Is there a better way to remove PVA?

[RGordon87 0]

Hi. I just received my Ultimaker 3 yesterday and I set it up last night. I created a part that has PLA and PVA support. I'm sitting it in a bath of hot water and it just gets gooey. Is there a better way to remove the support material? I stuck in the bath almost 3 hours ago and there's still a lot left. I'm at work. Should I get a fish tank with a heater in it to keep the water warm? There isn't a pressure washer here so I can't do that. There's got to be a better way right?

Thanks in advance.

Rachel

[Tomhe 21]

Hi Rachel, welcome to the forum!

Removing PVA can indeed be messy. I wouldn't use a heater for PLA-PVA prints, as PLA will start to deform at temperatures above 35C. You can speed up the dissolving a little bit by heating to ~30C, but I think it would be more useful to get a little aquarium pump. A 10 euro aquarium pump will make the water flow enough to speed up the PVA dissolving drastically. Especially if you change the water often enough (don't let the water become cloudy!).

My setup here is a 20 liter waste bin with a simple pump, and small prints can be cleaned within a few hours. All my normal prints are clean overnight, as long as the PVA parts don't float above the water...

[gr5 2,271]

I used to use a pump but not anymore. I just leave it overnight and the next day there is tremendous progress. Sometimes still not done if there are deep cracks.

[ultiarjan 1,223]

To keep the part under I use a hook made out of a paperclip, a piece of string, and some old metal parts for weight ..... you can picture it I guess.

adding some heat does help, to do it in a controlled way I use this thing, but obviously not as cheap as a simple pump.

https://anovaculinary.com/

[RudydG 62]

The Ultimaker pva is sticky, even after some hours in the water. But it also sticks well to the parts during printing.

I also used other makerfille pva, easier tot remove, but it was more difficult to print due to less adhesion to pla.

[meduza 191]

Our setup is a 30 liter aquarium, with a Eheim Compact 1000 (1000L/h) aquarium pump with a bent piece of tubing to create a circular flow in the tank, and a Eheim 75W heater set to 34 degrees. It helps _a lot_ with dissolving the PVA to have some heat and a lot of circulation.

[Sdivad 0]

PVA is heavier than water and settles to the bottom, PLA is lighter than water and floats to the top. After a print, I suspend the printed model and build plate upside down and just under the water line, in a bin just a little larger than the build plate. The build plate acts like a ceiling that holds the model under the water line until all PVA is disolved. Models extract easy if you let gravity do the work, and without the need for circulating water that can damage a delicate model.

[jirodriguez72 19]

Buy a set of dental picks off of Amazon (~$10), after about 4 hours scrape as much of the PVA off as you can then put it back in the water, rinse and repeat that process.

[dsp 20]

after 5 to 10min using flowing tap water it gets softer and you can break most of if you are to late just leave it over night, 

Be carefull with the buildplate methode of sdivad if your model is thin. the build plate is quite heavy and can deform the print.