Does anyone have any experience printing with ABS on the Creality Ender 3 V2. Did you have to make any modifications and was the print a good quality?
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I don’t have an Ender 3, but this video is a great resource:
I imagine you’ll probably want to upgrade to a glass bed and an enclosure.
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Hey Hunter,
Welcome to the forum and the world of 3D printing!
An enclosure is definitely high on the list of priorities, as simple as a huge carboard box from Bunnings up to a custom designed on will do as long as you can get some heat in there.
Also be sure not to push your bed temps too high! The default mag plate on the Ender’s can fail and cause some interesting results.
PS: for a comprehensive filament video give this a watch: How to Use EVERY 3D FILAMENT - YouTube
Liam.
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Hi Hunter,
I’m going down this path right now! Here are some things I found along the way:
- Enclosures are mandatory, I found that even with a draft shield from the slicer, the warping and detachment from bed was horrible without one. This is mostly due to the way that the “Mendel-style” printers like the Ender drag the print through the cold air as part of the printing movements.
- Since your V2 has a glass bed, you shouldn’t need to worry about killing any magnets (there are none)
- ABS stinks. This varies based on filament used, but make sure you’re doing it in a room you don’t need to be in, and that you keep it ventilated.
- Draft shields and brims are your friend, just make sure they don’t connect and pull the print off when the draft shield detaches.
- Let your enclosure “heat-soak” - This depends on how big your box is, but I’d recommend about 30 minutes to let everything get nice and toasty.
- Make sure you tune your extrusion multiplier for new types of filament. Teaching Tech’s calibrator is a godsend for most 3d printing problems
- If you don’t have a bed levelling probe, I’ve found the manual mesh levelling to work great if your bed is warped. TT has a great video on this.
- ABS actually hates cooling, I’ve found printing with no fan works fine.
- Be careful you don’t end up with a massive filament blob at the bottom of your hotend, as due to the heat of ABS, you can take your hotend plastic with it (ask me how I know
)
I’m still in this process, so I’m still learning, but that’s what I’ve found so far.
Happy Printing!
-James
EDIT: Just forgot an important point, make sure you get a high-temperature PTFE tube from Capricorn or similar before you start printing above about 240C, as the stock one can fail above that
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Hi Hunter,
I want to confirm James findings since I am working on this too. I am not investing in enclosures yet, but maybe I will do that in the near future. It is struggling to get it right to print ABS on ender 3 v2, but it is doable. I do tune some settings based on settings used by this youtuber
I’ve changed hotbed temps to 90 and print speed to 50 mm/s in ultimaker and it does the job. I’m a bit concerned to not do above 90 since ender 3 v2 is rated max in 90 according to this
I do this in my garage, which is quite isolated from the external wind. So maybe it also counts as an advantage for printing an ABS without enclosure. However, be careful of the gas produced while the printer is printing. It’s very noticeable and unpleasant.
Also, using my settings, I have noticed the draft produced is at first will stick to the base but eventually will never be attached to the base plate in the middle of the process. It doesn’t affect the result though.
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Hey Sami,
Even with a draft shield, the biggest thing that helped for me was the enclosure, hands down. It doesn’t need to be anything special, my enclosure is just some cardboard taped together for the “walls” and a spare fitted sheet over the top for the “roof”. Great video link BTW! That’s some fantastic print quality from the looks of the fuzzy video.
I’m currently working on making a fan duct that sits in a nearby window to gently waft VOCs outside
-James
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Figured I’d chime in with my problems in this thread to see if anyone has ideas:
I can’t seem to get my ABS to stick to my PEI. I’ve cleaned it with detergent and IPA, contact is good (as per the photo below) but it just slides off somewhere through the first/second layer
Apparently there’s a wide variety of quality when it comes to PEI sheets, maybe I’ve picked a dud?
I’ve turned bottom layer width up gradually, now at 0.8mm (twice my nozzle)
I’ve gradually been turning down the first layer speed, now at 10mm/s
BLTouch is in place and working correctly
Keen to see if anyone has gotten to the end of this bumpy path!
-James
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Hey James,
What bed adhesion were you using? I would say a raft is definitely required here, it might also be worth picking up some Magigoo to garuantee a stuck print for your project!
I also ran across this YT video that is quite interesting: How to Print ABS on an OPEN Printer - YouTube
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Hi Liam,
Thanks for the tips! I’ll definitely keep the magigoo in mind, but I actually came back to update on a fix I found. My PEI plate was a little too smooth, so I scuffed it up with some high-grit sandpaper, and it’s working great now!
That slurry solution in the video looks really cool, and I’ll keep it in mind for any mission-critical parts that I need to absolutely never detatch from the plate 
Good luck to all the others on the Ender ABS journey, I’ll keep you updated with some photos of test prints once I’m done with the rest of my tuning.
-James
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