21

Careful with this Jackson. Fleks3D is not compatible with the either the PEI print surface on your heated bed, or the automatic leveling features of the Lulzbot Mini. You would need to do some serious modifications to try that out.

-James

22

Hi Jackson,

Sorry for the delay. If you looks at the materials that Aleph Objects sent along with your printer there is a check sheet signed by the person who calibrated your printer. One of the values on that sheet was the Z-Offset that is hard-coded into your firmware. It’s slightly different for every Mini. What I would do is carefully watch the printer as it’s laying down plastic on the first layer, if it looks like the nozzle is too close or too far from the print bed, then adjusting the Z-offset in Cura is an easy way to fix that. Adjusting the filament diameter and feed % will sort of fix that problem too, but you won’t actually be fixing the root cause, just doing a work around, that will have a negative effect on all layers but the first layer. The Z-Offset parameter is how you fix height problems for the first layer specifically, which seems to be a good portion of your problem.

TLDR; Fiddle with it a bit, try different values, see if it improves.

Seems like you’re making progress. Let us know how it goes.

-James

23

I just tried the Fleks3D on my Lulzbot TAZ5 and didn’t turn on the heated bed. Of course I first tried a hard print in ABS and couldn’t get the first layer to stick. I’m a little discouraged with it at this point and might have wasted my money.

Any suggestions?

Steve

24

I don’t want to come off as too negative, but I really seriously doubt you’ll get better results with the Fleks3D plates than you do with your heated bed printing in ABS. The problem with ABS prints sticking, has nothing to do with adhesion, or stickiness if you will. The problem with ABS is that as it cools the material shrinks, quite a lot. This causes the plastic to rip itself free of the build plate and warp pretty badly, the best way to combat this, no the only way to combat this, is to control the cooling process. A heated bed keeps the plastic from shrinking on the bottom couple layers, and thus it sticks well. A heated build chamber would keep the whole part from shrinking too quickly, and the deformation would be nice and uniform.

TLDR; No matter what marketing tells you, nothing beats heat for ABS.

And just in case this offended anyone, I’m not saying it’s impossible to print in ABS without a heated bed or build chamber, there is plenty of evidence of people doing just that, but you need to pay very careful attention to the entire process, including the model geometries you are printing.

-James

25

Out of curiosity, why are you using HIPS?

I’ve found:

PLA - Best dimensional accuracy, but shatters

ABS - Tougher, can warp a bit. Wears better than PLA.

Nylon - Really tough, tends to warp. I swear by Taulman.

HIPS - Nice dimensionally, nice quality, and ABS/PLA stick to it. But brittle…

I got HIPS originally for doing “lost foam casting”, but it doesn’t burn out cleanly enough, so it usually just sits on the shelf (If I’m burning out in an oven anyway, PLA smells much better).