Best benchy I ever printed, and it's ASA with zero tuning

https://lemmy.zip/post/23834

Best benchy I ever printed, and it's ASA with zero tuning - Lemmy.zip

I have spent weeks of tuning PETG to print on my modified CR-10. I would get regular failures and really stringy prints. I had trouble getting it to stick to the bed, and could only print really slowly. I was dreading trying ASA, but I bought a roll of Polylite ASA, put it on the printer without drying it, and used a default ASA profile I found online (I didn’t even start with a temp tower). The only changes I made was a minimum layer fan of 10% as my PETG fan shroud needs constant cooling. I didn’t see anything about enclosure temperature so I left it at 40°. The first print started great but broke off the bed. The Z height was off and I didn’t get it fixed until the first layer was halfway done. This benchy is the second print using a default ASA profile, no tuning. I feel like I’ve wasted my time with PETG. This material has been so much easier to print. Edit: not sure why my image didn’t upload. I’m new to Jerboa.

This is a particularly easy type of print for ABS or ASA. Things that are small and more rounded are not very difficult. Polymaker also makes some of the best ASA/ABS. ABS is usually very similar to ASA but the (warping) problems are about as bad as ABS is cheaper than ASA.

Things that are hard with these filaments are parts like, for example, an electronics box where there is a large surface on the build plate with pointy corners, thin walls, and a bridge plus monotonic infill over the top. The thin walls will cool at a very different rate than the monotonic layers on the build plate. This will start lifting the pointy corners of the print. The bridge will need the part fan and this will cause issues around the uppermost thin wall section as it is cooled even faster. Then the top layers will print with an overhang over the walls because of the cooling rate difference. If the part is removed too quickly from an enclosure, the top layers are likely to lift off the walls with a layer separation. The part cooling fan for bridges will make the most problems in general as it will alter the temperature differential between layers and induce stress. The larger and more complex the print gets the more these issues will happen.

The ultimate fix is to print in an actively heated enclosure. A Core XY printer is much better because the print is not moved as much. The Voron 2.4 is designed specifically as a printer totally optimized for ABS. This printer looks kinda like a Core XY but the build plate never moves at all due to a carriage that moves the print head up and down.