How To Stop 3d Prints From Warping? Avoid Warping - Prevent Warping in Printing with PLA (3D print)

How To Stop 3d Prints From Warping? 3D prints can be a great way to prototype and design, but they often have flaws. Warping is one of the most common issues that 3D printed objects experience.

This blog post will discuss how you can stop your 3d print from warping by following these three steps:

1) use an appropriate cooling technique

2) wait for the correct time before removing it from the bed or platform, and

3) allow it to cool completely before handling.

Table of Contents

Related:

How to stop 3d prints from warping? (print & prevent warping)

To avoid warping, make sure that the build plate is heated. This means that it will be at a temperature just below the point where it solidifies. This way nothing will warp and stay flat to the build plate. I recommend using a heated glass bed, as the print sticks to it very well and PLA is rarely a problem.

If you are planning to use ABS then indeed fire up your heater as this plastic will not work without baking it on a heated glass build platform. Other plastics may require an even higher temperature from the build plate, but those materials are less frequently used for 3D printing than PLA and ABS.

The other option would be to design your objects in such a way that they do not warp during printing.

This can be done by placing holes through the object or designing overhangs so that they support each other and avoid sagging mid-air. Lastly, all objects usually warp slightly because of cooling down after being printed – don’t expect your object to be completely warp-free after printing.

However, if you see your print starting to warp mid-way through the process then it mostly means that your printer is not properly calibrated or that there is something wrong with the filament.

It may also mean that the material is outdated and needs replacement with fresh stock.

How To Stop 3d Prints From Warping?

3D Print Warping During Printing

Warping is the curling up of a 3D print during printing. This can be both cured and exacerbated by playing around with the printer’s environment that it is sitting in. The most common cause of warping with ABS 3D prints is when, after printing for a certain amount of time (usually somewhere between 45 minutes and 3 hours), one of the corners of your print lifts up, starts to curl, and then eventually pops off.

Warping can be caused by a number of factors: too low bed temperature, incorrect filament (particularly cheap or old filaments full of fillers), incorrect printing speeds, non-flat surfaces on the build plate (which cause the print to shift around, pop off and then curl up), ambient humidity (particularly if you’re printing in a room with high humidity levels) and more.

There are much more detailed explanations of how to solve warping problems in the 3D printing community (for example this one by MakerBot).

The following explanation is meant as a starting point for solving warping issues. If you’re still having trouble with warping after trying out all these techniques, chances are your prints won’t warp at all if you leave them on the print bed until they cool.

How To Stop 3d Prints From Warping?

Printing ABS on Blue Tape

One way to help prevent ABS prints from warping is to use blue painter’s tape or Kapton tape instead of an adhesive print surface like BuildTak.

Using blue painters’ tape pretty much guarantees that your first layer will stick well to the build plate and eliminate any curling or lifting of the first layer. The tape is also very easy to remove if you want to reprint something on top of it.

Kapton tape is better than painters’ tape because it has a much higher melting point (it’s often used in high-temperature applications like heating elements) and won’t lift your prints right off the printer bed when you’re removing them (if you’re careful).

Printing ABS on Glass

Another way to help prevent warping is to print ABS on some standard window glass . You can use some standard super glue or other adhesive to hold down the corners of your build plate (check out this page for instructions on how to do that with various types of glue).

If you have a glass cutting machine, or if you want to take the time to cut up a sheet of glass yourself, buy some cheap window glass (a 12 x 24″ sheet only costs about $10 at Home Depot), cover it with blue painters tape, and use that as your build plate.

How To Stop 3d Prints From Warping?

Printing ABS on cork board (or other uneven surfaces)

If you don’t like the idea of using adhesive print surfaces like BuildTak or Blue Tape, another way to help prevent warping is by printing on an uneven surface. I’ve found that Ecorcical Cork Board works really well for this purpose (it’s also much easier to find than BuildTak).

The roughness of the cork causes your first layer to stick very well and prevents curling during the first few layers.

Once you get to higher levels of your print, the corkboard actually starts working against you – it bends up with the rest of your print and can cause parts to pop off or curl upwards.

The solution is to use an ABS slurry (see this post ) in order to adhere your print very well to the cork surface for those last few high-level layers.

As an added bonus, printing on a bumpy/uneven build plate like this makes it easier for you to remove printed parts from your printer bed without having them stick too strongly or break off while removing them.

Using a Heated Build Plate One way of stopping warping completely is by using a heated build plate. On one hand, your print will stick very well to the build plate and will be much less likely to lift off.

On the other hand, you shouldn’t print large flat parts or anything which requires a long distance between different sections of your part (the small gaps between segments of your print may get squished shut due to the pressure of your nozzle on the build plate).

Since you need to heat up your build plate before printing anyway, it’s a great idea to use a heated build plate even with ABS. I find that my temperatures need to be about 10 degrees higher than with PLA in order to keep print from lifting off or curling as much.

Using a Cold Bed If you don’t have a heated print bed and still want to prevent warping, here is another trick that usually works quite well: Print onto Blue Tape instead of directly onto your bare printer bed (PLA only).

How To Stop 3d Prints From Warping?

PETG warping temperature (avoid warping) – heated bed temperature/heated build plate/ improve bed adhesion

The following outlines how to set up your printer for PETG, and explains what the various settings do in more detail. If this is too much information, just follow the summary at the end. A lot of trial and error has gone into where these settings are today, so there’s good reason to present

We all know that 3D printing involves heating and/or cooling some materials to very high or very low temperatures while the printer is in use.

Printing with ABS filament, for example, involves extruding hot (220-265 degrees Celsius) molten plastic onto a print bed which has been heated to about 100 degrees Celsius. This causes the bottommost layers of the print to bond with the print bed, ensuring that subsequent layers are placed in exactly the right spot.

You might be surprised to learn that PETG filament – which is derived from conventional “melt-pour” PET bottles used for water & carbonated beverage containers (and other such things) – actually starts out as a molten liquid at around 230 degrees Celsius! This obviously means that the printer will have to heat up the hotend and printbed to a higher temperature than for many other materials. On the other hand, it also means that ABS slurry is going to be our friend during cool-down if we want a good surface finish on a PETG print. More on slurry later…

The other thing you might not have expected is that printing PETG filament at 230 degrees Celsius essentially melts the nozzle, so it’s vital to print using a material with good “stepping ability”. For instance, PLA and ABS don’t work well with such high temperatures.

But many newer materials such as XT do, so we have a number of options open to us.

I have seen several forum posts which say that PETG should be printed at the same temperature as ABS. This is fundamentally wrong, and can lead to all sorts of problems while printing. The following guide aims to illustrate why this is so, and what you should do instead.

How To Stop 3d Print From Warping?

PLA warping Ender 3 printer – How to fix PLA warping? (reduce printing speed)

Hello everyone! I have been reading a few forums and seeing many people having problems with the E3, so I am going to try my best to explain how to modify your new printer to run smoother.

After following this guide you should see a nice speed boost of about 120-140% without having to modify your e-steps. I was able to push the speed to about 50mm/s which is good for an Ender 3, but would advise not going too much faster as you have to have some safety margin on the motors.

The first thing you are going to need is a piece of string or hair tie wire or anything that will pull tight across the X-axis belt.

You do this by putting one end of the wire under both belts where they hold onto the pulley and then crisscrossing it so it goes over each half-moon plastic cylinder sticking up, put more tension on it so you can fit more than just two fingers underneath.

The tighter belt should be resting on top of these cylinders rather than inside them, if you are having trouble fitting the string, then it is too loose.

Parts needed: 1 Hair Tie Wire or String.

The next step in your printer should be to have a look at the drag chain or filament guide tube so you can see how far it has moved away from the frame.

You do this by pulling back around 10 cm of filament until it comes out of the hobbed bolt, holding onto it there and pulling on both sides of the filament while making sure that your wire is still in place, if you feel any resistance then you know that part has come off track or that there is dirt in between two pieces.

If everything keeps moving when pulled gently but stops as soon as you let go, then great, this means that your printer is fine.

You should also be able to see from the filament guide tube if anything is going wrong as well, and this will help you out a lot in the future so you can tell what problems might occur.

If you feel like it is too much work for you, then there’s another way to check if something has come unplugged without having to pull on any filaments. This involves doing exactly the same as above but rather than pulling the filament out, just put your finger into where the filament comes out and slowly move it around inside until you find an obstruction or dirt clogging up your machine.

How To Stop 3d Prints From Warping? (cre: simplify3d)

Parts needed: 1 Wire or String (if not already done).

The next step is going to be making sure that your print stick properly to the bed.

The key for this is making sure that you have a clean glass plate or aluminum print surface, and also having enough grip on the printbed so it has less of a chance of slipping while printing.

If you are using PLA then I would advise just sticking with the glass plate from the factory which will give you good bonding between adhesive and plastic, but if you’re sliding around then there are several methods you can use:

-Aerospace 303:

This is a spray made for sticking surfaces together and is great at making sure your surface and plastic stick together.

It also doesn’t leave any kind of sticky or oily residue behind after it’s dried off, so you can just wipe away any dust that gets on the surface using a tissue or cloth.

–Kapton/Tape:

If you are not able to get hold of Aerospace 303 then I suggest grabbing some Kapton tape as this will give you much better grip than hairspray or ABS juice but do take into account that PLA tends to warp more when printing if there isn’t enough temperature variation between cooler and hotter sections.

Currently, I am trying out hairspray for getting my print adhered to the bed, and I can say that it works okay for general print but I am not very impressed with how it handles bridging.

–Gluestick:

Another good method for PLA, just to put some glue on top of your printbed before starting up your printer, which takes away all worries about warping, and makes sure that heat doesn’t get through to the adhesive layer.

–Bluetack:

This stuff is pretty much the same in terms of function compared to gluestick in terms of sticking print to surfaces, but comes in different colors depending on what brand you buy which can make life easier if you are making things with more than one color.

–Hairspray on top of Printed:

This is a method that gives you some pretty good grip but it doesn’t last long, I would only recommend this for print that don’t take up the full print bed since having something printed on an edge can be difficult to remove after the fact.

The idea behind this is that instead of spraying your adhesive directly on the glass or aluminum print surface you spray some layers around where your extruder nozzle will go so that anything being printed has more chance of sticking together rather than being pushed away onto the nonstick layer.

–Wax Paper Method:

This isn’t really all that helpful for me considering how much hairspray I tend to use on my print but hey, maybe this will come in handy for some of you.

It basically involves putting wax paper above where you put your adhesive and then taking it off after the print has finished. The idea behind this is that anything printed on top of the wax paper will stick to where it usually does and not what might be pushing against the paper as a nonstick layer would do.

How To Stop 3d Prints From Warping? (cre: ultimaker)

–Spray Mount:

I haven’t used spray mount myself so I don’t know how well it works, supposedly people have had a pretty good experience with these things sticking their prints down as long as there isn’t too much heat involved making sure that PLA stays as cool as possible during printing or else you might end up with bubbles or uneven layers underneath your print.

I would say it’s a decent alternative to hairspray and gluestick but is easy enough to find at your local stationery shop so yeah, maybe give this one a shot if you don’t want to use icky chemicals on what will soon be part of your body.

–Blue Painters Tape:

Not the most potent method for sticking prints down but it does seem like something which might work out alright in combination with spray mount or ABS juice, blue painters tape usually doesn’t warp when heated up unlike normal Scotch tape, and has enough grip to keep PLA from warping away when cooling down.

-Kapton Tape: If you don’t feel like messing around with tapes and such then Kapton tape is pretty much the same stuff as painters tape but with a better adhesive surface, now if only the print surface on my printer wasn’t made of aluminum then I could probably use this with no problem.

–ABS Slurry:

Works pretty much like ABS juice except it is instead used to saturate you’re printed before starting up your machine, using slurry will give you some decent grip between whatever is being printed and the glass print bed even when the surface starts getting too hot for normal hairspray to handle since more layers are being added ad infinitum so there’s no need to worry about what might be printed falling off of where it should be.

The downside of using ABS slurry means that you can’t use Kapton tape or painter’s tape on top of where you put the slurry but since both are easy enough to come by I don’t see this as being too much of an issue.

–ABS Juice:

Works in a similar fashion to ABS Slurry except instead it is used when the printer starts up, all you have to do with this stuff is make sure that your adhesion surface is clean and then spray some ABS juice down before starting up your machine.

The reason I usually just use hairspray for my prints is that I can whip up a new mixture of hairspray by mixing one part water with four parts hairspray using a measuring cup, having another container for airtight storage so my bottle doesn’t get contaminated which saves me from having to buy a new bottle every time.

Conclusion – “warp”

We have found that the warping issue can be resolved by using a heated build chamber, or printing at higher speeds. If you would like more information on how to print in 3D without warping your prints, please contact us and we will gladly provide some recommendations for you based on our experience with this problem.

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Tags: how to prevent warping, way to avoid warping, preventing warping, fix pla warping, printer build plate, cooling fan settings, heated bed temperature, build plate temperature, build plate adhesion, improve bed adhesion, reduce printing speed, model, reduce, rapid, enclosure.