Experiments printing ABS on the Z18

[Ryan Weaving]

I'm an unfortunate owner of the Makerbot Z18.  I was so excited for this printer and pre-ordered it as soon as it was available. I own the Thingomatic, Replicator, and Replicator 2X I thought that this printer would be a great addition to my Makerbot collection.  I immediately started having problems with the print quality.  Extruder was constantly clicking, filament feed issues, inconstant leveling, surface artifacts, etc..   I was not going to pay the extra $$$ for Makercare.  Makerbot's tech support is beyond horrible because they are afraid to admit that there are fundimental design issues with the printer and smart extruder.  I ordered a 3 pack of extruders hoping to solve the extruder issue.  After having waited for over a month for my replacement extruders to arrive the first extruder was bad right out of the box.  Makerbot only warranties the extuders 2 months after ship date, so if you buy a 3 pack test them all because I doubt Makerbot does.  The new extruders made no difference.  I was almost ready to give up and rework the entire top end of the machine and replace the electronics because I'm not going to buy Maker Care, but before I do that I decided to do some experments printing ABS.  ABS is my plastic of choice because of its strength and work-ability with acetone.  I took some kapton tape and covered the build platform with it and applied some ABS acetone mixture to it with a paper towel rubbing until the acetone is evaporated.  I mounted a roll of Octave ABS filament so that it feeds into the top feed.  I set the extruder temp to 225C and chamber to 48C.  I turned off the PLA cooling fan.  There is a bug in the Makerbot firmware that causes a timeout when waiting for the chamber to get to temp. (Error 1001: Toolhead not heating), so you might have to restart a few times until the chamber gets to temp.  I've attached some photos from my experiments.  The printer took 13 hours to print the teapot (3 shell 10% fill).  I was pleasantly surprised this morning to see the teapot had printed without major issues.  The surface quality is better then anything else I have ever printed on this printer.  I really think that Stratasys had Makerbot intentionally neuter this machine's capability.  The Kapton tape does not stick to well to the build platform tape,  I'm going to try to add a sheet of aluminium or stainless to the build platform and see how well that works.    

[David K.]

Thanks for the post Ryan,  I was able to get surprising good results also when printing with ABS on my Z18.  See pictures and a video here.  I was able to get my chamber up to 55c, but had to wait about 30 minutes.  I recommenced using Elmer's disappearing purple glue stick to get the ABS to stick.  I am wondering if Makerbot and Stratasys are gonna release a Z18x, similar to what they did with the 2x.

[Ryan Carlyle]

Yeah, ABS is much better behaved from a hot-end standpoint, so I'm not surprised it works better than PLA as far as the extruder is concerned. Bad thermal management in the extruder means you can't print PLA, period. ABS is less picky because the glass point is so high.

I would not be surprised if Stratasys did not want the Z18 to print ABS because of competition with its printers. On the other hand, Makerbot is 100% in favor of neutering products for better user experience, and making printers PLA-only is a standard way of making them more newbie-friendly.