Breakaway seems to work well - are there any downsides?

[FalmouthLouis 3]

I'm very impressed with Breakaway. I've done around 10 days of intensive printing of items which have all needed support. I would say that Breakaway has indeed come away 95% completely at the first attempt, while the remaining 5% has pretty well all come away with a bit of fine tweezer work. In about a third of the cases, some strands still get left which need some very careful work to remove. Compared with PVA, Breakaway is a joy to use. .... and it's a vast improvement on what you can hope to get with scaffolding produced by a single nozzle machine.

 

There have been a couple of times when Breakaway did not bind cleanly to the print bed when starting a new job immediately following the removal of the previous one. I ended up doing a material change and then clipping off 10 cm or so of the Breakaway filament before re-feeding it into the system. This worked for me, though I don't know if there's any genuine rationale behind my "solution".

 

Obviously, PVA is still going to be needed when handling sensitive internal structures and, since removing Breakaway involves a certain amount of force, I wouldn't want to use if when supporting particularly delicate structures.

 

Having been so positive about Breakaway, are there problems around it? Will it continue to perform well after sitting around for some months?

[RudydG 62]

I have the same experience, joy to use for parts which are strong enough and do not need the 100% finishing. Pva with support roof + ironing is better, but not easy to use, more critical in humidity, and a lot of time lost for removing the stuff.

[SandervG 1,521]

Hi, it looks like you have a good understanding of when to use PVA and when to use the BreakAway material. 

I don't think there are any noticeable drawbacks in having it sit around, no more than regular PLA or your other build materials. 

 

Can you show some of the surface quality you got when removing your Break away material? Did you use a regular plier to pull it off?

[FalmouthLouis 3]

SandervG: I've just started a three day print involving lots of Breakaway, so I will have lots to report back on after that. It's of a bird, perching on a book lectern, looking down. 15 cm high. It will be using nearly 30 cm of Breakaway.

 

I don't have the photos you want, but it seems to leave flat surfaces spotless. Where I did have a few issues was with an irregular egg-style design which I printed on an end. Breakaway supported the print absolutely solidly, but when I came to break the support away, I was left with strands of Breakaway around the bottom of the print which, though not massively important,were quite tricky to clear. Towards the end, I was having to use tweezers to pull away individual strands.

 

For some jobs, I've been able to clear Breakaway just by using my hands, fingers and occasionally finger nails. After that, I've pliers supplemented by tweezers.

 

If photos will help, I'll post some once I've finished the three-day print.

[SandervG 1,521]

Thanks! I would be curious to see how it works for you ?

Was it this particular egg-shaped print that was more difficult to remove, or do you have any idea if it is sphere-shapes in general which are more difficult to clean?

 

If you can remove it by hands that sounds very easy, and much faster than PVA too. 

[FalmouthLouis 3]

The print eventually took three and a half days. I had to slow it down because the Prime Tower got knocked over about half way through the job leaving some messy attempts to print where the tower should have been.

 

Otherwise, all went very well. Breakaway continued to print clearly right to the end, and the design called for a lot of support. See the first image below. Using the tools in the fifth image, it took me 20 minutes to clear the model of Breakaway. It involved quite a lot of work with pliers and I had to use quite a lot of force, but that was mostly to do with cutting/crushing the material into manageable sizes. I had quite deliberately toughned the walls of the model, but I didn't sense that I was ever in danger of damaging it. The beak and head of the bird was heavily encased in Breakaway. Once I had cleared the bulk of the support material away, it was relatively easy to carefully clip the remaining material away. The second and third pictures show that the surface of the model ended up in very decent condition.

 

I shudder to think how long it would have taken to dissolve the equivalent amount of PVA

 

My verdict is that Breakaway performed admirably, but I wouldn't want to use it on particularly delicate structures or ones involving complicated internal designs.

 

 

[SandervG 1,521]

Hi @FalmouthLouis , thanks for the update! Very interesting to see. When there is such a large structure BreakAway material supporting a part like the head, do you try to just break a part of it using pliers or what do you experience works best to remove it? I can imagine a tool to cut it in half could also work, perhaps in a slightly more controlling fashion than breaking it off. But perhaps I'm completely wrong ?

 

In any case, the result looks really impressive! What did you print the bird for?

[FalmouthLouis 3]

I've now had a bad experience with Breakaway supporting a relatively delicate structure. The item below was printed in Polycarbonate, but had relatively thin walls. I was probably too cautious and printed this with scaffolding both inside and outside the structure. As a result the final print was pretty well enclosed with Breakaway. I left if for a week before I started the clean up, which may have allowed the Breakaway to harden more than if I had tried this right after printing. On the right below, you will see the damage I did as I tore Breakaway off the print. if you compare the picture on the right with the picture on the left, where I was more successful, you can see how the dividing columns between the circular openings got broken away. What you also don't see from these pictures is that the structure ultimately sheared horizontally along a mid line, as a result of some of the force I had to use.

 

Towards the last third of this tidy-up I was starting to refine my techniques, and could probably have reduced the damage I did.

 

However, this has just convinced me that soluble PVA may still have its uses when I need to support relatively fragile structures.

 

 

[Dim3nsioneer 557]

atm PC+Breakaway is experimental because the two materials stick really well to each other. But we might soon see something in Cura (thx to @smartavionics) which improves that situation.

[kmanstudios 1,120]

That bird was really nice looking! ?

[lrodriguez 32]

On 7/18/2018 at 9:56 AM, FalmouthLouis said:

I've now had a bad experience with Breakaway supporting a relatively delicate structure. The item below was printed in Polycarbonate, but had relatively thin walls. I was probably too cautious and printed this with scaffolding both inside and outside the structure. As a result the final print was pretty well enclosed with Breakaway. I left if for a week before I started the clean up, which may have allowed the Breakaway to harden more than if I had tried this right after printing. On the right below, you will see the damage I did as I tore Breakaway off the print. if you compare the picture on the right with the picture on the left, where I was more successful, you can see how the dividing columns between the circular openings got broken away. What you also don't see from these pictures is that the structure ultimately sheared horizontally along a mid line, as a result of some of the force I had to use.

 

Towards the last third of this tidy-up I was starting to refine my techniques, and could probably have reduced the damage I did.

 

However, this has just convinced me that soluble PVA may still have its uses when I need to support relatively fragile structures.

 

 

 

Have you looked into using support ONLY for the Support Interface? The support is printed with your main material. It saves your support material consumption, and money!

 

 

[Julius 1]

HI All, I'm new in 3D printing. I use mainly to make prototypes for my compagny.

 

I started using Breakaway support with ABS 2 weeks ago. (all from Ultimaker filaments) I use Cura to make the splicing. All went well until I had to make an elevated structure. The Support (in Breakaway) is very hard to remove on the 2 or 3 last layer (closer to the parts). It's look like it fuse with ABS

 

I try tweeser but it's almost inaffective. So I'm looking to modify support printing...but I don't know were to change support settup, and what set-up should I change...

 

Thanks you for your help

[FalmouthLouis 3]

Further experiences with Breakaway:

 

It's dangerous to use as a support for relatively fragile structures. However careful you are, some force is needed to separate Breakaway from what it's supporting. For 90% of print challenges, this is not an issue, but as walls get thinner, the problems increase.

 

Secondly, it doesn't like crevices - even quite wide ones. You can get left with Breakaway layers at the bottom of the crevice where you can't get leverage even with fine pliers or tweezers. At that point you are stymied because you can't wash the material away a la PVA.

 

I had a messy experience printing some scanned earphones where I used Breakaway to support CPE. It took me five hours to get the attached rather scruffy results on the underside, the top surface being fine. I sort of suspect that the further away one gets from supporting PLA, the more temperamental Breakaway becomes.