is there a New Era of Water soluble Supports ???
Hey guys,
Im wondering if any of you has experience with water soluble filaments for engineering filaments like ABS.
I would like to print a model with soluble supports out of ABS with really fine structures. I tried HIPS as supportmaterial but i can´t get it completely dissolved and there stays always some kind of slime on the model. So that during the removal of the slime, parts of the model break apart. I also have the feeling that the Limonene which dissolves the HIPS weakens the bonding between the ABS layers.
The problem with normal PVA is that the nozzle temperature of ABS is to high for PVA so that the ABS kind of melts threw the PVA supports.
I just found the filament Infinite AquaSys 120which is water soluble and should compatible with ABS in accordance to the producer.
I also found Polydissolve S2 wich is also soluble in water but needs some changes in the PH value to solute it.
Despite the first articles i found about these materials where one year old, I was not able to find some kind of reviews about these Materials. Because they are pretty expensive (~200€ per kg) i wanted to ask you guys if you have tried one of these and can share your experiences.
Or you might even have a better and cheaper idea for my support problem.
I am using a Prusa i3 with MMU2S
Kind regards
minki
RE: is there a New Era of Water soluble Supports ???
Hello minki,
nice title, I had the same thought recently. There are at least two more options availaible, https://colorfabb.com/colorfabb-dpa-100 and https://vxl3d.com/soluble-support-material-2/?lang=en . Like Polydissolve S2, these need to be dissolved in an alkaline solution, much like the Makerbot SR30. I am having good success in dissolving the DPA-100 with a sous vide bath like https://www.amazon.de/Steba-Sous-Vide-Garer-Volumen-Pumpenleistung/dp/B00NMD2S2K . I guess the 3DGence ESM-10 is also something similar. They even use it with PEEK.
Personally, I had tons of trouble with plain water solubles due to jamming, bubbling and carbonization. Almost did not want to give it another try. Does not really matter if its PVOH (PVA) or BVOH. Aquasys 120 seems to be a BVOH mixed with sugar. But the DPA-100 was a breeze to work with. Printed good with ABS parameters straight from the box. Never any jams and it seems to me, the material is less hygroscopic. So far, I have tried it with ABS, ASA and TPE and it works perfectly. Only downside is you need to have the correct removal agent to dissolve it and it does not dissolve in plain water. Going to try with PA and PETG next.
What I dont know is, how well this is going to work with a setup like MMU. I have a Felix printer here with two heads. Only use my Prusa with one material.
Kind regards,
Antony
RE: is there a New Era of Water soluble Supports ???
Get a dual hotend printer and print with something like ABS/PLA + PETG
https://www.antalife.com/2020/07/project-just-how-multi-material-is.html
www.antalife.com
aquasys120
Does not work well with the MMU2S out of the box.
Having recently tamed the MMU finally, I decided to try solubles again. PVA and BVOH work without a hitch. I had bought a spool of aquasys120 thinking it would be all good. It probably is in a proper multi extruder printer. I can even print a an xyz calibration cube out of it.
But because there is no profile for it in PS, even 2.4.0 master builds, you basically have to try different settings. I started this process last night and it jammed 3 times so I called it. earlier in the day I did both pva and bvoh prints without issue. I may end up chucking the spool but it's in the dryer now(75 deg per the data-sheet for it) and maybe this evening I'll try it again.
still no luck with the aquasys120
I created a .3mf with a simple test print that I'm going to zip up and send to the support folks at infinite materials, they seemed willing to try to figure out needs to be set in order to get the stuff to behave. Given the auqasys120 is a bit more rigid than PVA or BVOH I have a feeling that doesn't help things given how the MMU2S works. For now I would recommend anyone considering the aquasys120 should hold off since the PrimaSelect PVA+ and Verbatim BVOH work fine. the BVOH in particular works fine with both PLA and PETG. The time it takes to switch filaments gives the time nozzle enough time to come to temp for the two materials.