Friday, April 04, 2008

 

RepRap extruder does ABS

Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) works really well in the RepRap extruder. Its melting point is 105°C which is less than HDPE so it does not stress the extruder as much thermally. It is harder than HDPE and PCL so it is quite tricky to get enough motor torque without the clutch slipping. Loosening the top springs on the pump and tightening only the bottom springs helps as well as lubricating the filament with oil.

Its warping is a lot less than HDPE and a bit more than PCL, but the main advantages are that the die swell is low and the filament is very compliant. It follows the head movement accurately even when extruding 0.5mm filament at 16mm/s. That gives objects good definition and sharp corners.



It is also much harder than the other two plastics and makes very rigid objects.

Read all the details here: hydraraptor.blogspot.com/2008/04/absolution and for comparison my evaluation of PCL is here: hydraraptor.blogspot.com/2008/03/chalk-and-cheese.

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Comments:
That looks very good quality indeed. Can you remind me where you got the ABS filament?
 
Very nice!
 
Adrian,
I got it from the RRRF.
 
ABS is easy to come by. You can buy it at very good prices from New Image.
 
That looks REALLY good, Chris!
 
Wow, great definition indeed. I guess this is one of the nicer materials to work with. Very good to find out about this.

Thanks a lot for this review!
 
Wow! Those are the first RepRap parts I've seen that really look as good as the 'professional' machines produce. For all the difficulties of extruding this stuff - it's got to be worth the investment of effort to make it work well.

Wonderful news indeed!
 
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