Picked up, very happy customer, thanks to you guys!

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I can only agree!!

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Great to hear, @Benson! Excellent news :slight_smile:

Beautiful results! I am glad that we were able to help you deliver a good product to a (no-doubt) satisfied customer :slight_smile:

Happy to see that somebody else loves Dimafix. It’s a must have to me now. Avoided countless rafts and warps. For the rest, advices on this thread sum it up pretty well: 90-95° top after the first layer at 110° for the bed, No fans unless really necessary but then inside a closed chamber, not too fast print to give each layer a chance to “adapt”… Avoiding too dense infills also helps. (Except maybe for 100% infill?)

I am so Glad I ignored all advice and jumped straight into ABS when I first started, everyone said do PLA till your good at that, then try ABS, our family is used to tackling the hardest first, so ABS to me is Easy as waking up in the morning.

I’d rather do ABS any day before PLA, I find PLA is very messy.

Hi Guys,

Great thread, I have really learnt a lot from reading it. I basically only print with ABS (I have an Makerbot Replicator 2X fourth gen) and I sometimes have trouble with prints stopping extruding a few hours into a print and I don’t know why. After reading this I think it may be too much cooling from the fans? The problem is I don’t know if you can change the settings in the makerbot software and I am thinking of getting Simplify3D but I want to confirm it is my settings and not any hardware related problems first. I have attached a photo which failed 2 hours into a 4 hr print.

My printer is fully enclosed and I seal it up to stop heat leakage, I use 120C bed temp (found I got better results with hotter?), 230C extrusion, 10% hex infill, default fan settings and extrusion speeds. I have also swapped out both thermocouples, heating elements and 1 nozzle (upgrade) and this didn’t fix the problem.

Any advice much appreciated.

Cheers

Andrew

Can I ask you what brand of ABS are you using?

Your settings seem ok, I love the sticky note about the desk, lolz, careful someone don’t tell you that your messy, Bwhaaa, not me, I’m messier than that& my ABS is always good…

That photo is from a brand of ABS called Thinglab (I am in Australia) but I also have genuine Makerbot filament and the extrusion stopping happens with both. I try to keep them packed away with dehumidfying packets to stop moisture getting into them but I don’t know if it helps.

Have you checked your Feeder, your feeder may be clogged a bit, the only time my prints stop like that is the filament stops due to dirty feeder roller.

Check and clean the feed roller/sprocket, whatever you like to call the damn thing.

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I clean it occasionally and yeah it is typically a bit dirty. So after that print above I unloaded the filament and then reloaded it and now I’m printing the object/bracket in this thread to test the printer and it appears to be working fine (so the feeder should still be dirty but maybe cleaned out a little with the filament replacement). How do I stop the feeder getting clogged during a print? (if you have any ideas) because if I’m running a print for 12 hours and it clogs after 3 even if I clean it at the start the print will fail.

Hey Andrew,

Glad you are able to absorb some useful knowledge from the thread! A lot of good information available here, and maybe we can add some more :slight_smile:

A print stopping midway through for no reason is an issue I experience myself from time to time. I do not know why this happens, but assuming yours isn’t jamming, I have found some decent solutions that have worked for me. The first thing I would recommend is trying a different set of slicer software. Download Slic3r (http://slic3r.org/) and configure it for your printer. I have included starting and ending gcode for your printer to use in Slic3r if you need it. Try using that and see if that works. The other solution that may work would be to re-orient the part in the software (turn it around, 90 degress, etc.) I haven’t found any information online as to why a print stops mid way through, so it truly is a mystery! Give those things a shot and let me know how it goes!

Also, are you able to print other objects successfully?

*EDIT* - Gcode has been attached in a PDF to keep things organized!
Bonus Code.pdf (119 KB)

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Hi CMDRReservoir,

No I don’t think it is jamming, I mean when I pull the filament out it is stripped where the gear has been crunching against the filament and it hasn’t been moving but then the nozzle is all clear and all I have to do is unload the filament and then reload it and it works fine.

Yeah I can print other objects fine, it just does it with the long ones occasionally for some reason, I have almost finished the bracket/object from this thread and it looks great and all I did was unload/reload the filament.

Ok cheers I will look into that, thanks for the g code I am definitely not much of a g code writer.

Andrew

Here is the object I just finished printing, took just over an hour and it came out pretty decent, few small dodgy bits but overall is pretty good I think. And all I changed from my failed print is to unload/reload the filament and different object obviously.

Andrew,

Thank you for printing the test object, that helps! The print looked pretty good, and if there was any clogging or obstruction, you’d have some thin walls and cracks (provided it even printed at all). I would try the few things I mentioned, and if you need any help setting up Slic3r, let me know! I’ve been using it for quite some time, and know its peculiarities. Did you design this object or download it?

Nate

Hi Nate,

No this is the object from the start of this thread I just downloaded it. Do you know if I can export the file type as an .x3g with Slic3r?

Cheers

Andrew

Andrew,

Hahaha, I meant the object you are trying to print! Should have specified XD Is that an original design or a downloaded STL? And as far as exporting from Slic3r to .x3g, there is unfortunately no built in way to do it; however, you can download ReplicatorG (http://replicat.org/) and that has a nifty .x3g coversion button (I’ve included a screengrab for you). There is a way to do it in Slic3r with some perl script but that is a little more trouble than it’s worth, imo. If you want to give it a whirl though, here is a guide:

http://www.3duniverse.org/2014/01/05/using-slic3r-with-a-flashforge-creator/

Just scroll down to the Converting from G-Code to .X3G Using GPX as a Slic3r Post-Processor and it’ll tell you how to do it.

Nate

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Haha oh right I was wondering why you asked that, nah it wasn’t my design but it happens with mine and downloaded ones to and I can’t seem to find any pattern other than the objects that take a long time.

Thanks for the info, I’ll check it out, I have to admit I am tempted by Simplify3D as it seems to have got lots of good feedback and I can’t be bothered trying to run multiple different programs to be honest.

Cheers for your help

Andrew

Sorry to be late to this thread. Just, like yourself, have had to tackle ABS after mostly being a solely PLA person.

The prints aren’t HD, (0.2mm) but I thought this might help.

I’ve tred buildtak sheets, which seem to work OK, but still warp, even with a raft. Then I found dimafix (if you’re in the UK, kora is a reseller). After applying a layer of spray directly to my aluminium print bed (no kapton), I crossed my fingers and hit print.

The results are amazing, it sticks fast until it cools, and then it shocks itself free from the bed, (akin to PLA on heated glass). Instead of the usual corners curling, a couple of the parts I’ve printed have been that the part is bowed outwards (corners touching the desk, middle lifting), but that’s probably because those were long thin parts.

The only issue I’ve had is with splitting of layers, (only on a reasonably tall print) but I gather that’s because I’m printing too hot and the heated bed is slightly too hot. Also, the printer isn’t enclosed in any way, which as I understand would help with the layer splitting.

The first picture is using buildtak, you can see the part warped quite a bit even though I used a raft and brim.

The second picture is a side by side of the buildtak (right) and dimafix (left). The dimafix surface is smooth and flat. The only places it lifted is where there wasn’t very good contact with the bed for the first layer.

The third picture shows the sides of the two parts, the dimafix one cracked partway up, presumably due to the lack of a enclosure.

This is pretty interesting. Thanks for showing the results. So it seems there’s major quality affected by reducing temps on the following layers? If that’s the case, i don’t understand why. Wouldn’t reduced temp reduce heat? Enclosures are used to maintain or keep the heat.

I can understand the different effects of infill, since it could make the part more rigid, so it wouldn’t necessarily warp as much. It would make sence, since the higher % infill, the more solid the part, making the part more straight

Also, what if my bed temp can’t get up to 110 C? I printing w/ the Rostock Max V2 and I’ve always printed at 90C, consistent. The stock bed has trouble heating anything past 90C. Already takes about 15 min to get up to temp. But, I haven’t had success printing a box w/ out warmping or curling at the bottom edge. Maybe I can try 90, then 80-85C on the following layers?