping.

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