ABS Printing no heat bed required

Just signed up for the forums here... thought I'd let everyone know that I put a vinyl stick down floor tile to the glass on my printer bed and it works great for printing with ABS, as its the only material I have printed with... just hopeing to help anyone out thats having a hard time getting their prints to stay down..

To be clear are you are printing on top of a self stick vinyl tile (peel/stick vinyl tiles).
Or are you using an adhesive film.

Have you tried printing other types of filament materials.
How durable is it, i.e. does the PVC peel off, and stick to the object.

Post a picture.

Pictures please! This sounds very interesting

Please Attach Pictures and where to buy

He seems to have gone very quiet...

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_______________________________________
Waitaki 3D Printer

I think I may try this. I have a super mega home stuff store not far from my home and they cost less than a dollar. I will report back as soon as I have some experience with it.

To report back:

I selected the smoothest vinyl tile I could find. It does have a texture, but no ridges as can be found with other vinyl floor tile designs. It cost $1.19 at the super mega home stuff store.

I cut the tile to size. Originally, I thought I would try it without the vinyl adhered to the glass plate, but I soon discovered that the plate was very difficult to level due to undulations in the tile. It is quiet stiff and not at all flat. At this point, I assumed the tile must have been adhered to the plate by betaprophet, I removed most of the backing and applied the tile to the glass.

Without heat: nearly no adhesion at all.
With heat (80C): some adhesion, in fact I completed a calibration cube that looks great. However, the adhesion was not better than heated glass, and nowhere near blue painters tape.

I am afraid that without further information from betaprophet, I can't see that this is a good alternative to other viable solutions. I would love to be wrong. betaprophet, please tell us what I did wrong.

My two cents....

Alright, more information:

I removed the tile from the glass and flipped it over (adhesive is now up). Heat from the bed helped soften the tile, making it easier to level, and it seems to lay flatter now without adhering to the bed. It is quite sticky and the raft is sticking just fine to the cold bed. It is sticky enough that the part may not even need a raft, although I will need to confirm that.

It also seems that heating the bed softens the adhesive, so that may make it easier to take the part off after the print is complete.


Ken

Alright, I think I have enough information to give a full analysis.

For the initial print, I can see that the adhesive on the tile would likely hold the part down properly. The adhesive however does release from the tile onto the part during removal, and what is left does not hold the part down. I don't think this is an effective long term solution.

It was a great idea, but as far as I can see, it only works for one print.

I would love for someone to prove me wrong. Its entirely possible I have missed something,

Thanks everyone!

Ken

I print ABS without a heated bed too.

How?

I print abs without heated bed using plastik 70
[www.google.com]
on glass

Getting ABS to stick is only part of the story. Without a heated bed and chamber you simply can't print bigger parts without them delaminating at some point.
I would love to be proven wrong, but so far noone did.

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[www.bonkers.de]
[merlin-hotend.de]
[www.hackerspace-ffm.de]

I looked up this spray (Plastik 70) since I can't find in the USA, and it appears to consist of "acrylic resins". It seems that high gloss clear acrylic paint of the spray variety should accomplish the same job, will try tomorrow. My ABS juice worked to an extent (ABS juice is recommended on another forum, though I believe it's usually with a heated bed, something I'm trying to avoid), but was only half consistent as getting completely even ABS coverage is actually difficult with a paint brush and paper towel.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/28/2015 03:11AM by swbluto.

So, I tried spray-paint plastic primer on aluminum bed. No dice.
Then I tried clear gloss on aluminum bed. No dice.
Then I tried ABS juice on Kapton tape, ontop of aluminum bed. It worked but the part still curled upward and the kapton just lifted from the bed to accomodate its shrinking. Interesting. It seems that it works by evenly distributing the ABS juice, being heat resistant (keeps plastic warm longer) and it's insoluble, so I'm suspecting other non-soluble materials with acetone would work - i.e., Teflon/PTFE. I ordered some Telfon sheet with adhesive backing to test in a few days. I ordered teflon sheeting because it's significantly cheaper than comparable Kapton or PEEK sheeting (Think 1000s of dollars)

Then I went to the store and grabbed some acrylic and polycarbonate which incidentally came in the right size from Lowe's - 8"x10". Found that both were "incompatible" with ABS juice due to its acetone dissolving properties, so I abandoned that approach. However, I found that polycarbonate is able to easily get ABS to stick at a 50 degree C bed temp, and it's actually pretty sticky at room temperature (Corners still lifted though). Interesting! It lifts pretty easily at 50 degrees C when pulling on it, too, so one might need a razor blade or some such to pry from underneath to prevent delamination of thin parts (Like mine).

I'm thinking that polycarbonate at 40-50 degrees C might do the trick. Rapidly heats up from room temp, and a blast of cold air (Say from canned air or some such), can easily cool down the surface temporarily to lift the object quickly. Also, seen complaints on Amazon of BuildTak's inability to clean with alcohol. That seems to be what I'm observing here, it doesn't seem to clean nearly as well as glass does (At least it leaves visible markings. Not sure if it's affecting performance.)

What's this BuildTak miracle product? It seems that reprap.org suspects it's polycarbonate based...

EDIT: Got a tiny bit of corner warpage later in the print (Though not initially ) at 50 C bed temp, will retry at 60 C. Will continue to experiment with different techniques/approaches. It seems that the shrinkage tendency also causes delamination on the thin parts of the part. EDIT: Getting even tinier amounts of warpage at 60, will try 70.

Going upto 70 gets away from the point of no heat, however.I'm thinking that Polycarbonate plus that purple glue stick at Staples might work. I wouldn't try hairspray with polycarbonate because hairspray relies on plastizers for its stickiness, requiring heat to get that sufficient bonding power with ABS.

EDIT: Tried acrylic, no heated bed. Part stuck but corners definitely lifted as the layers started stacking. Will try both polycarbonate and acrylic with glue tomorrow. If none of that doesn't work, than I'll just try polycarbonate with my ABS juice and see what happens. I'm betting that the teflon + ABS juice is most likely going to be a winner, but I'll have to wait til getting the sheet.

I wonder if it's possible to spray paint kapton or paint kapton on a surface? The only problem with the kapton tape is that it lifts. Other than that, it's the perfect solution with ABS juice.

I suppose some kind of heated surface is acceptable IF the part has low thermal conductivity, like fiberglass, so I can cool the part down quickly yet keep the overall surface heated for the next part. I'm wondering how ABS juice will stick to the fiberglass without dissolving it. Hmmm... I do have circuit boards somewhere... Oh wait, you have to wait until the surface cools to apply acetone, well, I guess a heated surface rules out the ABS slurry method. So, I'll just stick to...

-Finding what ABS slurry sticks well to in a non-heated state (I.e., what does ABS stick well to that acetone doesn't dissolve, like kapton? Teflon is the current suspect.).
-Heated methods that don't involve flammable/toxic substances; rules out ABS juice and hairspray. Polycarbonate and acrylic don't seem to effectively work (Acrylic also is unsuitable to be heated due to its low melting point), though I guess polycarbonate probably does work at higher temperatures. I'll try out 80 degrees next just to see if it /ever/ does work at some temperature. Then, possibly, 100 degrees.

-80 degrees worked well with polycarbonate, though the piece did exhibit some /very/ slight curving up from the bed on the corners. 100 degrees might be the best temperature here. Using canned air upside down made it very easy to pop the piece off, so cold air/liquid appears to be a valid method for rapid object extraction from a surface. Hmmm... that actually sounds fairly economical - spraying cold water on the surface of the polycarbonate. No need for fancy CNC cold air machines, just a little squirt gun of ice cold water.

Still, I need to figure out this non-heated problem for my /other/ machine (Doesn't have a heated bed and, ideally, wouldn't need one.). However, the heated polycarbonate method is rather clean and the surface finish is great - might be worth springing for a heated bed. This ABS plastic I have doesn't seem to have great layer adhesion however - easily delaminates with moderate force unlike my PLA. I think this ABS might be just some crappy ABS - I'm guessing the Sabic MG 94 based ABS like the HATCHBOX ABS is probably better. (Interestingly, my polycarbonate comes from SABIC.)

Edited 16 time(s). Last edit at 07/01/2015 03:56AM by swbluto.

Printing ABS is not magic
Against warping use an enclosure with an inside temperature of >50°C (usually you get that without extra heating if you just put a working enclosure around your printer).
Also make sure that the the item beeing printed is not cooled during printing, this can cause warping and delamination.

To make ABS stick to the printbed use a thin PEI sheet on a Glas or machined Aluminum heatbed.
In extreme cases put a very fine layer of ABS/Aceton juice on the PEI plate. Caution, this can stick strong enough thatz removing parts might damage the plate.
ABS juice might be flameable when it is fluid, but once dried it is just ABS, there is no extra risk during printing.

I print ABS every day for a couple of years now. If you are a bit carefull with handling the PEI plate the investment lasts for years.

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[www.bonkers.de]
[merlin-hotend.de]
[www.hackerspace-ffm.de]

I also use PEI and a heated chamber (plastic built box around my printer. Once you get the bed perfectly (and I mean very perfectly) level and get your nozzle height dialed in there is no need for anything else. I never have warping, my prints stick to the bed but once cooled they are easy to remove (with a little help from a painters knife or spatula). I have done several hundred prints in ABS and PLA using the PEI sheet and it's absolutely perfect. Lulzbot now ships all their printers with PEI and so should every other maker.

At the Dallas maker space their polyprinters all use this with no juice and the printers are generally amazing. sometimes still get warpage. the printers have an enclosure.

PET tape

[www.polyprinter.com]

Good news! ABS Juice on a nonheated Teflon surface works PERFECTLY, just like Kapton! Unfortunately, it seems like this "strongest 3M adhesive ever" doesn't seem to keep the teflon attached to the polycarb bed like it should, but it's still reasonably straight as at least it doesn't bend upward nearly as much as the Kapton tape did.

My reasoning for suspecting teflon should work was along these lines.

It seems like "plastics attach well to plastics".

It seems that acetone-resistance 'plastic-like substances'(Like kapton) readily detach.

So, it seemed to me like Teflon was a good candidate and it works perfectly for a non-heated bed.

I personally like my 8" wide x 36 yard kapton sheet in conjunction with a heated bed, since there's absolutely no bending involved. However, teflon may just work with the non-heated bed printers for general use.

Maybe this 3M adhesive would've been more ideal for a different surface other than polycarbonate? (Or is it acrylic? I don't know.) Probably. Will be getting more and testing different bed surfaces since it has so much promise. Going to research this adhesive.

Wow, this adhesive isn't exactly that strong. It's strong for tape, sure, but it seems like epoxy would've been a HELLUVA lot stronger than this stuff. I think I'm going to look into buying teflon sheets directly which I'll then apply using the various plastic epoxies out there.

Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 07/07/2015 12:12AM by swbluto.

Got some etched teflon, I'll see if I can epoxy it to a flat, extremely adhering surface like some kind of 6" wide piece of flat wood, maybe.

Etched teflon seems to allow the use of common epoxies and glues on the etched side.

Still trying to figure out a solution for my printrbot, I'm getting both teflon and a heated bed to determine the best way to go about this. For my makergear, I'm sticking with kapton on a heated bed since that's proven to work pretty effectively. Doesn't seem like I need to reply the ABS slurry either, just a quick wipe of alcohol and I'm good to go for another print.

Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 07/07/2015 12:45AM by swbluto.

Hi.

Noobie here.

Is 'ABS Juice' and Slurry the same thing ? -- the homemake bottle of acertone with bits of ABS dissolved in it ?

If so, I found a great alternate method for this, and have been using it for 2 weeks without a single print lifting, and with minimum mess. Also no color change on the bottom of the print from the slurry.

It is so simple a solution - using each color of filament that you have, you print a small puck, about 40mm diameter.
When you want to print, make sure the bed is clean, drop a few drops of acetone on the bed ( I have a syringe full of clean acetone stored in a glass jar ) and then rub the puck over the acetone. The concentration of ABS to acetone should be a lot higher than that in a slurry.

Just use the correct puck for the color filament that you are printing with, and there's no color change on the bottom.

I found it in this page :
https://www.youmagine.com/designs/abs-slurry-puck-mallet