At first, I would like to say hello to everyone, it is my first post here and definitely not last one ;). In this post, I want to review probably one of the most amazing ABS filament for beginners. It is from F3Dfilament.com which is Polish based company that is producing high quality filaments. They claim that they are using best available pellets from USA, and to be honest, after printing with some of their materials I believe in it. All filament you will see from that company was sent for me to review, however this is my personal opinion about it.
So we are going to take a look at ABS-X filament in lemon yellow color. The X at the end represents additives that they used to make it print better. It comes in a cardboard box, vacuum sealed with desiccant inside. There is sticker with name of the material and temperatures range which is a nice touch sine you do not have to remember it – you just take a look at the spool. Now, to the filament part.
ABS filament – PRINTING TEMPERATURES
Label says that I can print it between 225 and 255. I found that for me 235 is a sweet spot. Regular ABS require bed temperatures as high as 110, but here is the thing – I printed this stuff at 70!!! And it was hard to remove from bed. But more on that later.
ABS filament – LAYER AND BED ADHESION
Prints in ABS-X did not delaminated on any of my prints with it so far. Prints are strong, and durable, they will eventually give up, but no delamination issues. I used painters tape with ABS-X mixed with acetone as a print surface, and I heated my bed only to 70 degrees. No warping, no adhesion problems, starts at the very first try. Low bed temperature and good adhesion makes this great material for beginners and people without enclosed printer.
ABS filament – FLEXIBILITY
As you can see on the photo ABS-X can be bent all the way backwards without snapping. It takes few more bends to break it. Point for you, ABS-X. It is really durable and I think it would be great for making moving parts that work under some load (of course reasonable amount of load)
ABS filament – COLOR
There is no color change after the material is printed, it remains the same before and after printing. I unwound some of it from the spool and did not noticed any color changes, so I assume that it remains consistent for the rest of the spool.
ABS filament – SMELL
There is slight really hard to spot fruity smell when printing, nothing really bad, I had my printer on desktop and I did not get headache. Smell was only slightly recognizable, not much of a problem in my opinion considering a fact that ABS filaments that I used so far were terrible and I could smell them all around my house. ABS-X smell is noticeable only if you leave the room for a while and come back. I am taking that as an advantage.
ABS filament – PRINT QUALITY
Print quality is simply great. If you use filament filter (trust me, you should) you should get amazing quality prints with consistent layers, no blobs, zits or stringing. ABS-X did not warped for me with 70 degrees on a bed, but heating it to 100 won’t hurt. I used Painters tape with some of ABS juice on top of it and it sticks from at the very first try! I checked diameter of the filament in 10 different places, the average turned out to be 1.748 mm so I bet that it is pretty nice and will give you really good, consistent results if you have your extruder calibrated properly. Top surface of the print is smooth, almost matte, it impressed me first time I saw it.
ABS filament – POST PROCESSING
You can smooth it with acetone, I made ABS juice out of it and apply with a brush. Nice smooth finish even without sanding it. Since it does not suffer from stringing, you don’t need any post processing at all, I would say that prints are perfect straight from the bed. However if you want that premium quality finish, this is the material to work with.
ABS filament – PRICE
When writing this post price at their website is 85 PLN which would give around 21 USD. I do not consider it much, for such high quality filament, I will be getting more of it in the future for sure.
It is definitely cheaper than some of the “high quality, well known” brands of filament, so it is money saver without sacrificing quality of the print.
ABS filament -SUMMARY
ABS-X is great filament at a reasonable price. Compared to other ABS filaments it stands out with less shrinkage, almost odorless printing without the need for an enclosed 3D printer. I would say that printing with it is almost like printing with slightly more durable PLA. Definitely worth checking out, especially for beginners who would like to start their adventure with ABS. I can recommend this filament to everyone who have 3D printer.
I have plenty more of filaments from F3Dfilament.com to review so be sure to visit 3Dprinterchat.com for more cool reviews and 3D printing stuff.
I went to the site and it wasn’t in English, Why do a great review in English and send people to the site, If the people can’t understand the site. grrrrrr
That’s not really a barrier nowadays – just visit the site using Chrome and it will auto-translate to English. The site won’t look pretty, but it’s easily good enough to get by.
Google translator is really helpfull, i will contact them for english version of vebsite
Sounds like a winner! I like that light bright color. I’ve not considered printing with ABS much because of the smell everybody talks about but this filament seems to have solved that. I wonder if it’s just this yellow color or all of their filaments that have only a little smell? getting off subject for a minute, I was wondering about the bearing you printed. How did the inner balls turn out and did they have any flat spots? And what keeps the balls from sticking to the plastic underneath? I’ve seen prints that have movable gears inside an enclosure and have always wondered how the gears were able to move? Another question I have is how does the extruder drop a “dot” of filament to make a ball without the filament still being attached to the extruder and strung along when the extruder moves away? Sorry for all the questions. I’m still learning.
I guess I need to ask this on the forum but I was wondering about the yellow bearing in the picture. So is it possible to print “free-standing” objects inside a 3D print as you go? I was wondering how the bearing balls go printed inside of it without getting flat spots or sticking to the rest of the print? Plus how did you print the overhangs (that incase the balls inside) without supports?