ABS without heat.

[dlw]

Has anyone tried the method of mixing acetone with ABS to make a solution to coat glass.
A video on youtube shows it can be don.

Comments please.

dlw

[Mooselake]

It's called abs juice.

ABS likes to warp while cooling and pull away from the print surface. Feel free to try abs juice, but it's reportedly really hard to remove the printed object if you're using an unheated bed, either that or it won't hold well enough and will pop off while printing. Never tried it, since my plywood wonder was shipped with a heated bed, a sample roll of ABS, and no print cooling fan. PB started off recommending ABS and avoiding PLA before they reversed their stand.

Why do you want to use ABS? It's tricky stuff to print with and some think it has an objectionable smell. For most things PLA is better.

Kirk

[RetireeJay]

It's been talked about in this forum for four years: viewtopic.php?f=29&t=1101&p=9243

You can learn a lot by searching in this forum; thousands of topics exist.

[dlw]

I am making a prototype of a product.
Testing is imperative before presentation.
My understanding is ABS will hold up better and last longer.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

dlw

[Mooselake]

[Mooselake]

[RetireeJay]

Moose and I are on the same wavelength...

Commercial machines that corporations buy for their R&D departments often use ABS (and rarely if ever PLA). But they definitely do use heated beds, and in fact they use heated chambers, with forced air circulation and very precise temperature control in order to make ABS parts that don't warp or crack. These machines are the size of large refrigerators. I'd be very surprised if you can make anything much larger than a stack of four or five pennies out of ABS on an cold-bed Printrbot without having problems with adhesion, warping, and cracking.

I've been using T-Glase, and it is much easier to print than ABS (it also doesn't smell, at least to my nose). T-Glase (a form of PET, similar to what they use for water bottles) makes reasonably strong prints that are more resistant to heat and degradation than PLA. I generally print with a heated bed, but I think T-Glase it would work for smallish parts if you use Elmer's Glue Stick on glass at room temperature. I also historically did a lot of work with nylon - which is extremely tough (I mean resistant to breaking), and also can be printed on glass with glue stick, or on Garolite (see Taulman3D.com). However, nylon is hygroscopic so it may warp during use depending on whether it's exposed to water or high humidity. Nylon is very bad for ooze (plastic dribbling out of the nozzle when it's not supposed to be extruding); T-Glase ooze is not as bad as nylon; I guess PLA must be even better for avoiding ooze based on pictures I've seen of beautiful prints.

[Corey Warren]

RetireeJay,

Do you print using clear T-Glase or colored T-Glase? I don't seem to see a whole lot of colors in T-Glase. Maybe, I'm not looking at the right sites.

[RetireeJay]

They have clear, red, blue, green, aqua, and opaque white.