Attempting to print ABS on a Chinese i3 clone.

3D Printing
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Attempting to print ABS on a Chinese i3 clone. Ended up building a (very) ghetto enclosure, to see if helps (before making something more elaborate).

Built the enclosure after watching the video from @3DPrintingNerd where they built something a bit more dubious. :slight_smile:

The enclosure seems to help, though I have not yet got the settings for ABS sorted. Iterating. (Does make the printer much quieter.)

0d5bf84dca7b9b0f0f998a29d914ecb3.jpeg
0d5bf84dca7b9b0f0f998a29d914ecb3.jpeg3036×4048 2.86 MB

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810164ccdf4f253501880d78120a004d.jpeg4048×3036 3.58 MB

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2eb5ccf9bb8aa4e63902958a9b841336.jpeg4048×3036 2.86 MB

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aa9788dd8ac1925886bcfa149ee1ef07.jpeg4048×3036 3.78 MB

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3be5f53f54508d93ad833e44da2ab55b.jpeg3036×4048 4.67 MB

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The enclosure will help a lot, bed surface is another… I used bare aluminium with hair spray. What are you using?

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@Jeremiah_Coley I got past the problem with the corner lifting from the bed, though I varied more than one parameter, so the cause is not (yet) clear. Still have under-extrusion(?) on the concave outer area. Also picked up roughness on the top surface (over-extrusion?). But … much better than initial settings. Still trying variants.

The bed surface on this re-branded Wanhao printer is some sort of coating that works well with PLA. In fact, sometimes too well, so I use glue-stick to limit adhesion.

With ABS have only tried with glue-stick on the bed.

Latest print:

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c92e434b32a669416264f41903ebccfd.jpeg3036×4048 2.9 MB

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It’s that stringing in the corner? Did it just flick out?

Relatedly I’ve got a few bits of foam packing sheets from stuff that I tape together to make a ghetto enclosure, seemed to help on long prints I was running

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@Mr_Bonce not stringing, a shortage of plastic in that bend. Printing with slower speed and acceleration, at present. Will see.

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I am trying to calculate the cost of those boxes based on $2 a bottle. Is that a $36 enclosure?

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@Matt_Harrington There are in fact five boxes in use. My grandson likes to build things.

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At the end, my Chinese i3 clone (Monoprice Maker Select Plus) can manage 40mm/s when printing ABS. Much, much slower than PLA.

To be clear, better firmware could likely improve the performance. A better hot-end could likely improve performance. Likely I will not do either, at least in short term.

I bought this printer as a bootstrap to print the parts for my next printer. If you want a very well done Prusa i3, buy one from Prusa.

This printer only has to be good enough.