# Dissolvable Support Best Practices

**URL:** <https://forum.lulzbot.com/t/dissolvable-support-best-practices/3127>\
**Category:** Filament\
**Created:** [March 14, 2016, 10:07pm UTC](https://forum.lulzbot.com/t/dissolvable-support-best-practices/3127 "2016-03-14T22:07:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![shasselberg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@shasselberg](https://forum.lulzbot.com/u/shasselberg)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2016, 10:07pm UTC](https://forum.lulzbot.com/t/dissolvable-support-best-practices/3127/1 "2016-03-14T22:07:27Z")

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I am very new and learning, but I am quite interested in using water soluble PVA support. Has anyone compiled a list of best practices? Temperatures, speeds, etc. And are some filaments more compatible with PVA than others? I was using nGen, which was some people are saying is becoming popular, but I find that it oozes and prints are stringy. And the PVA/nGen interface looks horrible. Not the smooth surface I was hoping for.

 ![480955501.jpeg](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/uploads/lulzbot/original/2X/6/669acc4344d993db22e468908fedb5bfd7b8f3ea.jpeg)  
 ![0314161750a.jpg.jpeg](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/uploads/lulzbot/original/2X/3/32e2b5b6244bbe193238ab6255f9948de3563e56.jpeg)

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**Author:** ![nopick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7bcc69/32.png) [@nopick](https://forum.lulzbot.com/u/nopick)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2016, 9:10pm UTC](https://forum.lulzbot.com/t/dissolvable-support-best-practices/3127/2 "2016-03-15T21:10:19Z")

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What support density were you using? I think it has to be pretty high to get the really nice support to part surface.

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**Author:** ![kcchen\_00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9dc877/32.png) [@kcchen\_00](https://forum.lulzbot.com/u/kcchen_00)\
**Post date:** [March 16, 2016, 12:39am UTC](https://forum.lulzbot.com/t/dissolvable-support-best-practices/3127/3 "2016-03-16T00:39:49Z")

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I’d use a 100% density and no layer or horizontal separation for dissolvable material. You basically want to create a solid platform to build on with no bridging.

The following video is a tutorial for S3D, but I think the beginning explains the premise for using PVA as a support material:  
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koCVOsRA6Bc&index=16&list=PLogLRK5xzNdieu445p2O7wODJpQBVf-Ss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koCVOsRA6Bc&index=16&list=PLogLRK5xzNdieu445p2O7wODJpQBVf-Ss)

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**Author:** ![shasselberg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@shasselberg](https://forum.lulzbot.com/u/shasselberg)\
**Post date:** [March 16, 2016, 1:46am UTC](https://forum.lulzbot.com/t/dissolvable-support-best-practices/3127/4 "2016-03-16T01:46:11Z")

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Thank you for the tips. That may be part of my problem, but not all of it. The bigger problem, I think, is that PVA and nGen don’t seem compatible. They do not stick to each other. I switched to PLA with PVA support and results seem much better, but it has presented different problems. More on that later.

The dense fill settings do make a lot of sense. I do not see them in Cura, however. Maybe I need to switch to something else?

The other problem I had is that the PVA raft lost adhesion with the print bed. I tried it with clean PEI, and with blue painters tape. Both times started quite optimistically, but the part dislodged and the machine printed spaghetti.