dandeluca

I am updating this post. I finally fixed the PVA issue. I washed the PEI build plate with some dawn and water. This despite the plate having "DO NOT WASH WITH WATER" written on it. The PVA could finally adhere properly. Hopefully I can just stick to Isopropyl Alcohol from now on.

I did request a material station for these reasons, but it was not in the budget. (At least we can add it in the future) This is a school environment and it's difficult to tinker with things in front of 25 preteens. Our old Stratasys printer reliably printed for 10 years without much intervention.

I am going to dry this filament out before storage. I am still not convinced the PVA is printing 'right' but I have been playing around with Cura settings for support and I think I see how to get better results. PVA really failed where it printed on top of the PLA, it did best when it was building on itself or off the build plate. There are some setting you can make to encourage the latter.

Strangely when I came in this morning the machine did not show an error. It was simply paused. I pressed play and it started back up. Idk if a staff member somehow paused it accidentally or what. Unfortunately I requested the UlitiMaker material handling station and we did not have the budget for it, maybe next year. Right now the print is continuing. The PVA filling the void on the left looks perfect, the PVA on the front is still a bit of a mess, but getting better? I am ordering some desiccant on my own dime so I can store that roll properly when this print finally finishes.

The humidly of the room is low (under 30%) in the winter and but the spool has been out for several days. The printer was left running at work, but I can see it stopped with an error, not sure why it stopped though. I have a PO in for some new spools of PVA and a drying solution. It interesting that you say how PVA does not stick to PLA. I noticed that Cura left some 'cut outs' on the brim and I wondered why. From what you say it must be for the PVA to stick directly to the bed, however it did not adhere to the print bed well either. I think my next step is going to be to clean everything, dry out the PVA and try again. I can deal with a little bit of stringiness, but if the prints won't finish thats going to be a problem.

So we just got a new S7 printer and immediately out of the box starting having trouble with the PVA support material. Out of the bag it was very brittle and broke in the boden tube. after clearing that we got the printer up and running, extruder 1 with the Tough PLA seems to working perfectly, but extruder 2 with the PVA support material is stringy with poor adhesion and print quality. Is this normal? It seems like the PVA is not retracting correctly or perhaps there is some other issue. Any advice or experience is appreciated.