Printing with Verbatim BVOH vs PVA

The place to discuss filament...
Post Reply
Explorer74
Posts: 17
Joined: Sat Aug 26, 2017 5:02 pm

Printing with Verbatim BVOH vs PVA

Post by Explorer74 » Tue Dec 19, 2017 3:51 pm

I recently got some of the new Verbatim BVOH filament. This is like PVA, dissolves in water. So it is designed for support structure. Let me say off the top, I LOVE this stuff :-) First the good news. BVOH prints like PLA, not PVA. There is no stringyness or oozing. It is rigid like PLA. With PVA I had to reduce temperature on the idle extruder to try to keep all the filament from leaking out of the nozzle while it is waiting. This made for very long print times and it was still a mess. With BVOH you print just like you would with two color PLA. I printed the StarBall on my MakerGear M3 Dual Independent printer at 200 C with a bed temp of 70 C for both the PLA and the BVOH. There was practically no oozing from the BVOH. In fact it oozed less than the PLA. The StarBall is a hollow ball made up of interlocked starfish. The internal support requires a dissoluble support. BVOH worked perfectly for this. Drop the print in warm water and a few hours later the BVOH is gone.

Now for the bad news. This stuff is EXPENSIVE! It runs about $100 for 0.5 kg spool. That is about 10 times as expensive as PLA. I think it is worth it. I will be using it for detailed support, but thankfully Simplify3D has a feature where you can use regular PLA for most of the support and PVA or BVOH for dense support just where the support touches the print. The other thing I've noticed is that BVOH seems to be a little more rigid than PLA, so probably more brittle. Be careful with long narrow supports.
Attachments
StarBall sm.jpg

rcionni
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Mar 18, 2018 6:08 pm

Re: Printing with Verbatim BVOH vs PVA

Post by rcionni » Mon May 14, 2018 3:30 am

I have had good success with BVOH as long as the support is only from the buildplate. When I try to use BVOH for support from PLA to PLA...the BVOH won't adhere to the PVA. Any tips?
Bob

RH700
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Aug 04, 2018 7:50 pm

Re: Printing with Verbatim BVOH vs PVA

Post by RH700 » Sat Aug 04, 2018 7:53 pm

I have the same problem. BVOH won't stick to the PLA raft. It's like I'm printing on Teflon. Any suggestions?

Post Reply