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In Defence of ABS

You are here: Home / Makes, Tests, and Builds / In Defence of ABS
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Author: Chris Garrett

ABS Octopi Pi Zero CaseABS gets a rough rap in the 3d printing community, so I wanted to give a small defence of ABS filament for your 3d printer consideration …

Now, just because I am defending ABS, does not mean it is perfect or even that it is my favourite filament!

I am simply saying it is still worth considering.

Here’s why:

  • Yes, it is stinky, but so are a lot of filaments, and even PLA stings my lungs – you should be printing with good ventilation, anyway, and if you can, monitoring even from another room.
  • Vapour smoothing – Yes, there is now a special formulation of PLA that can be smoothed with a special machine, but ABS is the OG and doesn’t need anything special.
  • Solvent welding – Solvent welding ABS for rock-solid joins is awesome.
  • Heat and wear resistance – PETG is good, but there is a reason why car manufacturers make car interiors out of ABS.
  • Price – You can get ABS cheap.
  • Paints and Sands well – Yeah there are other filaments that finish well, or better, but it is definitely one of the attributes that help ABS.

So imagine you are going to be making a full-size R2-D2 style astromech robot replica, you are going to be lugging it around in your car, possibly on hot days. What could you use?

ABS would be cost-effective, would finish looking top-notch, parts would go together well, and it wouldn’t wilt on the way to the convention.

OK, it takes some dialling in, but with a cheap enclosure and PEI on your bed, it prints almost as well as any other filament.

Worth thinking about?

Here are a couple of ABS prints where I chose ABS especially because of heat tolerance (and because silver ABS is pretty!):

ABS Octopi Pi Zero Case
ABS Raspberry Pi Zero Camera Case
Thumb wheel
Heat Bed Thumb wheel

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Category: Makes, Tests, and BuildsTag: 3d printing, filament, tips
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About Chris Garrett

Marketing Director by day, maker, retro gaming, tabletop war/roleplaying nerd by night. Co-author of the Problogger Book with Darren Rowse. Husband, Dad, 🇨🇦 Canadian.

Check out Retro Game Coders for retro gaming/computing.

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