Using PETG as a support material?
A friend of mine with a B***u printer says he uses PETG as a support material when printing in PLA. Apparently, PETG doesn't stick well to PLA, so it can work for this.
Has anyone tried using PETG for supports with the MMU3? The wipe tower might be problematic. Since PETG prints at a higher temp than PLA this might be problematic. Also, any PETG contaminating the PLA will weaken it, so extra long purges may be required.
RE: Using PETG as a support material?
Hey Dude -
So I've been trying PETG and Hips, because of similar temp. The issue I believe with material contamination is real, because I'm having structural integrity issues. I recently posted about this, and someone mentioned longer purge times. I haven't tried it yet, but will soon. Good Luck.
RE: Using PETG as a support material?
Here is how i did it using my mk3.9 with mmu3 printing in pla using petg as support:
First go to filament settings, we need to make two new filament profiles.
Pick Prusament pla, go to advanced and change "Purge volume multiplier" to 200% and save it with a new name.
Pick Prusament petg, change bed temp to 60 (both of them) and go to advanced and set "Purge volume multiplier" to 200% and save it with a new name.
(we need to save both as new profile since we need different settings on two slots at the same time)
Use the first pla profile on for example slot 1 and the other petg profile as support on slot 5
Print settings, starting from "0.2mm SPEED"
Go to Support material and make below changes:
(click image to see all settings)
Next go to Multiple extruders and change "Support material/raft/skirt extruder" to 5 and "Support material/raft interface extruder" to 5 (this is what defines where the support material is taken from)
Save as a new profile for future use.
Obviously you don't want any kind of "wipe to infill" enabled because that will mix pla with petg as infill.
Even with 200% purge multiplier (results in around 160 mm3 of material) the layer adhesion is still a little bit worse than just plain pla.
Also the whole support structure will be petg from the bed to make sure it stays in place, using petg for support only on interface layer would most likely not work very well.
This is what i have been experimenting with and works reasonably well.
RE: Using PETG as a support material?
I've been manually setting purge volume to 400mm^3 and have been having good success with that. I do this for PLA +PETG and for PETG +PLA
Other tips ...
- Set support > top contact z distance to 0 (soluable)
- Set support > interface pattern spacing to 0 (this is optional, but gets a smoother interface layer, makes the supported surfaces look great).
- Set support > Syncronize with object layers to on if not already
- Set the multiple extruders > support material and wipe tower extruders to be your primary plastic (you really don't want to mix those)
- If you haven't set top contact z distance to 0 already, you will likely get a warning about the wipe tower
- Set the multiple extruders > support material interface layer to be your secondary plastic
- This way, you may not have to deal with your secondary plastic sitting on the heat bed.
RE: Using PETG as a support material?
Thank you both for the recommendations.