Fnord

The hardware should not be "defective by design", which then forces end-users to have to buy or build weird custom add-ons or have to treat the filament like a delicate fragile snowflake. Why does the device not ship with a sealed, gasketed reel enclosure designed to keep moisture away from the PVA reel? Hanging PVA on the back as designed is ridiculous for anywhere on the planet that it rains or is foggy occasionally, as any high humidity rapidly ruins PVA. Ink cartridges commonly use extremely long thin labyrinth breather tubes to slow the loss of moisture as ink is used. A sealed reel enclosure shipped with the machine could use a labyrinth breather tube to slow the absorption of moisture as the media feeds out. It should be standard procedure to open a sealed PVA reel package, put the reel in the enclosure and then take a large silica bag out of the reel packaging and put the silica bag in the enclosure with the reel. Why isn't the entire PVA filament path made as air-tight as possible from a sealed reel enclosure, to a motorized feeder with an airtight gasketed cover enclosing it, to a feed tube gasketed to the printhead heater, so that PVA can be left installed at all times and it still works, even in a high humidity environment? But no, we have to instead go through all sorts of extra special handling steps and build additional homemade filament storage or entire-device dry-box enclosures that should have shipped with the hardware as standard.

I hate to say it, but I screwed up. I bought the Ultimaker dual extrusion marketing hype and even got our school to spend its very limited technology funds on the Ultimaker 3 Extended. I am posting this anonymously because I don't want the blame for wasting thousands of dollars on this joke of a technology to come back to haunt me. The PVA support material and the "dual-head extruder technology" HAS NEVER WORKED PROPERLY as the marketing claims. The PVA support material is extremely difficult to work with. It MUST stay absolutely dry or you will have problems. If you live in any part of the world other than the Sahara desert, the PVA is going to start absorbing moisture out of the air the instant you open the filament packaging, and the PVA is going to fail to work properly. Your printed material will have what looks like pieces of cotton candy all over the place, and the PVA extruder will randomly plug up in the middle of a job and fail to support the workpiece. We bought the Ultimaker 3 Extended to print some really large and complex engineering models and show what 3D printing can do, but in fact I have never been able to get the PVA to work long enough to produce a column more than about 5-10 cm tall before the PVA head plugs up and the print fails, even with the optional PVA extruder column that forcibly wastes PVA by printing a column of useless material for each layer. After being exposed to the open air in an air-conditioned classroom for about 3 months, the PVA absorbs so much moisture that it becomes soft and bendy like aldente pasta. And of course by this point the PVA is completely useless for printing as the moisture will make the printhead spit, bubble, and burn. We are out thousands of dollars for a hyped-up 3D printer and its "water dissolving" support material that are essentially completely useless, because we can't run the 3D printer and/or store it in an absolute zero humidity environment at all times. Our fault apparently. Or maybe we're "just not using it enough", which apparently means going through a full roll of PVA in a day or so, and then discarding what's left. Small printing projects spread out over many days to weeks that barely uses any PVA, will almost guarantee the reel of PVA sitting on the back of the printer is going to absorb moisture and not work properly. If it were possible I would demand a refund for a lemon of a product that cannot do what the marketing videos claim, unless you take extreme measures to run it in an absolute zero humidity working environment. But the thing is about two years old now, so..