[Printing a Nylon part with dissolvable PVA as support material]

What you describe by the way sounds like pva.  You soak it in water for 10 hours and it gets very very soft.  And you can just pull it apart like snot.

Definitely not PVA. The actual PVA dissolves and pulls apart like snot. My "nylon" holds together but just becomes very soft, bendable, and seems to lose most its strength properties. Doesn't completely fall apart however.

[Printing a Nylon part with dissolvable PVA as support material]

Nylon and ABS are a whole level harder to work with than PLA.  It took me about 100 prints to feel really comfortable with PLA and then another 100 to feel comfortable with ABS.  I'm still not comfortable with Nylon.

I have printed nylon with pva support and that works very well.  Even better than pla with pva support.  I soaked the part for about 24 hours and it did not affect the nylon in a bad way at all.  I did not dry the nylon in an oven or anything.  Besides it only takes a day or so to reabsorb water from the air.

I have no idea what you mean about the nylon getting "soft and weak".  Was it in heavy usage?  Did you use it for a gear or something?  Nylon is much more flexible than PLA or ABS.  If you use it to make say a link in a chain that is a good thing as it distributes the forces better and makes it as strong as hell.  Much stronger than a chain link made with PLA or ABS.  That is not so good for say a quadcopter arm or a gear.  Or in uses where it gets above 90C due to friction (even if only the thin skin surface of the part gets to 90C it's a problem eventually).

PLA should be stronger than ABS for most cases (it's complicated).  The main problem with PLA is not strength but that it can't handle > 50C very well.  If you need higher temp but want a material almost as easy to print as PLA then go with nGen.

If you want something you can drive a truck over, then nylon is best.  It is soft so it will just flex and return to normal after. No damage done.  You can drop nylon parts off a tall building and they probably won't get damaged when they hit rock.  Not so true with ABS or PLA.

For warping of ABS I can definitely help you there but I recommend staying away from ABS.  Fixing the warping issue is easy.  Making it as strong as PLA is hard.  Very tricky.  In fact you will have to do some destructive testing until you know that your ABS is bonding properly.  There's no other way to tell.  With PLA it always bonds properly.

First of all, thank you for your detailed response. The part I am trying to print from Nylon is an interface between a linear screw actuator carraige and light load of less than 1lb. I will try to upload my solidworks model or .stl file when I am back in the office tomorrow.

I printed two of these pieces. The first one failed 80% of the way due to pva not extruding. The second one I got the PVA to properly extrude and it came out well. I soaked the second/completed print in water to dissolve the pla (probably a week ago). Today I was messing with the actuator and noticed the nylon actuator interface piece was extremely weak. Flimsy, very soft, and bendable to the point I broke it pushing on it pretty lightly. No way this would have happened right off the print. I compared it to the failed piece which was nearby, and it was a world of a difference. The failed (non-soaked piece) was still hard as a rock and not bendable or flimsy.

The piece in use was in the same enviroment as the failed print, with very little usage/wear on the completed print. Only difference was that I soaked it in water.

I then came across another piece which I soaked the previous night (nylon with pva support, no production usage) and it seemed "swollen" and distorted in every direction. The piece looked nothing like when it finished printing the day before. Also noticeably softer/weaker.

I was very suprised I could not find more info on this topic, but it seems most people dont have this problem? Perhaps the industrial water I am soaking the nylon in contains a chemical that affects it?

I am at a loss as to what is going on. FYI I am using an Ultimaker 3+ Extended with Ultimaker spools.

Thanks again.

Taylor

[Printing a Nylon part with dissolvable PVA as support material]

Hello,

I am new to printing with Nylon, but I heard it is best/strongest for production parts, so I am testing it out. I am trying to use PVA as a support material and then dissolve it away afterwards. However, Nylon is hydroscopic so I am having issues. At first, the PVA dissolved away fine and the print worked well. After a few days, the nylon (which I now assume had water absorbed internally still) became very soft and weak and broke very easily.

My question is, if I want to use Nylon with a PVA support material, can I soak the print in water, and then dry in it an oven right after and not lose any strength? Or is it a case of Nylon never having the same strength after soaking it in water, therefore making Nylon and PVA an incompatible print combination.

ABS warps a bit too much for some of the parts I am using. PLA seems a bit too weak. I also have CPE, but my understanding is that CPE is used more for high temp applications.

Thanks for any advice or tips in advance!

Taylor