ABS has some really favourable properties, but it can also be really hard to print. I've always been in treat-burdows properties, but even though I got a custom enclosure for my Prusa Mark III, I still had a lot of issues printing it. Over time, I tried many approaches to make the print stick with varying degrees of success. So when I got my warren 0.2 kit, I finally needed to dial in my process. Let's dive right in. Welcome back factory owners. This video is dedicated to printing ABS and ASA successfully. There's a lot of information out there which for me turned out to be more misleading than helping. It's also about what doesn't work and what you should avoid to prevent your prints from failing. When I first got into 3 printing, I specifically checked that my chosen model can print ABS and even bought a spool right away. What I didn't know back then is that higher print temperature isn't the only thing you have to take into account to get good results. One thing right away, although it's not impossible to print ABS without an enclosure, it's extremely hit or miss. Even if the print sticks till the end, it's very likely to develop cracks and layer separation. So do yourself a favor and invest in some form and enclosure if you want to get into printing ABS or any of the more advanced materials like polycarbonate and nylon. The enclosure doesn't need to and in fact shouldn't be totally airtight. The goal is to keep waves of cold air away from the print. Inside temperatures of around 40 degrees are already sufficient in my experience and easily sustainable for any printer if you're printing inside of your house. If you're on a budget, even a cardboard box is enough for occasional use. But keep in mind to never leave the cardboard in close printer unattended, the combination of heat and highly flammable materials can be a recipe for disaster. So don't burn your house down, hi. Now that we all agreed on using an enclosure, let's talk about bad adhesion. ABS needs a lot more persuasion than simple PVA glue stick to hold on firmly to the bed. In my early days, out of sheer desperation I tried using ABS slurry. That means dissolving ABS and acetone to create a sprint you can cover your print bandwidth. The slurry can be made out of failed prints, coincidentally I had plenty of those. That stuff actually sticks pretty well, but as if ABS doesn't smell bad enough already, working with acetone enhances the experience quite a bit. The container for the slurry also needs to be airtight, otherwise the acetone will just evaporate over time and you're left with a solid blob of ABS. You also need to be patient after applying to the print surface, otherwise the slurry will foam when heating up the bed and you get a really artistic surface finish that looks like this. This print was done on my open frame CR10 and developed a few cracks. I fixed those with the soldering iron and some extra filament as filler. The print does its job but getting there was not fun. ABS slurry is just nasty to work with and they are better alternatives. I've been pretty skeptical about Magigoo, at around 20 bucks it's rather expensive so I never bothered to other bottle. A while back they did a promotion where you got a free sample when ordering from 3D Jake and even then I just put them aside and almost forgot about those samples. Only after I got really frustrated with the large ASA print I finally remembered and tried one of those samples. The result was mind blowing to me. You have to know my failed attempts went really bad back then. The print fell off the bed completely and got caught by the moving bed. Somehow the printer managed to push the enclosure under open with the failed print and threw it underground to taunt me. The model was also too large to apply a brim. With a sample of Magigoo though the print stuck for the entirety of the print and didn't warp at all. Although the manufacturer says one application is good for a few prints I applied before every print, especially with ABS a t-shirt is significantly reduced after a print. If you're interested I'll add a link to you can support a channel with in the description below. The application itself is pretty easy. There's a little spring in the top that needs to be pushed in so you just have to push the tip onto the build surface a bit and press the bottle lightly. Then cover the area your print needs. I do this until I notice a very fine white coating but it might even be more than necessary. In case your print still warps off the bed surface you can add a brim especially for long and slim parts this might be unavoidable. In many cases it's not necessary to cover the whole part. You can reduce material cost, print time and post processing by applying additional first layer support only in specific areas. Adding a cylinder and a slicer only as high as the first layer does the trick. With this it's way harder for the print to pull itself off the bed. You can find more tips like this in the free guide I linked in the description below. It will help you to optimize your design, slicing and prevent failed prints. Bad adhesion is only one part of the equation though. When I print it smaller parts in my enclosure I always got really bad looking prints. The reason for that is too much heat building up in the part. That means the layer below is still too hot and therefore soft. This gets worse the faster you print. This is also the reason for overhangs curling upwards. The only problem is that the Prusa Mark III isn't particularly fast yet still I had that problem. Slowing it down even further definitely wasn't an option. Turns out keeping the part cooling fan off is actually a bigger issue than turning it on. Of course that only applies if you have an enclosure. So I started changing the predefined Prusa filament profile for ABS to include cooling. Even just a bit already helps a lot. Unfortunately there's no hard and fast rule for how much cooling is needed. It mostly depends on the size of the part you're printing and the speed you're printing at. For my Prusa Mark III I usually go with around 30% fan speed but I'm also using a dual fan set up so 50% might be better suited for stock Prusa i3. For the Warron 0.2 I always turn it up to 100% since the machine is printing way faster. It's also important to disable the fan for the first few layers. I keep this setting at 3 so the first layers get no cooling at all. For very small layers you'd still run into cooling issues especially if the fan is already at maximum speed. The following slicer options are for Prusa slicer but there should be an equivalent for any slicer you might be using. They're considered expert level settings in Prusa slicer so you need to be an expert mode to see them. In case you're not already at maximum speed you can set enable fan if layer print time is below. This means the fan will speed up if the time it takes to print the current layer is below the given time value. I generally leave it at 20 seconds. The even more important setting is called slow down if layer print time is below. It ensures the print time of layer is never below the defined seconds giving the layer enough time to cool down. This is absolutely crucial for finer details in the print. The lowest value I set here is 5 seconds for my Warron. Setting it to 10 seconds gives you more safety but it also slows down small parts quite a bit when printing fast. You can mitigate that by putting the same part on the bit plate twice in case you need more parts anyway. Mastering those settings I've had no major issues printing ABS anymore. There are also certain things that need to be avoided at all cost when printing ABS. The number one error to avoid is cold air movement hitting the print. Simply put do not open the enclosure while printing. Period. If you're using a cardboard box with no windows installed cheap webcams and some lights to watch the print or cut a hole in the box and apply some transparent plastic foil. If you're designing a part yourself try to avoid long uninterrupted straight lines. The longer the line the more forces apply with the material cooled down and shrinks. Try designing like a steel bridge instead of one solid block. With that approach the forces are distributed more evenly and can cancel each other out to some degree. And lastly keep the build plate clean and covered in the adhesive of your choice. I can't recommend magic you enough although I haven't tried anything else yet since I never had the need to do so. If you want to see what I needed those ABS parts for you can watch the video over here and subscribe over there. See you in the next one.