Does anyone have some tips for preventing part warp'age post print and vapour smoothing?
Attached is a photo of some Intel NUC lids I tried to print,
Material: Ultrat
Resolution: 0.09
The left one had full infill and the right one had light infill and is 1.5mm thicker.
Parts appeared to have no warping before and immediately after vapour smoothing. They only started warping a couple hours later.
Does vapour smoothing cause more warping? or would it have done the same if I had left the unsmoothed part out for a couple hours? Is this just an inherent property of ABS?
Also the autocalibration of the platform has to be performed: Printer menu -> Maintenance -> Platform autocalibration.
Warping of big parts:
Every polymer will shrink when it's going to cool down. Shrinkage is expressed in %. While warping in small prints is barely visible, deformation in larger prints than 100mm can be observed.
For such cases we recommend these solutions:
- Make sure that temperature inside the room is stable and there are no air flows
- Printing with light infill or mesh infill (it means 0% infill),
- Proper design: huge, solid parts deform more than parts with thin walls. Thus printing parts designed for molding (ex. various covers etc.) are less prone to warp,
- Printing with Z-Ultrat, Z-HIPS, Z-Glass: those materials have smaller shrinkage rate than Z-ABS,
If the problem still presist, you can prepare ABS juice which significantly increases sticking to the platform. Here is a tutorial which shows how to prepare it: http://support.zortrax.com/warping-syndrome-solution/
Sometimes rotating a model for example 45 deg around X or Y axis gives much better results. More support is generated and warping points are being changed.
Thanks for the reply Chris, but it's not a printing problem I'm having, the printer is fine. I'm just asking if anyone has any tips for reducing the warping that happens after the print and when you vapour smooth it.
You should be careful with the the acetone vaporizing regarding the thin printouts. The vaporizing should be done in the acetone fumes only. If there is too much acetone beeing used, the effect can be the same as you've faced in your case.
On thin parts like yours solvent vapor penetrates in the Abs and soften the structure allowing the macromolecules chains of the polymer to split and the item to finally bend according to present tensions.
You might solve the problem in several ways
- applying directly Acetone or MEK with a brush , you can dilute both with a less agressive solvent (white spirit, hexane) to better control the process.
- applying Acetone vapors while the item is till on the print bed attached by raft , if the relevant face is upwards
- using vacuum and heat to rectify item desired shape using an hot gun and a vacuum cleaner