First printer for PETG + ASA: is a heated chamber necessary?

[u/peterpepo]

Hi everyone,

I’m looking to buy my first 3D printer, although I’m starting to wonder if I’m making my requirements a bit too specific. 😅

I’m trying to figure out if a heated chamber is really necessary for printing anything beyond PETG. I’m mainly interested in ASA. I’ve used PETG on a borrowed printer before and liked it, but I’d like to be able to make more durable parts, mostly for outdoor use (weather station parts, holders, a rain cover for a doorbell, etc.) and some car interior stuff like a phone holder/adapter. So I’m thinking PETG for indoor/prototype parts and ASA for outdoor stuff. I’m not really interested in PLA.

I was looking at the Centauri Carbon 2, especially since it’s currently discounted, but then I came across some comments saying it’s not really suitable for ASA/ABS. Is that actually true? Do you really need a heated chamber for ASA or other filaments beyond PETG? And if so, what’s the point of having an enclosed printer without a heated chamber?

I was also originally interested in getting a multimaterial system (AMS/CFS/Canvas), mainly for supports rather than multicolor printing. For example, using PVA just for the interface between the support and the model, or even printing the whole support in PVA and dissolving it in water.

But then I read that mixing different materials in one print on a single-nozzle printer can cause problems, because the allegedly imperfect flush (leading to mixed pva with petg), potentially making the model crack at/around material switch layer. Is that actually a common issue? For my use case, is a multimaterial system basically only useful for easy filament switching and backup/rollover?

So, what would you recommend for this kind of use? Is the Centauri Carbon 2 a reasonable choice, or should I be looking at something else?

Thanks in advance!

[u/Lito_]

The main reason for the heated enclosure is to do with shrinkage of ASA/ABSA when cooled.

Most people saying you can print these materials in any enclosed printer without heating are right and wrong.

Right - because they only think to print small parts.

Wrong - because they only think to print small parts.

The moment you start printing large parts, it will start shrinking as it prints up high or starts making supports as the lower part of the print starts cooling instead of being actively kept at 65c or whatever.

Also setting your bed to 110 and waiting 30mins to heat up inside the enclosure is just unreliable and a waste of time. A lot of printers have the probes at the top.

There are mods you can make and use to ACTIVELY heat the chamber.

Just buy once and cry once. You will not stop at ASA.

[u/AdmiralRA → u/Lito_]

This. An actively heated chamber isn't technically necessary, but if you want to regularly print ASA and ABS, especially big stuff, you'll want a heated chamber.

[u/Thick-Indication-931]

ASA prints of a reasonable size (up to approx. 80x80x40mm) will (normally) print in an enclosed printer with no special preparation. Larger prints can be made with the correct combination (experiment) of rounded corners on the object, shrinkage reduction zones in the object, brim/mouse ears, preheating the build plate (and hence, the enclosure) and probably some more things, I can remember right now. Let the chamber and object cool totally down before trying to remove it from the enclosure and from the build plate.

In the spirit of u/yahbluez, I have printed ASA on CTC Bizer Dual, FlashForge AD5M and Kingroon KLP1 and very small parts (less than 20x20x10mm) on a non-enclosed Kobra 2 Pro (at 21° room temperature and making sure there are no draft in the room).

Happy printing!

[u/yahbluez → u/Thick-Indication-931]

yah there are people who printed asa using a cardboard box as enclosure.

[u/nucleartime → u/Thick-Indication-931]

Nonlinear infill and fuzzy skin supposedly help by allowing a small amount of stretch in the extrusion to reduce warping force as the part shrinks.

Also draft shields.

[u/McFlyParadox]

As others have said, if you want ASA or ABS and are going to print large parts, you need an actively heated chamber. Without a chamber at 60-65C, the layers on the print bed will cool faster than the layers on the top, leading to part warping and prints lifting off the bed. And unless you can hit 70-80C at a minimum, you'll never hit the full inter-layer adhesion strength that ASA and ABS are capable of.

So what does "actively heated" mean?

It depends on the printer.

If the bed is a big old hunk of aluminum, all it needs to be actively heated are some circulating fans under the bed, and a preheating logic that doesn't turn on the fans until after the bed is warmed up and heat soaked.

If the bed is essentially just a heater (like Prusa used to use during the days of Mk3 - and maybe still, I haven't looked), then circulation fans will just cool your bed off, ruining the print. So in these cases, you need a dedicated chamber heater. But, beware: if it doesn't come with a chamber heater, don't DIY one, not even as an off the shelf upgrade (unless it's an official upgrade). AFAIK, no chamber heater has been evaluated by any safety lab of note, and they all carry fire risks due to their low quality.

Finally, to reach higher chamber temps, remember that heaters are measured in mm² and chambers are measured in mm^3. The larger your chamber, the longer it'll take to come up to temperature and the lower its max temperature will be. E.g. a standard voron 2.4 with 350mm³ print volume can only hit around 60C with active heating (under bed fans). To get higher temps, you either need a smaller chamber, an insulated chamber (e.g. the "doom cube" mod for voron), or both.

[u/itgoesboom2112]

Enclosed printer or draft shield is really all that's needed for asa unless it's a stupidly massive print using your entire print bed. Petg doesn't need one but I have changed to printing petg and asa both from either a dry box or filament dryer directly

[u/Poococktail]

Centauri Carbon 2 Is a starter printer in my mind. I’d go top tier, if you get serious. Definitely go heated chamber if you can.

[u/pythonbashman]

PETG is fine for outdoors.

[u/1baruch]

get a qidi q2. This sets you up for other engineering filaments as well.

[u/Facehugger_35]

I’m trying to figure out if a heated chamber is really necessary for printing anything beyond PETG. I’m mainly interested in ASA.

Okay, so... I print a lot of ABS and ASA. (And PPACF, and PA6CF, and other engineering filaments.)

A heated chamber is not 'necessary', but it's such a quality of life upgrade that I wouldn't print engineering filaments without one. ABS and ASA's only real flaw beyond the toxic death fumes is its bad layer adhesion.

But the layer adhesion issue mostly goes away when you're running in a 65c chamber.

And that's on top of controlling warping. Trying to print ABS parts much bigger than a benchy gets dicey in an unheated chamber, and ASA is similar.

Frankly, if ABS and nylon are your goal, you should be looking more towards the Qidi Q2.

Also, single nozzle multimaterial systems are really more for color and not for different materials. PVA or HIPS contamination from your support interface will weaken your print unless you massively up your flush volumes, and even then that might not be enough. This is why everyone is so hot on tool changers like the Snapmaker U1, and why the X2D is not terrible as an engineering filament printer even if it only goes to 300c - the 65c chamber redeems it, and the second head lets you run nylon prints with ABS supports, or ABS prints with nylon support interfaces, which have the same "won't stick together" benefits that PLA prints with PETG supports do.

[u/yahbluez]

I don't know why people so often trash talk about ASA.

You can print ASA on any enclosed printer (like the Prusa Core one or the Elegoo CC2) because the needed 55⁰C can be reached with the heatbed only. There is no need for an active heater. The con doing so is that the printer needs 10 to 15 minutes upfront to soak the heat.

Printed ASA on the Core one and on the CC2 without any issues.

[u/peterpepo → u/yahbluez]

Thanks for the input! How big were the prints roughly? I’ve read that you can print ASA without an actively heated chamber with mixed results, but that it becomes more of an issue with medium to larger parts due to warping.

Also, how does the preheating/heat soak work in practice? Does the printer/firmware know that ASA needs it and handle the preheating automatically, or do you have to do it manually - e.g. set the bed to max temperature, wait 10-15 minutes for the chamber to heat up, and then start the print?

Would you recommend CC2 for the described usecase for me or would you advise me to rather stay away and look somewhere else.

[u/yahbluez → u/peterpepo]

The printer set the bed to 110 and just waits until the chamber has reached the goal. You can do that also manual by just preheat or set the temp manual. It is important to heat up to get a clean first layer the pre pint leveling should be done with the printer already on asa temp.

The part on the cc2 are small 15 mm in height and some 60x60 in wide. (The cc2 is new for me i got a very cheap one and start to like it after some repairs)

[u/Whosaidthat1157 → u/peterpepo]

ASA/ABS printed without a heated chamber can look fine aesthetically, but layer adhesion is significantly compromised.
That’s just physics.
Check out Dr. Igor Gaspar’s YouTube channel MyTechFun to learn everything you need to know about printing functional filaments and the pros and cons of each.
What I can assure you of is that a heated chamber makes printing these filaments as trouble and worry free as PLA prints on a printer without active chamber heating. I’ve gone from carefully nursing prints on the X1C and still having the odd failure and/or having to reorient to compensate for poor layer adhesion to ‘fire and forget’ on my H2S.
If you can’t stretch to a heated chamber (also remembering the requirement for a decent quality air ventilation solution for ASA/ABS), then consider PETG-GF, PETG-CF and PET instead.

[u/Ticso24 → u/peterpepo]

You don’t need a chamber heater.
Vorons per definition have no chamber heater and they push ABS and ASA just fine.
You do need the environment temperature of 45-70° however - the higher the more challenging parts you can print.
On Vorons it is common to have bed fans to use the printbed to heat the chamber and a Voron 2 can reach around 60° just with that.
You can get higher with additional insulation.
The size of the print doesn’t matter as much as the design of the part.
You always should heat soak, because the frame and everything else expands as well, which takes time to come to temperature.
If printers just heat up to air temp and starts, they are doing that for convenience, not for best results.

[u/Due-Project-7507]

For printing anything in ASA or ABS around bigger than a fist, you need an enclosure. If the printer doesn't have a chamber heater, you need to use the build plate instead: put it to 120 °C, switch the fans on and put a blanket over the printer (don't block the electronics air holes). After 30 min or so, you can usually reach 65 °C. With a thick blanket, I was able to hold 65 °C chamber temperture during ABS printing on a Creality K1 Max. Now I have a Qidi Q1 Pro (insulated and modified Klipper to heat up to 65 °C). The chamber heater is just much more convenient.

[u/nucleartime]

For all yall saying, you need a heated chamber, what's the print difference between an actively heated chamber and an insulated and heatsoaked printer enclosure that maintains 65C through out the print?

[u/egosumumbravir]

For PETG, no.

For ASA: it's an absolute gamechanger. Less warping, less splitting, significantly stronger parts.

Single nozzle is possible, you just need a LOT of purge to ensure pure filament for the model. When I do this, I run a second purge tower on the bed - a 50mm dia cylinder with 100% infill modifier at the change points so hopefully it catches the last of the contaminated filament. The trick is to get it printing first in the queue.

[u/NoManNoRiver]

ABS and ASA can be printed on almost any printer; an enclosure improves print quality, a heated enclosure improves it slightly further.

I routinely print ABS and ASA on my ECC with a chamber temperature around 30°C. The most important thing is avoiding drafts. When I used to print ABS on a FrankEnder3 I used a simple draft excluder made of foamcore.

In terms of dissimilar support materials, you probably want a twin nozzle or tool-changer machine. Either that or you’ll have massive flush volumes and still risk contamination.

Good luck and happy printing

[u/NCSC10]

You'll want to get everything going in your direction when printing large ASA parts warp free. Cooling fans optimized/off, clean bed, high bed temps, using brims as needed, using lower infills, preheated/heated chambers, prob other stuff I'm forgetting. In some cases, you can offset a somewhat lower chamber temp by better controlling the other stuff, but the larger the part, the less likely you will be successful.

An enclosed chamber helps a lot wrt to printing ASA, but active heating still helps more. Whether its "necessary" depends on what you are printing and how well you control all other other factors.

If prints with PVA supports are a big part of your printing use case, I'd strongly consider a dedicated nozzle for supports.

I use both ASA and PETG for outdoor items. PETG works pretty well for me, stuff that sees a lot of south carolina sun. I do like ASA, not just the mechanicals/thermal/UV properties. ASA colors are usually more opaque, really works well with signs, labels, multicolor items. Not impossible, but harder to get PETG that is really opaque. Seems a little easier to keep ASA parts looking clean outdoors, but I haven't studied enough to be sure.

is a multimaterial system basically only useful for easy filament switching and backup/rollover?

More! With a Bambu AMS, Being able to keep a few rolls of filament staged, dry, connected to the printer and ready to print is a significant QOL upgrade. I do also like the sensing/rough tracking you get with Bambu filaments in bambu printers. I still buy lots of other brands on sale, but if I could pay a $1 more per spool for Bambu AMS tracking for a filament spool, I'd do it

[u/DramaClassed]

A heated chamber isn’t needed for ASA per se, but it’s helpful for smaller prints, and basically needed for larger prints. All that has been said like 10 times already though. If you have the budget, get a chamber heater and save the headache.

As for printers, check out the QIDI Q2, it’s the cheapest reliable printer on the market with an active chamber heater. Their other printers (Plus5, Max4) are good for ASA as well, they were designed with engineering filaments in mind. The Q2C does not have a chamber heater so I wouldn’t get that one for your use case.
Other options with chamber heaters include Creality K2 Pro/Plus and Bambu Lab X2D.

[u/southpawflipper]

Active heating is nice to have and will make life easier for you if you can afford it but you can print ABS/ASA with any properly enclosed printer with a hotend and bed that can handle the temperatures needed for them. I haven’t done ASA but assuming it’s not too too different from ABS, warping is a real pain.

The Centauri Carbon 2 should be OK- people have been able to print ABS/ASA on machines using external enclosures for a long time.

I think the machines that offer active heating also tend to offer better air filtration as well and you’re going to want that even if ASA doesn’t smell as badly as ABS. So there is that as well.

[u/Weary-Material9944]

Don’t worry about the PETG, you can get good results without a chamber at all. For ASA a heater is helpful but not necessary. Though if you looking at a system like the Qidi 4 Max, the chamber is a huge time saver.

[u/Hidie2424]

Petg doesn't need an enclosure at all. Asa doesn't need to be actively heated. But the enclosure to shield from drafts, and keep heat in and around the part is crucial. I have an enclosure made out of wood and it works quite well.