ASA rounds out the print-settings series most people work through after PLA, PETG and ABS, and it borrows more from ABS than from anything else on that list. What sets ASA apart is what happens after the print is done: parts that would yellow and go brittle after a season outdoors hold their color and strength in ASA for years, but only if the nozzle temperature, bed temperature and enclosure are sorted out first. This guide covers the temperature ranges ASA spools fall into, why the cooling fan should stay off instead of getting cranked up, print speed, how ASA’s warping stacks up against ABS’s, and the acetone vapor smoothing that makes ASA more than just a weather-resistant swap. For how ASA compares to other materials before you buy a spool, see the 3D printer filament types guide. HIPS shares this same ABS-like temperament almost exactly, including the warping and enclosure logic covered below, so the settings here carry over directly if a spool is on hand; see the HIPS filament guide for its own numbers and its second job as a dissolvable ABS support material.
Nozzle temperature: why ASA needs more heat than PLA or PETG
Prusa’s knowledge base lists 260°C as the recommended nozzle temperature for its Prusament ASA, on the high side of what most other brands quote. Polymaker’s wiki gives a wider window, 240°C to 280°C, suggesting you start at 250°C and adjust from there depending on the specific spool. Overture’s cheat sheet lands in a similar 240°C to 270°C range for its ASA line, and MatterHackers’ printing guide describes “around 250°C” as typical, with 5°C adjustments up or down if layers aren’t bonding or if you’re getting stringing. Put those four sources together and the honest answer is that ASA prints somewhere between 240°C and 280°C, with most spools happiest around 250°C to 260°C. Check the temperature printed on your spool before trusting any of these numbers outright, and if you’re pushing past 240°C, Polymaker notes that an all-metal hotend becomes necessary since PTFE-lined hotends start degrading at that point.
Bed temperature and adhesion
Prusa recommends 105°C for the first layer and 110°C for the rest, with 100°C as the floor below which adhesion gets unreliable. Polymaker’s range is close, 90°C to 110°C, and MatterHackers quotes “around 110°C” as its typical setting. Overture is the outlier here, listing 70°C to 95°C for its ASA filament, noticeably cooler than the other three. That spread is worth taking seriously rather than averaging away: if your bed tops out below 100°C, you can still get acceptable adhesion at the lower end of the range, but you’re working with less margin against warping. ASA sticks well to smooth or powder-coated PEI sheets without extra prep, according to Prusa; on glass or other bare surfaces, a glue stick or dedicated adhesive like Magigoo helps. A brim of a dozen or more loops is standard practice on anything bigger than a small bracket.
Cooling fan and enclosure: keeping ASA warm instead of cold
If you’ve already read the ABS print settings guide, this section will sound familiar, because the cooling advice for ASA is nearly identical. Polymaker says to reduce or disable the part cooling fan, Overture specifies 0% for the full print, and MatterHackers tells you outright to turn the layer cooling fan off. The reasoning is the same as with ABS: rapid cooling on a styrenic material creates internal stress between layers, and that stress is what pulls corners up off the bed. An enclosure addresses the same problem from the other direction, by keeping the whole part at a stable temperature instead of just the last layer printed. Overture recommends keeping the internal air at 35°C to 40°C, while Polymaker calls a 60°C chamber ideal for larger or more warp-prone geometry. Prusa’s fallback for printers without an enclosure is PrusaSlicer’s draft shield option, which builds a sacrificial wall around the model to blunt drafts, though it won’t match a real enclosure on big prints.
Print speed
Polymaker lists 35mm/s to 70mm/s for ASA, and Overture recommends 30mm/s to 50mm/s, which puts the two brands’ ranges mostly overlapping in the 35 to 50mm/s band. Slower speeds give each layer more time to bond to the one below it before the next layer goes down, which matters more for ASA than for PLA since you’re not relying on a cooling fan to lock the shape in place. If you’re printing tall, thin parts or sharp overhangs, dropping toward the bottom of that range tends to help more than raising the nozzle temperature does.
Warping compared to ABS
Prusa’s own material guide lists “significant warping” as ASA’s main disadvantage, right alongside the same enclosure requirement ABS needs. Polymaker’s side-by-side comparison gives some texture to that: ASA’s heat deflection temperature runs 86°C to 96°C against ABS’s 100°C to 110°C, and its notched impact resistance (180 J/m) sits a bit below ABS’s 200 J/m. In practice, most people printing both materials report ASA warping somewhat less than ABS on the same part, likely because the acrylate rubber phase in ASA absorbs some of the shrinkage stress that ABS’s butadiene component doesn’t handle as gracefully. That’s a real difference, but it’s a difference of degree, not of kind: you still want a heated bed near 100°C or above, a brim or raft on anything with sharp corners, and an enclosure once parts get larger than a few centimeters per side. If lifting corners are already a familiar problem from ABS, the fix ABS warping guide covers fixes that apply here almost without modification.
UV resistance and acetone vapor smoothing
The reason to reach for ASA instead of ABS in the first place is what happens to the part after it’s off the bed. Prusa, Polymaker and MatterHackers all describe the same trade: ASA holds its color and mechanical properties under UV exposure where ABS yellows and gets brittle within a season outdoors. That makes ASA the better pick for anything that lives outside, garden fixtures, automotive trim, signage, mounting brackets left on a windowsill. ASA shares ABS’s solubility in acetone, though, which means the same vapor-smoothing technique that works on ABS also works here: acetone fumes melt the outer surface of the print into a glossy, almost injection-molded finish, at the cost of some fine detail and sharp edges. It’s also useful for gluing ASA parts together with an acetone slurry rather than a separate adhesive. If you’re weighing ASA against a print-and-forget option for anything that has to survive outdoors, the PETG vs ASA comparison lays out that trade-off directly.
ASA settings checklist
- Nozzle temperature in the 240-280°C range, starting near 250-260°C and adjusting from the spool’s printed guidance.
- Bed temperature between 90°C and 110°C where your printer allows it; treat anything below 100°C as a compromise, not a target.
- Cooling fan off or nearly off for the whole print, not just the first layers.
- Enclosure in place for anything beyond small parts, ideally holding 35°C to 60°C internal air temperature.
- Print speed in the 35-50mm/s range, slower on tall or sharp-cornered geometry.
- Brim or raft on parts prone to corner lift, plus a draft shield if you’re printing without an enclosure.