Printing ABS on Kapton…
After studing some articles over the internet i make next conlusions:
When printing, the heated bad must be at 70C (not 110C as usual)
You must remove the printed shape after full cooling of the bed (or you can tear away a part of the kapton layer)
3.Kapton layers must be fitted to bed without overlaping & air bubbles
No need to remove the kapton layer after printing (in some cases it still work about month of printing)
the printed shapes has a more tendency to curve (because the bigger difference of temperature)
I will be very gratfull if you confirm or refute my conclusions. Also it will be great if you add some moments which i missed.
@Whosa_whatsis with hairspray it will, doing it at the moment on glass. The lower bed temp seems to reduce warping, I guess because the thermal gradient from the bed surface upwards is less severe.
5 should be reworded, ABS has a higher CTE than PLA, and this will have a higher tendency to shrink more between layers. Since the previous layer is shrinking while current layer is printing, parts may have a tendency to curl up. This can be minimized by using a bed heated to around 100c, prevent air drafts from hitting part, and reducing continuous lengths of walls
@Whosa_whatsis I don’t know about 70C, but I’ve measured mine with an external thermocouple, as I do not have a controllable bed, and found mine was at 80C. Admittedly I can’t remember if I used a surface contact thermocouple or just a bare twisted pair. (Maybe I’ll remeasure some time.) My ABS parts are frequently difficult to remove from Kapton. The adhesion also seems to depend on the layer thickness and obviously whether or not I had the nozzle close enough to begin with.
I also sand my Kapton with 220 grit sandpaper and then wipe clean with IPA or acetone.
70C may be adequate for smaller ABS prints but once you start venturing into multiple or large/tall prints, you will need to raise the temperature. Reason being is that the printed part starts acting like a heatsink, drawing heat from the plate. I had large prints draw at least 10C from the plate. Your center plate may read 70C but prints near the edge will drop to 60C.
acetone AKA Fingernail polish remover (check to make sure its 100%) and a few strips of ABS, poor on heat bed around 50 C, smear around, bring to 100C, print on that, no wrapping, when dones, cool to 40C, it’ll pop off the bed on its own. use razor to clean up if needed.
Also with kapton I set my nozzle height even lower than usual so the first layers are pushed down onto the kapton firmly. I compensate in the model with a small 0.5mm chamfer which fills up.
