I am new to 3D but work in a thermal analysis lab. I have been running Bambu PLA filaments and poop on a differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) and the various colors have very different traces. The DSC measures the thermal transitions such as glass transition and the crystallization and melting behavior. The sample is heated from -10C at 10C/min to above the melt (185C), then cooled at 10C/min to -10C, and then heated again at 10C/min. Summary is either they use different grades of PLA for different colors, or the color additives greatly affect the thermal behavior of the PLA. The glass transition temperatures are all similar (56 C - 61C - higher for filament as they are cooled under stress). But above Tg they crystallize then melt and the colors show different behavior. The crystallization onset and peak temperatures, as well as the area of the peak differ with color. And the melting peak behavior (some have multiple melt peaks) including onset, peak and area. In the cooling step from the melt some formulations with crystallize upon cooling, others show no crystallization during this step. So critics of testing different colors may have a valid point. The fraction of molecules in crystals and the size of those crystals can affect mechanical properties. I am learning that PLA is slow to crystallize and might be amorphous after printing, but since I have seen crystallization upon cooling for some colors of filament, I think those colors have a degree of crystallinity. But also, the vendors may change the coloring formulation for different filament type (PLA vs PETG) of the same color. I have not printed parts and cut them up to test, I was using poop as a representative of the extruded part state. I have only tested white, blue, orange, red matte, green, a blue-green PLA from Bambu.
I use Bambulabs ABS-GF for large Auto part light housings and it’s by far the best most stable material to print with in the high temp category. The finish is beautiful as well.
@ No, I ruled it out due to the lower Heat tolerance, it only takes on higher heat once annealed according to the fine print so normal printing is on par with normal PETG. I don’t intend on annealing due to the shrinking and potential warping.
You should print your ABS/ASA in the Xidi with the chamber heater. Basically the higher the chamber temp, the better the layer adhesion, up to maybe 85C.
QIDI chamber heater, does not go up to 85C. The Max3 goes up to 65C. Not certain if the Plus4 goes much higher. I use the chamber heater 100% of the time with ASA and ABS, which I've been running heavily the past several weeks. Usually at 55C.
@@ArgueForSport I know that it goes up to 65, I'm just saying that the optimal temp is 85C to point out that the temp should be as high as possible in desktop printers. I print with a custom voron that goes up to 85C and IMO printing ABS/ASA in 50C is BS. If you know you know.
My biggest dislike of ABS and ASA is the soot or haze that it leaves all over the internals of the printer. It coats the glass and really gives you a good idea of what you'd be breathing in open air or unventilated environments.
That is mostly the off-gassing of styrene. I'd suggest two things to minimize these issues. Install a nevermore or bento box carbon hepa filter and run the filter during prints or simply exhaust the air after the print completes which may not eliminate but will cut down on hazing. Just be sure not to run it too long because it can increase chances of warping and de-laminating layers if you cool large prints too fast.
Igor, thanks once more. This helps to silence the critics who complain when testing is not done with the same colors. Honestly, I like the 3DO ASA-CF for decent layer adhesion but also because it gives higher temps for functional printer parts, with a nice appearance. It's not cheap, though. ASA ODOR - I have not run any Bambu filaments, but I have run ASA and ASA-CF from Fusion, Overture, Polymaker, 3DO, QIDI, Ambrosia and Sunlu. Aside from Sunlu, they all had pretty mild odors. Actually, the Galactic Grape color Ambrosia smells like grapes! The Sunlu needed to be run hotter than others, and it was truly toxic smelling. Worst smelling filament I've ever run. It was not only strong smelling, but it smelled particularly poisonous and made my head, throat and eyes hurt. I bought a 3M VOC filter mask after running that stuff. ABS ODOR - Similarly, I've run a wide range of ABS and some ABS-GF from many of those brands above, plus LDO. Some are worse than ASA, but the eSun ABS+HS magically didn't really smell at all. Note - my QIDI Max3 discharge feeds into a duct pipe to a large charcoal growing filter. The room with that printer has (2) air purifiers in the to help with microplastics. Didn't help with the Sunlu ASA, though!
Great testimg as always. I still prefer my prints in ASA. One thing i noted with my prints is that my heated chamber typically does not wven turn on because with nozzle temps of 260 and bed temps of 95 my chamber is already at 43.
I haven't tried the ASA from Bambu but do have many spools of their standard ABS. The Bambu ABS doesn't give off much odor even less so than Polymaker ABS which I also use frequently. Polymaker ASA has very little odor compared to their ABS so I found it surprising that Bambu's ASA line gives off a foul odor. I do have 2 spools of GF-ABS that I haven't yet tried so it's encouraging that it gave some edge case improvements like stiffness because I needed that for the project I'm about to embark upon. TY for all of the tests you provide it helps when ordering materials.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, ASA is in my opinion the best all around 3d printing filament. Aside from it needing a heated and ventilated chamber. But I've also decided that 3d printing will just never replace aluminum for heavy duty applications. I'll keep my 3d printer for prototyping and parts that must be plastic or are very intricate. But I recently discovered it's fairly easy to cut aluminum with a standard router and bits so I will be using that for things like angle brackets and the like.
I agree! Good ASA is really awesome stuff! For functional parts that need to be tough, it's hard to beat. Almost all my printing these days is ASA or polycarbonate. Polymax PC is some truly wild stuff.
@@rsilvers129That's a fairly hard claim to make given that the '+' is entirely nonstandard between brands. For all the +s I know ASA (and ABS) has them absolutely destroyed on creep, which is the main reason I would never use PLA for anything functional. PETG works ok for light loads over time as a halfway, but never PLA, + or no +.
The ABS-GF seems like good stuff. For some reason ASA doesn't seem to take to CF as well as other filament types, specifically with layer adhesion. Temperature resistance is great though!
Thank you again for making this video. My biggest barrier to 3d printing was my health, so I repurposed an... indoor plant room. I use a lung room, redundant 6in HVAC Carbon & multi-stage HEPA filters, and have loved printing Bambu ABS after the printroom got done.
Fun fact: I have all these filaments sitting on a shelf but haven't tried them yet. I want to create automotive parts, and after this video, I would rather have standard ABS or ABS-GF.
-- Thank you, Igor. Good way to start a year! Funny, I was wondering about smell myself, as ASA supposed to be "odorless" version of ABS, and even when it was in same EBOS as your's(soon to be replaced with Sunlu E2, which should work for annealing parts), which also did not have power to rotate spools, I had headache from smell. Back to watching video...
@@MyTechFun -- I was hoping for Amazon! Thank you so much, Igor, now I'm going to need it to print so much filament, that I also most got no use for, but please let us know, how it will work, because it is a big problem for me, and I've got same laundry exhaust vent, since I'm using LG 2 in one ventless laundry machine.
An other great video, thanks! I was thinking for the steel bolt maybe you should take a bigger aluminium bolt to be closer to the real heat detection temperature ?
I've unfortunately taken to respooling all my filament to deal with this and knots on rolls. Makes me feel better about having spent the time tweaking a pastamatic print even if it is very annoying to have to do.
14:00 I appreciate the bigger nuts used for comparison. I would like to see them in future videos but understand the added effort. 14:56 ASA is known for its bad smell (toxic) because of the fumes styrene emits. I recently started printing with ASA and I think I will switch to ABS-GF. I have an X1C.
Another great 3D printing material testing video. Thank you Igor. I sent a little PayPal money to show some appreciation a bit beyond my usual video like and appreciative comment.
I really liked this test, and what it showed me is you need to know your use case. No filament suits all needs. I have a question though: if you need dimensional accuracy, like the fiber reinforced materials provide, but do not want brittleness, what is a good choice?
Hi Igor. Thx a lot for this great test! I am a bit surprised with the weak layer adhesion of the ASA. In some tests ASA performs better than ABS in this regard. In other tests it performs worse. Do you have any idea, why this could be? Maybe differences in cooling/nozzle-temperature?
Other YT channels doing 3D printer material testing also had the surprising result of improved layer adhesion with chopped glass or carbon fiber. My engineering maxim: One good test is worth 8,567 expert opinions. “When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it. When you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind. It may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science.” ― Lord Kelvin
Thank you for this! That’s some pretty unexpected results between ASA CF and ABS GF. I’ve been trying to find the best material to print my voron stealthburner from and having tried Bambus Asa CF I can also agree that the deformation from the screws is a valid one. It tends to need re tightening more than I expected. Also have tried PET CF but to no benefit - it’s also quite a bit heavier - around 30% or so. If you’ve got any material recommendations that can withstand creep under high chamber temperatures while also being lightweight I’d love to hear your thoughts!!
I have been testing dragon burner parts from diffrent materials, if weight is your main priority (with high heat resistance) pa12-cf showed the best results for me, but creep is a notable problem with this material (annealing helps a bit tho and you are going to do it anyway for the better heat resistance), the other issue I had is printability (printing 2 layer pva helped, but bed adhesion was a nightmare with pa12.cf15 what might be quite perfect for you is paht-cf/ppa-cf from siraya tech. It's like 60$/kg and has increadible heat resistance (changes color when annealing, which makes it easier to see if you annealed it allready) no creep from what I have seen, sticks well to a pei bed (80-90C no adhesives worked for me) and great tensile strengh + ok layer adhesion. It's somewhere in the middle in terms of weight (1.2g/cm^3, not quite the 1.07 of pa12-cf, but still less than the pet-cf) if stiffness is not your main concern (low print speeds maybe, or just a cover), than pa6-cf looks to be the best material: light, good strengh and layer adhesion, but absorbs water like crazy, so it looses like 60-70% of its stiffness over time (also some of its strengh) hope it helps
@mytechfun awesome looking forward to it!! The only downside is weight - 1.2 g per cm vs ~1g per cm. Come to think of it it may be cool to have a leaderboard for strength (layer adhesion etc) vs filament density. This would be so good to have for cases like this - for example the siraya tech PET CF that I just finished printing my SB from, weighs nearly 50 grams more for the complete toolhead vs ASA CF, resulting in 1k less IS results. Anyway I’m rambling but maybe it gives you ideas for future videos :)
I just wondering why nobody making tests on pure filaments, before its even printed. I know it sounds uninteresting first, but it could actually gives us a direct result without the doubt regarding printing errors. Aside of that comparing to printed samples are also interesting, because who knows? Are they actually degrading or impoving.
Direct results, perhaps, but filament behaviour isn't very useful information, and it's a huge assumption that filament behaviour translates directly into printed part behaviour. It's also very very difficult to measure small variations on such a tiny cross section.
I have found Bambu's ASA to be weird. It is both smellier and more prone to warp than any other brand ASA I have tried. I stay away from their ASA as it is so prone to warping I practically find it unusable.
I am new to 3D but work in a thermal analysis lab. I have been running Bambu PLA filaments and poop on a differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) and the various colors have very different traces. The DSC measures the thermal transitions such as glass transition and the crystallization and melting behavior. The sample is heated from -10C at 10C/min to above the melt (185C), then cooled at 10C/min to -10C, and then heated again at 10C/min. Summary is either they use different grades of PLA for different colors, or the color additives greatly affect the thermal behavior of the PLA. The glass transition temperatures are all similar (56 C - 61C - higher for filament as they are cooled under stress). But above Tg they crystallize then melt and the colors show different behavior. The crystallization onset and peak temperatures, as well as the area of the peak differ with color. And the melting peak behavior (some have multiple melt peaks) including onset, peak and area. In the cooling step from the melt some formulations with crystallize upon cooling, others show no crystallization during this step.
So critics of testing different colors may have a valid point. The fraction of molecules in crystals and the size of those crystals can affect mechanical properties. I am learning that PLA is slow to crystallize and might be amorphous after printing, but since I have seen crystallization upon cooling for some colors of filament, I think those colors have a degree of crystallinity. But also, the vendors may change the coloring formulation for different filament type (PLA vs PETG) of the same color. I have not printed parts and cut them up to test, I was using poop as a representative of the extruded part state. I have only tested white, blue, orange, red matte, green, a blue-green PLA from Bambu.
Very interesting
I use Bambulabs ABS-GF for large Auto part light housings and it’s by far the best most stable material to print with in the high temp category. The finish is beautiful as well.
Have you tried PET-GF?
@ No, I ruled it out due to the lower Heat tolerance, it only takes on higher heat once annealed according to the fine print so normal printing is on par with normal PETG. I don’t intend on annealing due to the shrinking and potential warping.
@@BarnesysBuilds pet-cf has much higher heat tolerance even when not annealed, esp compared to petg, and higher than abs.
You should print your ABS/ASA in the Xidi with the chamber heater. Basically the higher the chamber temp, the better the layer adhesion, up to maybe 85C.
QIDI chamber heater, does not go up to 85C. The Max3 goes up to 65C. Not certain if the Plus4 goes much higher. I use the chamber heater 100% of the time with ASA and ABS, which I've been running heavily the past several weeks. Usually at 55C.
@@ArgueForSport I know that it goes up to 65, I'm just saying that the optimal temp is 85C to point out that the temp should be as high as possible in desktop printers. I print with a custom voron that goes up to 85C and IMO printing ABS/ASA in 50C is BS. If you know you know.
My biggest dislike of ABS and ASA is the soot or haze that it leaves all over the internals of the printer. It coats the glass and really gives you a good idea of what you'd be breathing in open air or unventilated environments.
That is mostly the off-gassing of styrene. I'd suggest two things to minimize these issues. Install a nevermore or bento box carbon hepa filter and run the filter during prints or simply exhaust the air after the print completes which may not eliminate but will cut down on hazing. Just be sure not to run it too long because it can increase chances of warping and de-laminating layers if you cool large prints too fast.
Lucky me, I bought the ABS-GF so I ended up buying the "right" one. Thanks for the work to do all the testing and presenting your results.
I like the new tests: picture deformation method and bolt compression. Interesting to get closer to ISO.
Tack!
Thank you for your support!
Igor, thanks once more. This helps to silence the critics who complain when testing is not done with the same colors. Honestly, I like the 3DO ASA-CF for decent layer adhesion but also because it gives higher temps for functional printer parts, with a nice appearance. It's not cheap, though.
ASA ODOR - I have not run any Bambu filaments, but I have run ASA and ASA-CF from Fusion, Overture, Polymaker, 3DO, QIDI, Ambrosia and Sunlu. Aside from Sunlu, they all had pretty mild odors. Actually, the Galactic Grape color Ambrosia smells like grapes! The Sunlu needed to be run hotter than others, and it was truly toxic smelling. Worst smelling filament I've ever run. It was not only strong smelling, but it smelled particularly poisonous and made my head, throat and eyes hurt. I bought a 3M VOC filter mask after running that stuff.
ABS ODOR - Similarly, I've run a wide range of ABS and some ABS-GF from many of those brands above, plus LDO. Some are worse than ASA, but the eSun ABS+HS magically didn't really smell at all.
Note - my QIDI Max3 discharge feeds into a duct pipe to a large charcoal growing filter. The room with that printer has (2) air purifiers in the to help with microplastics. Didn't help with the Sunlu ASA, though!
Love how detailed your testing is, subbed!!
Thank you for another comparison and providing the data
Great testimg as always. I still prefer my prints in ASA.
One thing i noted with my prints is that my heated chamber typically does not wven turn on because with nozzle temps of 260 and bed temps of 95 my chamber is already at 43.
43 is cold though, I use at least 50 with abs and asa and most often 60
I haven't tried the ASA from Bambu but do have many spools of their standard ABS. The Bambu ABS doesn't give off much odor even less so than Polymaker ABS which I also use frequently. Polymaker ASA has very little odor compared to their ABS so I found it surprising that Bambu's ASA line gives off a foul odor. I do have 2 spools of GF-ABS that I haven't yet tried so it's encouraging that it gave some edge case improvements like stiffness because I needed that for the project I'm about to embark upon. TY for all of the tests you provide it helps when ordering materials.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, ASA is in my opinion the best all around 3d printing filament. Aside from it needing a heated and ventilated chamber. But I've also decided that 3d printing will just never replace aluminum for heavy duty applications. I'll keep my 3d printer for prototyping and parts that must be plastic or are very intricate. But I recently discovered it's fairly easy to cut aluminum with a standard router and bits so I will be using that for things like angle brackets and the like.
It's worse than PLA+ in every way except for temp resistance.
I agree! Good ASA is really awesome stuff! For functional parts that need to be tough, it's hard to beat. Almost all my printing these days is ASA or polycarbonate. Polymax PC is some truly wild stuff.
@@rsilvers129That's a fairly hard claim to make given that the '+' is entirely nonstandard between brands. For all the +s I know ASA (and ABS) has them absolutely destroyed on creep, which is the main reason I would never use PLA for anything functional. PETG works ok for light loads over time as a halfway, but never PLA, + or no +.
@@rsilvers129 this is very wrong.
The ABS-GF seems like good stuff. For some reason ASA doesn't seem to take to CF as well as other filament types, specifically with layer adhesion. Temperature resistance is great though!
I got some really nice prints from abs-gf, even on a printer that is not tuned for looks.
One of the reasons I almost always go back to ABS when needing to trust the part over long time.
thanks!
interesting stuff as always. I only get ASA for UV resistance. no use for ABS for me.
Thank you again for making this video. My biggest barrier to 3d printing was my health, so I repurposed an... indoor plant room. I use a lung room, redundant 6in HVAC Carbon & multi-stage HEPA filters, and have loved printing Bambu ABS after the printroom got done.
How do you do this!?
Fun fact: I have all these filaments sitting on a shelf but haven't tried them yet. I want to create automotive parts, and after this video, I would rather have standard ABS or ABS-GF.
-- Thank you, Igor. Good way to start a year! Funny, I was wondering about smell myself, as ASA supposed to be "odorless" version of ABS, and even when it was in same EBOS as your's(soon to be replaced with Sunlu E2, which should work for annealing parts), which also did not have power to rotate spools, I had headache from smell. Back to watching video...
-- At 3:59 that is some serious fan, where did you get it?
-- I just finished watching this video, and I do like new protractor torque test, for sure!
Thank you!
Inline fan, Temu
@@MyTechFun -- I was hoping for Amazon! Thank you so much, Igor, now I'm going to need it to print so much filament, that I also most got no use for, but please let us know, how it will work, because it is a big problem for me, and I've got same laundry exhaust vent, since I'm using LG 2 in one ventless laundry machine.
Thanks for your research!
An other great video, thanks!
I was thinking for the steel bolt maybe you should take a bigger aluminium bolt to be closer to the real heat detection temperature ?
Do you experience the tape being pulled off at the end and stuck in the AMS? All 16 refill ABS I bought from Bambu are having this issue.😂
Hm, I my case this happened with PLA and PETG. It never made an auto refill 😅
@ Hopefully they can solve it in 2025…
I've unfortunately taken to respooling all my filament to deal with this and knots on rolls. Makes me feel better about having spent the time tweaking a pastamatic print even if it is very annoying to have to do.
14:00 I appreciate the bigger nuts used for comparison. I would like to see them in future videos but understand the added effort.
14:56 ASA is known for its bad smell (toxic) because of the fumes styrene emits. I recently started printing with ASA and I think I will switch to ABS-GF. I have an X1C.
... I assume you're aware of what the "S" is in "ABS" 😅
I recommend installing a BentoBox Filter. Worked wonders for me. From smelling the printer in the hallway to having to put my nose up to it.
I wonder what would happen if you printed the same files but with a larger 1mm nozzle and layer height.
Another great 3D printing material testing video. Thank you Igor. I sent a little PayPal money to show some appreciation a bit beyond my usual video like and appreciative comment.
Thank you very much for your support!
I really liked this test, and what it showed me is you need to know your use case. No filament suits all needs.
I have a question though: if you need dimensional accuracy, like the fiber reinforced materials provide, but do not want brittleness, what is a good choice?
No silver bullet, you need to tune shrinkage in orca.
Hi Igor. Thx a lot for this great test!
I am a bit surprised with the weak layer adhesion of the ASA.
In some tests ASA performs better than ABS in this regard. In other tests it performs worse.
Do you have any idea, why this could be? Maybe differences in cooling/nozzle-temperature?
that ABS-GF having higher layer bonding than the unfilled version is very interesting, is that a coextruded filament?
Other YT channels doing 3D printer material testing also had the surprising result of improved layer adhesion with chopped glass or carbon fiber. My engineering maxim: One good test is worth 8,567 expert opinions.
“When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it. When you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind. It may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science.”
― Lord Kelvin
@@Liberty4Ever bambulabs data also shows its z stregth is higher, and i didnt compare numbers, but they were in the same ballpark.
Not a coextrusion
Thank you for this! That’s some pretty unexpected results between ASA CF and ABS GF.
I’ve been trying to find the best material to print my voron stealthburner from and having tried Bambus Asa CF I can also agree that the deformation from the screws is a valid one. It tends to need re tightening more than I expected.
Also have tried PET CF but to no benefit - it’s also quite a bit heavier - around 30% or so.
If you’ve got any material recommendations that can withstand creep under high chamber temperatures while also being lightweight I’d love to hear your thoughts!!
I have been testing dragon burner parts from diffrent materials, if weight is your main priority (with high heat resistance) pa12-cf showed the best results for me, but creep is a notable problem with this material (annealing helps a bit tho and you are going to do it anyway for the better heat resistance), the other issue I had is printability (printing 2 layer pva helped, but bed adhesion was a nightmare with pa12.cf15
what might be quite perfect for you is paht-cf/ppa-cf from siraya tech. It's like 60$/kg and has increadible heat resistance (changes color when annealing, which makes it easier to see if you annealed it allready) no creep from what I have seen, sticks well to a pei bed (80-90C no adhesives worked for me) and great tensile strengh + ok layer adhesion. It's somewhere in the middle in terms of weight (1.2g/cm^3, not quite the 1.07 of pa12-cf, but still less than the pet-cf)
if stiffness is not your main concern (low print speeds maybe, or just a cover), than pa6-cf looks to be the best material: light, good strengh and layer adhesion, but absorbs water like crazy, so it looses like 60-70% of its stiffness over time (also some of its strengh)
hope it helps
I’m not sure about the weight, but PC-CF was tested on this channel and showed very little creeping and good temperature resistance
Soon 3DO PC vs PC-CF
@mytechfun awesome looking forward to it!! The only downside is weight - 1.2 g per cm vs ~1g per cm. Come to think of it it may be cool to have a leaderboard for strength (layer adhesion etc) vs filament density.
This would be so good to have for cases like this - for example the siraya tech PET CF that I just finished printing my SB from, weighs nearly 50 grams more for the complete toolhead vs ASA CF, resulting in 1k less IS results. Anyway I’m rambling but maybe it gives you ideas for future videos :)
ppa, pps obviously.
but cheaper annealed pet cf/gf or pccf (3dxtech) or pc-pbt-gf
I thought in a previous video you said ASA was worth the extra couple of euros vs regular ABS?
How much difference does Glass filled or Carbon Fiber play? Are they effectively the same? I wonder about ABS CF v ASA CF and ABS GF v ASA GF.
They aren't, cf is stiffer generally
I just wondering why nobody making tests on pure filaments, before its even printed. I know it sounds uninteresting first, but it could actually gives us a direct result without the doubt regarding printing errors. Aside of that comparing to printed samples are also interesting, because who knows? Are they actually degrading or impoving.
Direct results, perhaps, but filament behaviour isn't very useful information, and it's a huge assumption that filament behaviour translates directly into printed part behaviour. It's also very very difficult to measure small variations on such a tiny cross section.
Interesting that ABS must be a blend of some sort since the smell is less than ASA, I've noticed several new ABS+/ABS Pro on the market as of late
They are all blends, pure materials are rare nowadays
I have found Bambu's ASA to be weird. It is both smellier and more prone to warp than any other brand ASA I have tried. I stay away from their ASA as it is so prone to warping I practically find it unusable.
I have no issues, just clean pei bed and 55-60 chamber as one should use for such filaments in general
Extremely hogh quality video!
ABS is the best 🎉😂
The prices are sadly pretty high /:
They aren't, their abs-gf is among the cheapest
Put a cotton cloth under the weight nuts
Throwing gang signs in thumbnail
You can buy cheaper brands that doing the sae think and having similar results. Overrated brand in terms of quality.
Really, where can you get top quality abs-gf for 30 a kilo?