Delamination

Hi folks,

I'm getting major delamination issues:
[i.imgur.com]

The picture shown did lift off the bed a bit, but I have had prints that didn't lift at all and still delaminated.

I have tried turning the hotend temp up to 240, 250, 260, and even 270, with no luck.

I have also tried enclosing the printer in a cardboard box. Lid open, lid closed, and lid open with a heat lamp.

ABS type is chi mei 747.

All slic3r "advanced print settings" are default, except for extrusion width which is 0.5mm.

Perims are all 30mm/sec. All speeds are slic3r defaults. small perims are 15mm/sec.

I'm about ready to toss this thing in the trash. I bought my printer in Jan of 2014 and I still can't print something thin walled without it cracking. I've probably wasted 5 kg of filament just on my test prints, no joke.

As you can tell, I'm pretty frustrated. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks!!

Before you toss the printer let me help you understand why this happens if I can.

Delamination is a common issue when printing ABS. It occurs when the layers don't properly adhere to one another. The 2 biggest reasons for this are that the bottom or top layers are cold or they are not pushed together well enough (too tall layer height for the nozzle size) Another possible reason is poor quality filament or filament that has absorbed too much moisture.

Now you have already done some of the proper things by trying different temperatures and enclosing the printer. Normally enclosing the printer is the biggest plus you can do but it does need to be with something that will prevent heat escape as you need the inside air to be around 60c-80c If you don't actually measure this you can't know for sure how hot it is and cardboard is not a great thermal insulator.

You did not provide the layer height or nozzle diameter but make sure they are a bit different. The most common nozzles are .50 and .35, a good starting point for layer height would be .40 for the .50 nozzle and .25 for the .35 nozzle.

Next, speed, you mentions 30mm/s and while many issues can be helped with slow speeds like this, delamination is not one of them. If your printer can do it, speed that up to 50 or even 80 so the layer below has less time to cool down.

Filament, simply try another brand or even batch, it's possible you got a bad batch or that the particular filament you got is just not good at adhering to itself.

And lastly, if you don't need the specific properties of ABS, try PLA as it does not have the delamination issues, in fact you need a fan too cool it as it's deposited to keep it from being too hot.

P.S. The only "review" I could find of chi mei 747 filament said it was good but not great and several others agreed.

I hope this helps you.

Thank you so much for the help. I'm not about to give up just yet, I was a bit pissed off a few hours ago.

My extruder is an e3dv6 with a 0.4mm nozzle. I have been doing 0.3mm for the first layer, and 0.2mm for all other layers. Maybe I should be doing 0.3 mm for all layers? Or stick with 0.2mm?

Do you think I should go with higher or lower extrusion temps? I feel like too high might cause it to cool too fast. Maybe I should be going lower? Around 240 perhaps?

I definitely want to add a thermistor for the ambient temps. Could I use T2 on my ramps board for that do you think? Ideally I would use some sort of aux pins on my ramps board to control a relay for my heat lamp. I was also thinking about doing just a regular incandescent 100 watt bulb, since that would fit inside the box entirely, then keeping the lid closed.

Woah, I never even considered trying to _increase_ the print speed. Let me try that and see if it works!!

I had this problem. It turned out that the hot end fan was not only cooling the cold zone of the hot end, it was also blowing air over the nozzle which is good for printing PLA but bad for ABS. The problem was easily fixed with some Kapton tape.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/05/2015 03:40AM by dc42.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

DC42, that's a good point, if your extruder has a fan and the excess is blowing down on the print then that would be bad for ABS.

.3 and .2 are OK I just wanted to make sure you were not trying .4 with a .4 nozzle. I use to print at 235 (the most my hotend could safety handle but now I print at 250c all the time (new all metal hotend). I would just use a normal thermometer for now to see in temperature inside the box. I don't know enough about the board to help with that part.

If you want a compact and efficient heater, get one for reptiles, they plug into a normal bulb socket but don't waste any of the energy on light. A 40w one puts out as much or more than 100w bulb, that's what I was using before I built my enclosure.

HI

I got same issue also, and it was my fan mount on the E3D who was "not air tight", it was blowing air over the print. The air was blowing at the back of the machine, bounce over the carrier and back to the print.

The worse for ABS is fast cooling, check with your hand where the air goes, and avoid people running around your printer.