Finally Tried ABS and Got Sand

3D Printing Materials
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I have been printing successfully with PLA for a while now and last night I tried printing with ABS for the first time. I’m using a Lulzbot Taz 5 with the extruder set to 230 and the bed set at 110, fan off. Oh yeah - the ABS plastic I’m trying is from Lulzbot.

The first layer looked good. Good adhesion, but all I got beyond that was small plastic balls. They were everywhere - or would have been if I had not stopped the printer.

I’ve looked through as many troubleshooting guides as I can find - but this problem doesn’t seem to be there.

After cancelling the print, I lifted the extruder and told it to extrude more plastic. It came out as a nice string. So, seriously? What’s going wrong? Any ideas. Wish I had taken some pictures, but I was a little miffed.

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Without a picture its hard to say. Has the material been sitting out for a while? It might have absorbed too much moisture.

Otherwise, it sounds like your bed is level and the correct height since your first layer was fine.

I would check your extrusion multiplier (what slicer are you using?). Try bumping it up a bit. Sounds like you aren’t extruding enough plastic.

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If you read the specs on the Lulzbot ABS page, you can see that 230C is minimal temp,

set it to 240C, and try again :slight_smile:

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Thank you everyone for the suggestions. I tried some other ABS at 230 and it worked, but I got a huge amount of sag on the underside of Marvin (up until the walls were almost vertical). So, now to keep trying until I find the temperature settings that work best (next: 225).

At this point, I am tossing the first free sample of filament that I tried. I don’t have enough to worry about saving it and I am wondering if it was contaminated with something.

I’m using Cura for my slicer. Printing through Octoprint so I can watch the printer work when I’m at home (printer is at work).

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Ive found that setting the bed to 95 after the first few layers works the best. 110 was just too hot for the higher layers and I would see a curve on straight up walls.

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