Yes. ABS is one of the materials this site's data marks required rather than helpful, and that word is doing real work.
Small ABS parts will sometimes print on an open frame. Anything with a large footprint, a tall thin section or a long flat face will not, and the failure is not marginal — corners lift off the plate or the part cracks through a layer partway up.
The mechanism, in one paragraph
ABS contracts 0.4 to 0.8% as it cools, two to four times PLA's contraction. On an open machine, each new layer cools in room air while the layers below are still held flat by a hot plate. The upper material tries to shrink and the lower material will not let it, so the stress goes somewhere: either the bond to the bed fails, or a layer interface does.
Warm, still chamber air slows the cooling gradient enough that the stress stays below both of those thresholds. That is all an enclosure does, and it is enough.
What counts as an enclosure
Less than people think. It needs to hold warm air still. It does not need a heater, a filter, or to be sold as an accessory — plenty of successful ABS printing happens inside acrylic boxes, IKEA cabinets and cardboard.
What it does need is a door that closes and a position away from draughts. A machine with an open front, or one under an air conditioning vent, has an enclosure in name only.
Two settings that go with it
- Turn part cooling down or off. Every instinct from PLA is wrong here; the fan is fighting the enclosure.
- Let the part cool inside. Opening the door onto a hot finished part produces exactly the thermal gradient you spent the whole print avoiding, and large parts crack after printing for this reason.
The ventilation problem an enclosure creates
ABS emits styrene and ultrafine particles. An enclosure concentrates them, which is fine while it is closed and less fine when you open it.
Vent the room, or use a filtered or extracted enclosure for a machine that runs where people sit. This is the practical reason a lot of people move to ASA outdoors and PETG indoors rather than solving it.
Tell the material selector that your machine is open-frame and it removes fifteen materials outright, ABS among them — a quick way to see what an enclosure is actually buying you. The enclosures guide covers the chamber itself, and ABS's stored temperatures, shrinkage band and drying schedule live on its own page.