Anyone used Printbite surface ?

[curious aardvark]

Okay - I'm feeling masochistic and my dad wants a bunch of stuff printed for his pigeon decoys - so i thought: lets try abs :-) I've got a shelf full of the stinky stuff.

So, heat extruder to 245 and lots of horrible brown crap starts to drip out.
That's right children, if you have lots of pla stuck round your heat block that you've completely forgotten about - when you start using abs again it all comes off.
Once I'd got it off and the smoke stopped and the abs was finally extruding properly, I tried again.

Initially thought I'd try abs at 60c.
That doesn't work - does not stick.

So currently pre-heating to 245 and 100 for a calibration.

right then - here goes a carabiner test print....

Nope that doesn't work. I'll try 110 and 250
Tighten calibration up slightly as well - but it was pretty tight to start with. Would have been fine with pla and polyflex.
It's not looking good.

Right any tighter and I'll have blocked the nozzle.

For the record room temperature is currently 21.8 c 45% humidity.

I went for a carabiner as they're long and will warp and also only take about 10 minutes to knock out at 0.3mm & 60mm/s
Unenclosed printer. reprapper tech grey/silver abs.
Print cooling fan is on. haven't fitted switch yet and I can't be arsed unscrewing the connector.

So far so good, I believe this will be only the second thing I've ever printed from abs that wasn't printed on a raft.
First print with the printer was a succesful secret heart box. After that it just went downhill lol

On a side note, when i was playing around with the polycarbonate the other day the extruder was at 265 - so why didn't the pla burn up and drip out then ? No idea, but it didn't.

Okay up to 90% and no sign of warp.

Done.
carabiner is stuck solid. I'm guessing it'll remove at 60.
lol - nope 90c !

Clean print - some small layer issues - but I think that ws when i was peeling the the thin priming strip from the edge of the platform :-)
Okay so abs has passed.

But you need the bed very hot and up the extrusion temp a bit as well
And a very tight calibration. You want it so you have to force the paper to slide under the nozzle.

Right I'll try one of these pigeon stick extenders and see how that goes.
But so far, yeah abs looking good :-)

Oh yeah due to the aluminium plate and the printbite actual bed temp while printing was about 99.
Dunno if the printbed will go any higher than 110 - but if it doesn't need to then I'm not going to push it.

So doing two of these sockety things - designed so you can add a cheap tent peg to a plastic peg to make a longer plastic pigeon post.
Figured it was quicker and cheaper than making a load of full length plastic extentions.
we'll see :-)
Anyway this one will take an hour or so. Oh yeah upped the print speed to 70.
Which is pretty much my limit on this machine with a 0.3mm layer height.
laters.

This stuff gives me a sore throat - I'm taking the dogs for a walk.

Well that didn't work. Looks like they probably detached at about the 70% mark.

In an enclosed print area I reckon it would most likely work fine.
Or on a raft.

Can't say this is any worse than I used to get with blue tape.
And the workshop stinks like a chemical factory.

So for abs I'd have to say: yes it works, but no miracle surface. You still need to do all the crap that you have to do with any other print surface for abs.

Now this is not abs plus or abs pro - just ordinary warpy, stinky abs. The good stuff would most likely be a lot better.
And doing it in an enclosed print area would also most likely be a lot better.
But I definitely remember why I jumped ship so readily to pla :-)

I'm going back to pla for a bit :-)