vtecprinting

I like tweaking with the settings just because everyone's environment is different. Honestly, I find myself back at the default settings more often then not, but I'm a "learn-by-doing" kinda guy. And no, right out of the box the PVA did pretty well. But to be fair, the early prints I did were not very complex and didn't use that much PVA. It sounds like humidity is a pretty consistent answer across the board. I'll try some techniques for drying it out (and keeping it dry).

My bed temp is 60 degrees C and I'm using the glue stick provided with the printer for adhesion. Actually, the stick is almost out. Any suggestions for replacements?

Hmm, I'm sure I could rig something up in the fab shop. Do you suggest re-heating if there are long periods of time between prints? I've only used about 50% of the 4kg roll thus far in 2ish months.

My engineering team just recently purchased an Ultimaker 3+ and I'm running into some issues printing PVA. A lot of times the PVA is dragged across the print area, leading to support failures by the time the first layer of "real" material is printed on top. This usually occurs after a few good layers of printing, and the situation worsens as more layers are added. I've already increased retraction distances and avoid printed parts when travelling. I've also lowered the print temperature of the PVA to help mitigate some of the oozing when the core isn't being used. Additionally, I've tried the Prime Tower and slower print speeds/printing jerks, but I see no noticeable improvement. Now the humidity in the office fluctuates pretty badly, so that could be contributing, but I don't hear too many "pops" when the PVA is extruding. The situation seems to be getting slightly worse as time goes on. In my most recent print, the PVA structure got very tangled, causing the Nylon layers to be pretty terrible at those interaction points. Attached are a few pictures of the tangled mess. Usually it's not this bad. I'm monitoring the temperature inside with a thermocouple and that seems to be pretty consistent. This occurs with PLA and with Nylon.