Z-ASA Pro not working for me

Hi,

I am new to 3d printing, but that’s a reason I chose Zortrax. Everything is fantastic in Z-ABS, Z-ABS2, Z-ULTRAT and Z-PLA. Z-NYLON is harder for me sometimes but manageable. Just with Z-ASA Pro I never got out something working. In the back left quadrant it wouldn’t even print a raft, I hear weird noises out of the extruder there but nothing coming out. Small parts basically work but have terrible melted looking surface. A smart phone cover failed after 2 hours with layers separating near one clip in the middle of the part.

Are you having success with this material? Do you need to apply tweaks in Z-Suite to get there?

I am thankful for any advice, I love the graphite color!

Regards,
Hendrik

P.S.: I have M200 Plus, Firmware 2.5.9, Z-Suite 2.22.0, side and top covers mounted

Hi Hendrik,

do you have any pictures of failed prints? Could you provide some .stl and .zcodex files as well?

As for the issue that the raft cannot be printed on a specific place of the platform - does this happen with Z-ASA Pro only? It seems the platform is too close to the nozzle, please calibrate the platform and, if necessary, change the platform offset through the menu. The distance will be increased, so the filament should start extruding properly again.

Also, as both side covers and HEPA Cover are installed - there might be too hot inside the chamber. You may run a test print without these accessories.

Best regards,
Karolina

Hi,

unfortunately I have no images of prints showing what I mean - failed layer adhesion is nothing to show, such objects I throw away, and the surface problem samples were all postprocessed trying to save something.

In the meantime I actually had some OK prints. It was smaller thick walled box like things (2 walls with some infill), I increased platform raft gap and first layer gap acouple of klicks, closed the covers, manually heated the heatbed to almost 90 to heat up the space before I started the print. Throughout one roll of ASA never was fully satisfied, until the end always had something that I had to write of as failure.

Now coming back to Z-ABS was such a pleasure! I will not get another Z-ASA roll until I hear some success stories here on the board or a future Z-Suite release does something to Z-ASA handling.

Regards,
Hendrik

I also have never gotten a good print from ASA Pro. Surface finish is bad, strings, details melted. This has happened both on my M200 and M200 plus. No problems with Z-ABS. Maybe I have a bad roll? I’ve had bad rolls of UltraT.

Hi @swarf_rat,

It sounds like an overheating problem to me.

Any pictures?

Have you had these rolls open for a long time? Any visible blobs on the string of material?

Kind regards,

Marcin

Hi Marcin,

I did take some picture of the last failure but they are too blurry to make any sense of. The roll has now been open for a long time, but did the same thing when I first opened it. No visible blobs on the material. Machine works fine on other materials, the one I had before this (an M200) also worked fine but had similar problems with the ASA.

Should I try turning the extrude temp down by 10 deg?

Does ASA have moisture problems needing to be dried before use?

I’ll try it again if I know what to try.

Hi @swarf_rat,

The pictures would help a lot, but let’s see.

  1. As it’s been quite a long time, I would consider drying the material just to exclude the moisture as a potential cause --> 80 degrees Celsius for 3 hours

  2. Try the same file.

  3. If no improvement, decrease the extrusion temp by 10 degrees Celsius

Please pass me the zcodex, so I can check if the issue appears at my end, too. Just to make sure it’s not the printing profile’s fault.

Hi,

my roll was good quite sure, none of the common signs of humidity whatsoever, also only been out of vacuum bag twice and drying in oven in between. Without closed enclosure and hepa cover I was experiencing problems with warping and sticking to the bed. The surface looked for sure like a temperature problem, but the poor layer adhesion hints not towards reducing extrusion temp, but increasing fan I would say.

Are the fan settings optimized for fully closed, open door, closed but no cover or fully open? I have to admit on second thought I find it weird having only one fan setting for these scenarios.

Not sure if it’s not too late for this, but with the M200 I got much better results when I used a separate nozzle for ASA, felt like cross-contamination between ASA and Ultrat in a nozzle would cause it to give inconsistent results. Worth a shot, though Plus nozzles are more expensive, try a new nozzle…