Printing with PVA

[Daid 306]

We've had little luck with PVA here. But, HIPS on the other hand seems to print a lot easier, and does not burn. Add added plus, it's also cheaper and can be used as normal print material, and seems to resemble a bit in between of PLA and ABS (on the first glance)

Disadvantage is that you have to dissolve it in Limonene.

 

[codemaven 0]

Daid,

Have you been able to find Limonene in The Netherlands? I can't seem to find it anywhere here in the UK.... Even Acetone is quite hard to come by here...

Cheers,

Troy.

 

[am001 0]

Acetone is about £6 delivered for a litre on ebay.co.uk. I've never found it difficult to get here. Fibreglassing supliers carry it very cheap too as it is used in quantity in that industry.

d-limonene is also on ebay at a bit more cost, around £15 per litre. That would start to get expensive if you are having to ue enough to fill a container that your part fits in and then throw it away afterwards...

 

[Daid 306]

Acetone is available at most DIY shops in the Netherlands.

We got some stuff containing limonene in some nature shop or something. Not sure what product, only 1 person did a few first tests with it yet. We waiting for more HIPS to scale up the testing.

 

[codemaven 0]

I will have another look on e-bay for Limonene, but last I looked I couldn't find any locally... All of the offers for it on Ebay were from other countries and willing to ship to the UK at outrageous cost. As for Acetone.... Back in Canada you can buy it at any DIY shop, or department store like Canadian Tire, Walmart, etc... But here in the UK the only place I've been able to find it is e-bay... I was really surprised that neither Robert Dyas and Wickes carry it.

Cheers,

Troy.

 

[jumpmobile 0]

Have found something on Limonene:

http://www.amazon.com/Greensense-Citrus-d-limonene-Natural-Cleaner/dp/B00025H2GI/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1384700835&sr=8-11&keywords=D-limonene

20€ per quart.

(I haven't heard of a quart but it seems to be more than a litre.)

First thing i'd do is to try how far you can dilute limonene without loosing its capability to dissolve HIPS.

Edit:

I have also found a video on how to extract small amounts of d-Limonen out of orange rind.

Ratio was:

2 grams of rind => 0.125ml D-Limonen (unknown purity)

So for 1 Litre you'll need about 16 kg of orange rind.

Still fun to know.

 

[Daid 306]

Small update on the HIPS printing. According to our filament supplier printing with HIPS is toxic. And the production process of HIPS filament uses a lot of nasty chemicals, which in turn is bad for the environment.

The good news is that they are trying to produce a water-soluble, environmental friendly, easy printable material. Which does not burn up like PVA does.

(I was working on dual-extrusion updates. I have an updated Cura which is better at printing support material with dual-extrusion. As well as a wipe/prime tower and ooze-shield implementation. It is a bit delayed due to some UM2 problems. But it is high on our list to improve dual-material printing)

 

[codemaven 0]

Hi JumpMobile,

that Amazon link is in the US, I don't think they ship that to the UK and if they do it will be very expensive... A quart is a quarter of a US Gallon.

Cheers,

Troy.

 

Have found something on Limonene:

http://www.amazon.com/Greensense-Citrus-d-limonene-Natural-Cleaner/dp/B00025H2GI/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1384700835&sr=8-11&keywords=D-limonene

20€ per quart.

(I haven't heard of a quart but it seems to be more than a litre.)

 

[jumpmobile 0]

Daid:

How is HIPS toxic? Could you tell us more?

I always thought it was FDA compliant and safe for food processing... ?

http://www.plasticsintl.com/datasheets/Polystyrene.pdf

 

[drayson 75]

....

The good news is that they are trying to produce a water-soluble, environmental friendly, easy printable material. Which does not burn up like PVA does.

.....

 

Hi Daid,

are there any news about the PVA-like material?

I´m asking because I ordered a second extruder a few minutes ago :-)

 

[Dim3nsioneer 557]

I just read somewhere that PVA should be printed without cooling (I guess this means fan off). Is that true? What's the issue with cooling and PVA?

 

[drayson 75]

I have not tried PVA up to now as my second print head makes troubles...

Could anybody else chare his experiance with the cooling thing...?

 

[burki 1]

I have not tried printing PVA with fan off. So far my prints with PVA support material were all printed with pretty much standard setting, including the fan.

Needless to say the prints were okay.

Will try if anything noticeably changes with the fan off and let you know though.

 

[Dim3nsioneer 557]

I have not tried printing PVA with fan off. So far my prints with PVA support material were all printed with pretty much standard setting, including the fan.

Needless to say the prints were okay.

Will try if anything noticeably changes with the fan off and let you know though.

 

Would you mind to disclose your PVA source? You might have it exactly from the place where I read about the non-fan-thing...

 

[burki 1]

Dim3nsioneer,i got my PVA from Mexhibit. They don't say anything about no fan, though.

But mind you: I use it for printing support material. I really don' t care if the results look good, they only need to stay in place.

Maybe it helps you to know that i normally print PVA at 200°C for .1 and .2 mm layers.

i've made some 20 prints with PVA so far. They were all technical components, with sizes beween something like 20*20*20 to maybe 40*40*40 mm.

I need to do a lot more tests to figure out really good settings, but since i normally need to manually clean and file my mechanical parts that i print anyway, i never bothered too much with the looks.

Hope that helps you a bit?

 

[Dim3nsioneer 557]

Yes, it does. Thxs! :smile:

 

[ritzenthaler-fabrice 0]

http://www.makershop.fr/