ABS or PLA & Acetone Smoothing?

Well I spent all last week and this weekend fine tuning my new printer and I sit down yesterday afternoon to print something and the idler block on my wades extruder cracked off! I spent the afternoon rebuilding it and went to go print and ejected my brass tube from the PTFE.

So I now have a useless hot end and broken extruder held together with krazy glue. I am going to just buy an all metal extruder and hot end so I have less of this BS to deal with.

I decided on the QU-BD MBE single extruder as its very well priceg and the simple all metal design is appealing to me. As I normally run 3mm PLA and the MBE is only 1.75mm I and now faced with the question of what type of plastic should I focus on using??

For the most part I am going to be making games, trinkets and electronics enclosures but I recently learned about acetone vapour smoothing to get the layers evened out and quite a good surface finish. I went out and bought a small container of acetone and brushed it on my PLA prints and all that happened was some melting of the details so I don't know if it works like is does on ABS.

So to the questions:
1) Can PLA be acetone vapour smoothed
2) Is ABS easier to extrude at 0.3mm, I hear it has better overhangs but tends to warp on large prints.
3) I print in my home so fumes are not great, does ABS produce more then PLA or are they just worse smelling but less volume?
4) PLA sticks like a MOFO to painters tape on an unheated bed, is their a wake to make it stick slightly less?

1) Nope, it goes weird with acetone, I don't think there's a good equivalent to how well acetone smooths abs.
2) Generally PLA prints better, warpage is much less of a problem, I don't think ABS prints any better in any way.
3) I can't smell any PLA fumes when I print at all, which is very useful as my printer sits on my desk all day printing.
4) When I used painters tape with pla (I now use a heated bed, covered in glass, and a weak pva solution dried on top), I always had to be careful not to touch the tape too much or grease from my fingers ruined the stickiness. If you can't get the parts off, I guess you could try rubbing the surface a bit with your fingers first.

Generally if it's sticking too much, I'd try printing the first layer 0.05mm higher.

Polygonhell Wrote:
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> Generally if it's sticking too much, I'd try
> printing the first layer 0.05mm higher.


That's the ticket.

I'd really recommend a glass-covered heated bed though. Makes printing in PLA soooooooo much nicer. The parts stick well when the glass is hot and then pop right off after it cools down. I printed PLA on a painter's-tape-covered MDF sheet for a year or so and would never go back.

If you're still interested in printing PLA without a heated platform, let me let you in in a little secret: print it at 210ºc straight onto roughed up acrylic. It sticks *incredibly* well but chisels off fairly easily with a metal paint scraper. I'd still recommend a heated bed covered in glass though, because it's tough to find perfectly flat acrylic. You'll tear your hair out with a warped platform. That's another advantage of the glass: it's perfectly flat.

I was originally printing onto acrilic but its surface melted slightly and soon was to uneven to use. Now I'm printing on picture frame glass with painters tape. I will eventually get a heated bed though.

I really like the results from acetone vapor but do you need to boil it with a cold lid for it to work or can I just put it on a platform in a can for a few hours?

james glanville Wrote:
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> a weak pva solution


as in diluted white Elmer's glue?

uMinded Wrote:
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> james glanville Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > a weak pva solution
>
>
> as in diluted white Elmer's glue?


Yes.