The Smoothest Filament: 3D Printing without layer lines!

I don't know about you but I am absolutely Fed Up of layers layers they're just so irritating you can't get rid of them they're in your face all the time attention seeking things that you just wish you could never see [Music] [Music] again this video is sponsored by PCB way I am of course talking about PVB you might have heard of it it's very much not new it's been around since something like 2016 but it's slowly gaining popularity well no it's it's not gaining popularity but more manufacturers are starting to make it so I guess it's up to you the viewer and me the whatever I am to make it more popular I've done my bit over here by buying six reals of it we'll we'll get to that so the basic premise is that PVB or polyvinyl butol not to be confused with PVA which is something entirely different PVB is not used as a support material but it's a 3D printing thermoplastic in its own right it is the material what makes it special is the ability to Vapor smooth it with moderately non-dangerous chemicals will get to that it's a semi-transparent slightly waxy looking plastic that I couldn't get any of in complete natural color because it's out of stock but this is probably the closest you can see that it's not a whole lot different to a natural looking PG but as a thermoplastic it more closely represents pla to print it you need almost but not quite the same settings as pla we'll get to that the other presentation you can buy PVB in presumably mixed with an opaque die of some sort is more like this stuff this also kind of looks like pla I've got in total two reels of pint PVB in these kind of natural colors and I've got three reels of other branded PVB in more solid normal colors so PVB is supposed to dissolve in alcohol and that's why we're interested in it not because we particularly want to dissolve it that would be inconvenient and we definitely shouldn't be drinking it don't do that ultimately we want to smooth it this is uh three test tubes I put three pieces I printed into the three test tubes and I'm about to awkwardly add isopropyl into the left one which is 99% alcohol by volume poisonous alcohol uh whiskey into the second one which I guess is technically poisonous as well but people drink it I can't really comment on that this is 40% alcohol by volume and water to the third which is also poisonous if you have enough of it but it's water 0% alcohol obviously leaving these for 24 hours pretty much tells us everything we want to know the isopropyl alcohol has completely obliterated the PVB turning it into goop the ethanol and I think that's being a bit too kind to Jack Daniels has affected the PVB but not really as dissolved and that is not because ethanol doesn't work as well it's because ethanol at 99% by volume is nearly impossible to buy as a normal person because we'd all be drinking it and not paying tax on it and that would be kind of like a drunken Anarchy and that can't be allowed also at 99% ethanol is actually surprisingly dangerous so we have to be saved from ourselves I guess anyway if you did have Ethan at 99% then I believe it would just behave the same as the isopropyl at 99% the water in the last sample is acting as a controller as we expect and it does absolutely nothing Well visibly anyway so back to print settings you want about 215 Celsius for a hot end temperature to print this stuff it does vary quite a bit the prer seems happier at 225 as the layer adhesion is a bit poor at 215 whereas the red stuff I've got seems to prefer closer to 205 but that's kind of the range somewhere between 200 and 225 cels in terms of bed temperature it is imperative and this is not optional you have to have the bed at about 80° C for the first layer and you can drop it a bit after that but not really below about 70 if you don't do this and you don't run the bed at ATC for the first layer then you are going to be making spaghetti it will not stick to the bed it will just lift uh side note this is also a problem for enclosed machines because at these temperatures PVB um yeah it's a fast way to get heat creep in your nozzle and I did get a block to nozzle and I got a block to 0.2 bamboo nozzle and that is an absolute nightmare to clear I won't go into how but yeah you don't want that so you absolutely do need to open the door and lid on an enclosed machine if you're printing PVB that is also not optional the printed finish on PVB is actually quite smooth already so you'd be forgiven for wondering why you need to smooth it anyway and honestly I'm not that sure either but we'll we'll do it anyway and it does have a pretty striking effect as you'll know from the thumbnail the smooth PVB does look significantly different at least when it's done properly there's quite a few ways to smooth PVB and I will go into exactly four of them in this video These are the only ones that really matter and every other method seems to sort of be a variation on them these four methods are vapor dunk spray and paint at least three of those are self-explanatory but we will start with Vapor this might be something you've encountered with abs where you use acetone Vapor to smooth the surface of ABS well it's kind of the same but it's way less dangerous and in some ways it's easier uh what you do is you create a source of alcohol Vapor probably spilling it everywhere in the process luckily isopropyl is also a cleaning fluid so that's usually not the end of the world if you spill it but obviously you don't want to spill too much and then then you seal the container in this case I have a CL from Ikea which actually works pretty well as it does seal quite effectively you then want to leave that there until you have the desired effect and that's why it's important to have a transparent container so that you don't have to keep opening it to check which would let the fumes out this will be in the order of several hours perhaps 12 to 24 depending on what the desired effect is one thing I did or seem to note is that the vapors either hang out low in the container or they condense on the cold base of the chamber somehow this causes whatever's touching the base of the container to soften and it will collapse or at least melt at the bottom so you probably don't want that you might do but most likely not so to prevent that you need to raise it up a bit I did create these stands and I printed them out of pla they print terribly but who cares they do the job and that's all that matters in this kind of [Music] situation [Music] oh I think if I had a comment about the vapor smoothing method it would be slow but it is very even and consistent and it doesn't use much isopropyl because you're enclosing it so it's kind of in there for the duration just being recirculated because the whole part or at least a good amount of the part is getting fully penetrated by the alcohol you will find it comes out of the chamber very soft and while it should eventually return to something like the original hardness this process will actually take days during which time the part is prone to being deformed if you happen to squash it so you have to be quite careful of that if you've done Vapor smoothing with abs then you may have heated the chamber while you did it that's quite a common method because it speeds it up you can do this here too and I'm going to say that's at your own risk the combustion temperature of isopropyl is quoted as being in the hundreds of degrees C check that for yourself don't trust me but bear in mind that that's dependent on pressure and so a sealed container being heated up is going to have higher pressure naturally and you don't want any explosions so I'm not going to recommend that simply because you can use patience instead or another method but if you must try this then I'm told the best way to do it is to have the part colder than the alcohol Vapor somehow this encourages condensation onto the part and this will make the process significantly quicker and the results will look more like if you were [Music] spraying [Music] [Music] method number two is brushing and that's as simple as it seems you get a paintbrush and you brush the isopropyl on it can leave smudges but it probably won't as long as you make sure you load the brush it's sort of like the opposite of normal painting you want to make sure that you are getting a lot of isopropyl on there so that it's not soaking and drying and then starting to smear as you add more coats the part will soften and get more sticky and I think that's the desired effect because if you let it dry between coats then you won't have as much effect on getting rid of the layer lines if that makes sense when you use this method it gets really sticky really quickly and it starts to resemble a half-eaten boiled candy that you just found wedged down the side of the car seat so make sure you plan for that you also don't want to leave fingerprints so I would recommend gloves and I would say gloves are essential anyway because you don't want this sticky stuff on your hands trust me and that's probably as good a time as any to point out that how important it is to read the safety data sheet for anything like this that doing you need to be reading the safety data sheet for the material and for the isopropyl you might think that you know everything but trust me there's going to be something on these data sheets that you don't know isopropyl is nowhere near as terrible as acetone when it's vaporized or sprayed but it's not by any means nice um it won't really harm your skin other than drying it but if you rub your eyes or pick your nose really don't want to do that or if you get it splashed in your eyes then you're going to be in a world of pain ultimately just careful especially with method three which is spraying I would recommend goggles for this because not only you'll making an aerosol but you're also being told to ventilate the room which means this stuff could go flying into your eyes just by picking up a draft you can get isopropyl in a spray bottle like I have because it's meant for first aid where I guess they don't use goggles so I do wonder how many times that might have led to further first aid by accidentally getting it in someone's eyes but anyway you're creating a mist of isopropyl so you want to be out of the way of it really don't want to be breathing that I recommend holding the parts at arms length and also putting them inside some kind of box so that as soon as you've sprayed you can put the lid on and not only does that stop it from vaporizing out of the box into the room it also means that you get more value for money because you've just sprayed a mist of isopropyl and that will that will stay in the box so you kind of getting a bit of free Vapor smoothing in the deal the spray method is probably overall the best method method in terms of a uniform finish if you don't want to wait for Vapor smoothing and you do have to apply this multiple times you really do have to apply this multiple times because it's not very effective if you're using a fine mist and obviously if you're using a non- fine Mist then it's going to drip down and probably make a terrible mess so you're kind of looking at upwards of five times to to have to spray to to get any kind of decent effect here I think the last method is dipping which is actually not as bad as sounds when you when you actually do it it carries extra hassle because when you dip PVB into isopropyl you are actually contaminating it which means you can't just put it back in the bottle you might not be able to see that but it's happening this kind of means that you have to be able to store the isopropyl that you're using in between users and it's just annoying I bought these Lids from Ikea I can't recommend them there's a really good chance of you spilling the isopropyl and I didn't do that but that was probably good luck not not good planning so overall I think this method is best done in a small container for small pieces like like Miniatures like I've done here and I should mention there are responsible ways to dispose of isopropyl you absolutely must not pour it down the train and this goes for resin as well where we where we use a lot of isopropyl do not pour it down the drain you have to evaporate it which is not a quick process because it doesn't evaporate that fast so yeah unless you're doing a lot of Dipping then this method will be wasteful you're going to have a lot of waste liquid to to deal with but the dipping method does work and it works really well it's the one method that you're most likely not to have to repeat or at least a maximum of twice I think but you do need to allow the part to drain off afterwards the drips are messy and sticky and tedious and of course again the part gets really sticky and really prone to fingerprints possibly even more and that means more dust and so you have to cover it to avoids dust sticking to it between applications or while it's drying while we're talking about messy and tedious have you ever tried making your own PCB back in the day the only choices we had as makers we didn't even call ourselves makers back then I'm not really sure what we would have called ourselves but the only method was to make our own pcbs which almost nobody was doing because it's messy and tedious or you would use breadboard which wasn't cheap like it is now actually but for permanent wiring for a circuit board you would have to either try to use this board with holes in it and you'd have to wire each component separately or you'd have to redraw the entire circuit with this stuff called stripboard and you have a lot of limitations there rumor has it though some people are still using this stuff I'm not sure why because you can literally get entire pcbs made and sent to you from PCB way do you remember this tool are you still using this do you even know what it's for let me know in the comments if you want your electronic projects to look professional then why not take the time to make them into PCB designs and get them manufactured by PCB way you can even put cool logos and funny things on the silk screen if you so wish PCB way also offer 3D printing services like resin but also SLS and fdm and also metal go check them out by following the links below and have a look at how easy it is to order pcbs for your projects all the links are below thank you as always PCB for sponsoring this video now back to it one of the things I noticed a lot with PVB especially the cheaper Brands is how much it strings so for that reason alone I I recommend printing pment PVB over all the others I think also a large reason why it strings this much is because it is really very very hygroscopic I think it's probably one of the most hygroscopic materials out there most of my Reals in fact all of the ones that weren't Pria ones were popping and steaming when I when I got them and I had to dry them also a funny story about that you see you need to dry your filament at about 45° and not for too long either it's very very sensitive to drying if you do what's advised here and dry at 60° C at least for most PVB at least especially for this red reel you get a ruined reel so I wouldn't recommend going above 45 degrees I did get another reel of this stuff which was annoying because I didn't need that much of it I dried it at 45° for about 4 hours and it was fine so I guess that's a lesson learned for 17 so this is the part where we talk about applications ultimately PVB is suitable for almost anything where pla is suitable for give or take probably not in contact with isopr pil though it has a reputation for being brittle but I think that's probably maybe slightly unwarranted if you smooth PVB it could potentially make it stronger I didn't test for that But ultimately the main application of PVB is going to be aesthetic I.E decorative you might not like the smooth look and I'm not sure I do but there are degrees of the smooth look and I did really like the jelly glassy look of the the more transparent versions like the pusherman PVB so ornaments like the balloon dog here are great applications as could jewelry be buttons um on an arcade stick and controls things like that could be really nice if they're smooth and also there's bers and so on if you can think of any application that I haven't mentioned or you've used it for any application that I haven't mentioned then let me know in the comments I'll finish up at this point and you can decide whether you want to try PVB I would say it's worth a go because the material can be had for Fairly cheap and a spray container of iso is also pretty cheap you probably already have one because it's used to clean your printer bed and on the bamboo machines it's used to clean the rails I will see you next time thank you for watching [Music] yeah

Channel: Lost In Tech

Views: 238,509

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Id: vUmVRIHYXtk

Length: 18min 16sec (1096 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 19 2024