I'm at the start of same journey you took with my Ender 3 S1, I bough the Creality Sonic pad but haven't installed it yet. What other changes did you make to print ABS, any recommendations?
With Ender 3's, you have the option of simple tent enclosures, they're ugly, but work well. This will help keep the enclosure warm, improving the reliability of ABS printing by both reducing warping (although this also comes down to the quality of filament) and improving bed adhesion.
The activated carbon filter will keep the fumes under control. I use a Bentobox filter, which uses both activated carbon and a HEPA filter, but Nevermore filters are also very popular.
That said, if you haven't bought it already, I'd recommend considering ASA instead of ABS. I recently tried ASA for the first time, and it is so much more of a pleasant experience compared to ABS, haven't seen any warping yet and produces far less fumes.
My Trident has a Nevermore V5 Duo for VOCs only. I picked up a nice big Honeywell air clearer with a monster HEPA filter in it that turns over the air like crazy to deal with microparticles. As a bonus, I can use the Honeywell for those times like forest fire season when the air quality is bad.
> They claim that around 90% of particles sized 0.3 microns are larger [for a MERV] are eliminated in a single pass. That’s good, but not totally reassuring. The question is, does it remove 99% in two passes? If 90% of the particles in the ambient air were large and the filter only catches large particles, then additional passes would never get rid of the most dangerous small particles. This is why I trust HEPA filters a bit more: since they remove almost all particles in one pass, I’m confident they should remove almost all particles eventually.
Also, there is the idea that HEPA filters act like a sieve. They don't. This article from the same guy is a great read [1]. So basically, multiple passes for the win.
> Air filters easily catch both large and small particles. It’s the intermediate regime where things are hard. The size where the filter performs worst is called the Most Penetrating Particle Size (MPPS). Typically this is around 0.15 microns.
[0] https://dynomight.net/2020/12/15/some-real-data-on-a-DIY-box...
The big change is the enclosure, doesn't have to be fancy, mine is a couple of IKEA LACK tables with some acrylic duct taped on and a door duct- taped on only one side.
I upgraded from Marlin to Kipper and tuned for resonance which lets you achieve much better speeds and quality than a stock E3v2
- if applicable, swap the default, white Bowden tube by one that's heat resistant (Capricorn comes often as a recommendation), that's for your health
- get a PEI sheet, ABS will have a tendency to detach/warp over long prints that PEI mitigates slightly
- draft being the main cause for warping and failed/dimensionally inaccurate ABS prints, you need an enclosure. A cardboard box is enough, but then you need to refrain from looking inside (which is difficult for complex and long prints), having a transparent side could help
- pre-hear enclosed, give it time, and tune your z offset accordingly
- dry your filament
Capricorn makes great bowden tubes, but even they're quite explicit about the risks of using any PTFE tubing--theirs included--inside a hot end at ABS temperatures.[0]
The health risks come from toxic PTFE off-gassing above the normal temperatures for PLA (though it starts off-gassing in small amounts at around 200°C). It's nasty shit, and you don't want to be breathing it in. Heat resistant bowden tubing doesn't do anything about that off-gassing; it's just meant to help mitigate deformation of the tubing at higher temperatures.
You're infinitely better off just tossing the PTFE-lined hot end and upgrading to an all-metal one. That anyone--cough, cough Creality and others in the inexpensive intro printer market--is shipping them on any of their printers in 2023 is just insane.
When everything is working right there should be no difference, but when things go wrong, not having plastic stuck to the heat break makes it more likely that a beginner can fix their own problem.