I’m absolutely NOT saying that it’s OKAY to be inhaling these fumes constantly. But a lot of people talk about the eye-watering stench it gives off, I only notice the smell to be strong but I definitely wouldn’t consider it that incredibly unpleasant. Similar to smell of sawdust when woodworking, not good for you, but certainly not what I would consider a foul stench. Anybody else the same?
Hahah sorry forgot to capitalise the acronym
My first thought was "I didn't know abs smell" and then I put down my donut.
Me too.
I'm very sensitive to many smells but abs is apparently not one of them. I can definitely smell it but it's not overpowering
Same here, it doesn't bother me at all
The answers I was looking for!!
It's actually strange because most strong smells affect me a lot.
Same.. maybe it is the brand we are using? I had some cheap off brand stuff that definitely had a much stronger smell.
A lot of ABS is blended and not pure and uncut, so that is a definite possibility
Possible but also I've been messing around with plastic spaghetti since my bf and I built a mendel. I don't remember ever being too bothered. We switched to pla on the mendel more for ease than smell. I've only been printing abs now because of an enclosed printer.
Brings back memories of printing parts for my first Voron on an essentially open E3v2. And it reminds me to change the carbon in my Voron’s filter
You successfully printed abs parts on your open ender 3v2? Don’t tell my one or he’ll get jealous.
Yeah, the trick is to have masses of airflow but zero draft…
That sounds like a very hard balance, good job!
Duck Tape and foamboard wall around the printer, printer opposite side of the room from an open window, door closed during printing. Printer has a MicroSwiss DD and hotend conversion
so an enclosure??
Even a fairly basic one will do
so its not "open air"
What you’re trying to do is stop drafts sweeping across the build plate and causing rapid/differential cooling of the piece.
As long as you don’t have a gale tearing through the build volume and some of the heat is kept in most modern ABS/ASA will print okay.
I used foamboard and ducktape to make a wall that sat around the whole printer (E3v2) and extended 10-15cm above the builplate. Printed all the parts for my first Voron like that without a single failed/warped print.
Could you elaborate please? I’m interested in printing ABS on my ender 3. Is your printer contained in a housing with ventilation/filters?
You can find fabric enclosures for like $25
Ngl. I also have r/beginnerfitness in my feed for some reason and this disgusted me.
Currently printing my first abs print as i type. In a cardboard box and an open window. ^
Let me know how you feel
I am not staying in the same room. But i dont hate the smell. Definitely needed to leave the windows open for an hour after the print was finished. But it worked.
Well not all ABS is created equal. I don't use it much but out of the 3 or 4 brands I have used only one has an obvious smell. It's the one that came with my second, second hand printer. The first day I was using it I ran it all day to get an idea of how well it worked. I kind of got used to the smell after about an hour and bought into the idea that it was harmless as was often said. However for about 3 days later everything that came out of me smelled just like that plastic from crap to sweat, even burps. Since then it runs in a separate closed room with open windows. I really can't imagine that a chemical like that could go through my system that thoroughly and be completely harmless. Weirdly now every time I smell that particular filament printing it literally smells like a version of crap to me.
Yep, my modern abs from polymaker only has a slight odor.. but I've got a spool of abs from "back in the day" (2013) that is incredibly pungent. It also feels like a different material in the hand. Which is all just kind of a testimate to how far we've come with polymers and blending.
Yeah. Still makes me wonder about what I'm breathing though. Not all chemical vapors have an odor but the plastics have really improved even just in the past couple of years I think. That older spool prints with a kind of waxy, chalky quality when cutting or finishing. Newer stuff usually has more of a denser plastic glassing finish and is a little stronger. The old stuff has a really nice sort of ivory appearance though and is easier to sand and clean up. When I acetone mist it it goes almost organic. It still has it's uses. I have to use it sparingly though. I won't be able to find a spool of that stuff again, stink and all.
ABS fumes contain styrene, formaldehyde, acrylonitrile and hydrogen cyanide.
Short exposure has been proven to cause temporary symptoms, including pulmonary and systemic effects, with potential for causing chronic illness.
As I said in my post, I’m not denying the harmful part of it. It’s just that I’ve seen a lot of people complain about just how intolerable the stench is. And I was curious what other people think.
I am not contradicting your point.
Just pointing out that the stench is not the only reason you should not smell it.
No shit
That is not how your comment reads whatsoever.
The problem isn't the pleasantness, it's the Styrene part of that acronym
What do you mean? If it is anything to do with the fact it IS toxic I’m not arguing with you. I just mean the actual smell
If you can't smell it, it still can hurt you. And since smell perception is very subjective, there is no point to discuss these perceptions in case of ABS.
Well lucky I wasn’t claiming that ABS can’t hurt me, simply stating that a lot of people claim the smell alone completely fucks with them. But to me I don’t really have an issue with the smell.
my parents were paint huffing carnies and i don't mind people smelling like gas or cigs at all. so yea, probably, there's some.
i've never printed abs but in my head it'd smell like acetone-y.
Acetone has a very sharp smell, I find abs to smell like burning polystyrene (which makes sense I guess as it also is a styrene polymer)
yea that'd mess with me. i'd hate that. 😂
It's not a nice smell but far from the worst thing I've had to smell. When I worked in a research lab we'd use 2-mercaptoethanol for molecular biology stuff, now that shit is hard to forget.
Yeah it’s not something I would buy a candle for to smell like, but it’s not intensively effective as lot of other people tend to say
I’m not sensitive to resin but my friend immediately complains about it. I find clear resin is slightly stronger than black or grey resin. I don’t do abs filament so I don’t have any filament that smells bad cause I use PLA, PETG, PA6 and TPU 95A
That’s interesting, I have spent a bit of time with a resin printer and within hours my eyes were legit watering and I could not stand to be in the same room as that toxic shit. This is often the comparable assumption people have about the smell of abs, yet it does not bother me nearly as much.
What put me off about resin printing originally is people saying the smell was terrible. My printer has a carbon filter so I don’t smell anything even when sitting right next to it. One thing I did notice is how small the actual printer is
I have used both and can say (regardless of danger itself) the idea of having an FDM printer near me where I consistently am exposed to harmful VOC’s vs resin printing I would absolutely much prefer FDM. I have spent a long time with several different filaments and they all have quirks but the minute I exposed myself to a uv resin I thought nope this is way too toxic for me.
Fair point. I don’t use resin that much these days cause resin here is $60 AUD per kilo so I buy $30 half kilo bottles for occasional minis that my friends want printed. 80% of the time I’m doing overnight PLA prints since the cooling fans on my CRX Pro are way too loud to sit next to.
This is why I PLA all day every day
abs in plastics factory is horrible when initialising. don't smell it! it's not good for you!
Well lucky I clarified in my post I’m not advocating the consistent exposure, moreso the fact that the exposure I have had has been a LOT less harmful than what a lot of other people have said.
Smelling less bad to you is not the same as "less harmful". And before you say it's just about the smell and not the toxicity, you've also made comments elsewhere in this thread like "I have spent a long time with several different filaments and they all have quirks but the minute I exposed myself to a uv resin I thought nope this is way too toxic for me."... as if you can judge the actual toxicity of a substance (especially long term!) by how it makes you feel at the specific moment of exposure.
I was very surprised at the headline until I realized the community. I was afraid there would be a pic of some sweaty guy in a gym flexing his stinky abs.
It smells exactly like electrical wires melting, which I can't help finding slightly panic-inducing.
Wires or the insulation around said wires?
If you want to be technical, then yes, the insulation. My point is that it smells the same as when wires overheat...not normally a happy smell.
Sorry maybe that came across wrong I just wanted to clarify as I was going to ask generally what material the insulation is made of?? Maybe they’re in the similar plastic category?
Hard to tell in text whether something is a real question or a snark...and on Reddit, it's usually a snark...so no worries. Yes, insulation on many wires contains ABS.
I have never been with a person who had abs defined enough for me to smell.
It isn't overpowering; except for the fact it makes my eyes pain and gives headaches without a filter.
That seems to be the general consensus tbh, I find that I get neither of those symptoms. It’s just a very specific smell and when I start to smell I know that I should not be around it for health reasons. But it’s never physically affected me.
I had my printers in my office for almost two years without issue using some high stank resin without issue
I think I smoked so much weed over the years fumes does little to me but I've since set things up in the closet with some ventilation
I don't think Inhaling abs fumes is good so don't go huffing the shit but you won't die because you printed something off in the same room your sitting in. That being said my old roommate used to get a headache just by smelling the stuff
Yeah man I spent some time with a resin printer and the fumes were absolutely brutal for me
3D jake PETG smells so much worse than any ABS i've printed
I can’t speak to ABS but I can’t smell ASA at all. People say it still has that smell, just less than ABS but I got nothing.
I ordered a roll of filament by color, and didn't realize I had ordered ABS. When I was printing a test swatch, the only way I knew something was wrong was because of the smell. I needed to cross-vent my house to clear it out, it reeked up the whole place.
I’m not a fan of ABS, but most other filaments are fine/pleasant.
I also do resin, and have only ever found one that I absolutely hated the smell of
The smell of resin is okay for me but holy shit does it make my eyes water. Not for me
Have this with resin, I actually really like the smell of some of them, while my girlfriend books a ticket to the next town as soon as I open a bottle, Even worse with printing and cleaning.
“Ah you think ABS is your ally? You merely adopted the ABS. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see 1.75mm PLA until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but blinding!”
In a "gas station smells good" kinda of way? Yes
Haha exactly!
I worked in plastics throughout highschool to save up for college (extrusion and injection molding) and got so used to ABS fumes and fumes from even harsher plastics at industrial scale that ABS fumes from 3d printing is just a minor annoyance. Still probably not the best stuff to inhale long term, but compared to PVC or santoprene it's nothing.
I worked in a place that manufactured "cultured marble" and the smell of the resin burned my nose and my eyes the first time I walked out onto the factory floor.
But you get used to it, so the first time I smelled ABS printing it was mild compared to where I worked.
So yeah I didn't really notice the smell, thank goodness I had issues with warping and moved on to PLA.
Keep in mind, some abs smells worse than others. Creality’s black makes my whole apartment smell, whereas polymaker abs, i cant even smell it sitting next to the printer
Literally every plumber that does not practice fastidious and well above 'normal' employment of PPE will either initially, or over time, become quite desensitized to ABS and related plastic fumes- so its not JUST you. Imagine how difficult it would be to be a plumber if any time you needed to cut, weld, or glue ABS it made your eyes water and you were nauseous.
With that said I agree that the smell of 3d printing ABS is, to me, not super significant; enough to warn me that perhaps I don't want to be in proximity for the entire duration of the print, but its not staggering or eye-watering.
Wait till you learn how toxic it I to breathe
Wait till you learn that I prefaced the post with the fact that I am aware it’s toxic to breathe.
I have no problem with ABS. I often read the diatribes of people here about it and kind of shake my head. It's all I print with, and it's never been an issue for me or my family.
That said, I eventually built a sealed printer enclosure because I know what's in the fumes isn't good for you. My latest printer, a vzbot, only has acrylic panels so I'm going to setup a nevermore.
But I don't treat ABS fumes as a dire thing like some do.
Yeah I’m kinda the same, it’s never affected me physically but also asbestos didn’t give people lung problems until wayyy later so better safe than sorry. But a lot of people tend to talk about just how obvious the danger is off the shear bad smell, even though said smell, while noticeable, is not to me a smell so bad I immediately feel I am in danger
The asbestos affected their lungs immediately, it's the symptoms that didn't appear until later.
You need to be careful here. Everyone has a different nose and some people literally can't smell certain things the same way.
ABS releases styrene gas.
If you can smell this regularly in your work area you need to fix the ventilation in your room now.
I'm not trying to scare or scold here but you should not be smelling this in your work area.
Don't panic or argue or discuss, just ventilate properly.
I can tell you right now that anyone who prints ABS a lot and has good ventilation will still get a whiff of it occasionally when they go to take their print off the bed. Ventilation is crucial but the smell of it is kinda unavoidable in most cases
The thing you watch out for is getting accustomed to it. It easy because it is a light smell and not concentrated in many cases.
So it's the long term exposure to those subtle quantities over time that might be more of a problem.
If you're just catching a wiff during handling yeah that's normal.
Most people don't calculate or measure their airflow to ensure a reasonable number of air exchanges per hour, so 'ventilation' is not always actually as good as people think it is.
I worked with chemicals for a long time so l I can just look at a room and see what's needed for ventilation. A lot of people get that wrong.
ABS printing VOC's are toxic and can cause serious issues with prolonged exposure. Some people are sensitive to them, like me, and they become very ill from them. Just because you can tolerate or even enjoy a VOC does not mean it is not toxic.
Yep and I totally agree with you. Never said it wasn’t bad bc it didn’t affect me. Was just curious if I was the only that the smell didn’t send off an instant red flag like a lot of other people talk about.
First read of the title I thought you were going around the gym sniffing people’s belly.
“Mate, your abs are smelling great today!”