Kinda had it with ABS. Trying to do large prints and the warping and cracking is driving me nuts, that is if the print doesn’t peel off the build plate and fail altogether in the first place. I’ve done what I can as far as print settings to have the best possibility of success, but even then the prints will often split.
I print car parts and things that are exposed to heat and chemicals occasionally, so ABS has been the easy choice, but are there any filaments out there that have comparable qualities but aren’t as likely to warp?
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ASA is the go-to answer. You could also try filled ABS or ASA, either glass fiber or carbon fiber. The fibers do not make it any stronger per se, but they do mitigate shrink and warp to a large degree. If you do so, use a hardened steel or gemstone nozzle.
PETG may also be suitable for some applications.
Pretty much this. ASA will still warp a little but it has half the shrinkage of ABS, is UV stable, and it gives off a lot less voltatiles while printing.
Yep exactly. ASA for strength and/or outdoor use, PETG for everything else.
I would go PET/PETG for everything unless you need the slightly higher temperature deflection of ASA. I have PET prints that have been outside for 2.5 years now with no discoloration or apparent issues in strength.
Agreed. I’ve got two bird feeders made out of the stuff just cooking away in the sun year round and they’ve been fine.
I did some reading before asking and ASA was mentioned as also having difficulties with warping. Has this not been the case in your experience?
Not the person you asked, but in my experience good (!) ASA is way better manageable. It still shrinks and can be annoying, but way less than ABS. As with ABS especially a good print bed and heated chamber is doing wonders.
On a glass plate + 3DLac + Brim it goes absolutely nowhere. Quite the opposite, I have to further cool down the plate and use a scraper to get it off. There might be better plates available, I just went with the oldschool structured glass because I wanted things to fucking work during print.
Thanks for the second opinion. Sounds like ASA is on the menu for a couple tryout prints.
That’s because everyone starts with PLA, and PLA has the lowest shrink and warp of all commonly available materials… which is why it’s so common and everyone starts with PLA.
Basically anything is going to warp more and compare poorly against PLA, but ASA’s shrinkage after cooling is less than half of ABS, so it compares favorably to ABS in particular. 1.6% vs 0.7% or something similar. PLA’s shrink rate, meanwhile, can be as low as 0.3% for competently manufactured blends. Shrinking while cooling is what causes warp, especially on broad flat objects.
Yeah, PLA is easy, it just doesn’t have the temp resistance and durability of better filaments. It’ll warp on a hot car seat in the summer.
Yes. And I suspect due to its low temperature resistance (this an intuitive guess; I’m not exactly a materials science engineer) it also exhibits very poor cold creep/permanent deflection characteristics. ABS is actually the best of the bunch there, probably hand in hand with ASA.
However, one thing people are often surprised to learn or discover about boring old PLA is that it actually has among the highest layer adhesion strength of the commonly available materials, I believe second only to polycarbonate, and it’s also the most rigid of the commonly available (non-filled) materials. At least at room temperature, anyway. It turns out that printing the screws for e.g. my Rockhopper or Adélie in anything but PLA amounts to being a fool’s errand.
It’s tempting to think of the litany of plastics available in filament form to consumers as a simple linear and escalating spectrum with “cheap, flimsy, easy to print” and one end and “expensive, strong, difficult to print” at the other. In reality as you know it’s not quite so simple. If anything, the hypothetical graph describing the properties of PLA, PETG, PET, ABS, ASA, Nylon, polycarbonate, etc. would have to be three dimensional.
All makes sense, of course. If I want a “pretty” non-structural print PLA is always a top choice. Fine, smooth, easily bonded with CA glue. ABS is a lot more finicky, but strong.
ASA can still warp, but an enclosed and warm build chamber should do a lot to squelch that. Are you printing on an open bed slinger? Or do you already have a build chamber?
Fully enclosed.
PCTG is supposed to be roughly half-way in-between PETG and ABS in heat resistance.
We print with PC at work because we need the best resistance (inside a hot motor). It has significantly better heat resistance than ABS/ASA (113°C heat deflection or higher sometimes vs ASA 93°) and not crazy expensive.
It also doesn’t warp nearly as much as ABS just in a little tent or enclosure. Glue stick for release on a smooth bed.
Try PETG or PETG-CF
PETG works great as long as the part doesn’t need to handle more than 60°C. It’s easy to print with and doesn’t warp.
I would not recommend using PETG-CF though. It will shed microscopic fibers unless you coat it in varnish or epoxy.
Didn’t have any issues with deforming of PETG parts in my car. Yeah, -CF should be handled with care, but there are parts that you might not need to touch, and it will be a bit more resistant to deforming under heat.
I print car parts with PETG. I lived in Morocco for a while and everything was fine. Load bearing parts inside the car would probably struggle over time but I didn’t have any problems.
