Polydissolve S1 - Total Bust

I cant figure out what I am doing wrong…

I bought a (very expensive) roll of Polydissolve S1 and have been trying to get it to work with my prints. I am using eSun PLA+ and experimenting with the Support Interface feature in Cura (using 3.2.27). I have tried a wide range of temperatures and feed rates, but my test prints fail every time. I am using the Dual Extruder V3 and printed the example gears with the supplied Polydissolve S1 without a problem. When I try to make my own prints, its garbage.

Specific setup:

  • eSun PLA+ model material in E1
  • Standard print settings based off of Verbatim PLA (always works great - never had a failed print) with tweaked temps
  • Bet temp from 60-70 Deg C
  • Polydissolve S1 support material in E2
  • Tried printing temps of 210-230
  • Print speeds of 20-40 mm/s
  • Flow of 95%-100%

Support infill is model material. The interface layers (roof and floor) are the Polydissolve S1 material.

Symptoms:

  • When Polydissolve material prints, it does not stick to the bed (regardless of temperature)
  • Polydissolve material also does not stick to model material (regardless of temperature)
  • Polydissolve material curls up when exiting nozzle and sticks to the outside of the nozzle instead of the surface below it

When these symptoms happen, the support material gets dragged around, and gets blobbed everywhere. It never stays where it should and eventually creates interference that cause the nozzle to crash into and, in some cases, break the print off the bed. My Polydissolve material came in a vacuum sealed bag with desiccant, but I noticed that it was very brittle. Is this normal? I can easily snap a piece in half.

I tried a new print with PLA in both extruders to ensure that there wasnt something messed up with the toolhead, and it printed out of both perfectly… So it appears to be a settings thing with the Polydissolve . I just don’t know what thread to pull next.

Anyway, any suggestions??

Could you post a couple photos of some failed prints? Getting a good visual is generally pretty helpful in situations like this.
I do think it is a bit odd that the filament was brittle enough to snap when you bent it. Do you notice any odd texturing on the PolyDissolve when it is being extruded? This is a good indicator that there was moisture in the filament, it is caused by small amounts of water vaporizing inside the filament and causing bubbling which affects the surface quality of the extruded material.

Thanks for the reply. Here are some photos:

This is how the filament broke when I first got it.



Notice that there are no strain marks. It just snapped. I have noticed that as I use more material in my tests, its getting better, where I can bend it 180 degrees and it doesnt break, so not sure whats up there…

Here are the Cura shots showing the model layer that the S1 gets printed on the PLA support lattes.


layers.png
Here are a few failed prints:

Bottom left and top left shows little to no adhesion at all. This was more typical with higher temps.
Bottom right shows slightly better adhesion but only at some points. This was a concentric pattern layer and the filament bead just straightened out instead of following the path.
Top right was lower temp (220) and pattern changed to lines. I slowed the layer speed to 20mm/s and turned off cooling. This seemed to give me the best result so far, but it is still far from being usable. The material still blobs and gets pushed around and clumps up, so its not sticking as well as it should. I also returned to 95% extrusion.

I have double checked my hardware setup. My toolhead nozzles are only 0.002" out of level, so that’s dialed in. Also, my temps are very stable.

Still trying to figure this out…

I’m having pretty similar issues, did you ever figure out a solution?

I’m using Polydissolve S1 with Taulman Bridge Nylon and it sticks to each other when it is printing; however when i put it in the water it seems like the nylon is falling apart and not sticking to its self. I have no problem with the Polydissolve. It was fragile when I first pulled it out but it is good now. I don’t have popping from it having to much moisture. I haven’t dried it or even put it away in a container I left it on the printer and it seems fine. The supports come out really nice and dissolve after letting it soak for a few hours. I’m wondering if the water is messing with the nylon from letting it sit in warm water for hours. I run my Polydissolve at 225 and the higher quality settings and it seems to do its job. I would appreciative the feedback.

So I’ll throw in my 2 cents. Note that I recently threw up my hands in frustration and gave up for now despite spending tons of time, emails, forum posts on here and s3d, and writing a ton of custom gcode. But I had a few successful prints using the poly dissolve. Here’s what I found, things I observed, and only clues, not a full solution:

  1. Printing rather slow at the higher end of print temps worked better for me.

  2. Heat creep is HUGE and gets progressively worse, so you actually have to switch to COLDER temps later or I’d start to clog.

  3. Using a glue stick like the latest cura settings suggest works better than it should.

Settings: 220C default, 6.5 mm retraction, 25 mm/s print speed gave me some ok prints.

These were NOT final tunings as I threw up my hands and walked away, back to a single extruder for me now. Part of it is that I can’t stand Cura, made worse by the stupid windows that take up tons of space with “use glue stick” that I can’t get rid of and get in the way of accessing settings. And it’s hard to tune s3d for the Taz, though I tried HARD. The changes to the firmware and the removal of z offset, forcing me to hardcode things made me give up there.

So I wish I had more suggestions for you, but that’s where I stopped! Lots of dual color prints, lots of single color, some supported prints, but far too few of any with too many headaches for me to keep on this for now. Good luck, I hope something here helped!

for me Id be thinking the Polydesolve is suspect if its brittle, I have limited knowledge of desolveable supports but I have had problems say with pva sticking to NgenLux where it just would not stick I personally would try some other dissolvable material and go from there…yes its a bummer but it sounds like you have tried everything if it wont even stick to the bed then your chasing your tale, I don’t like using glue stick either…
I dumped my idex machine for the TAZ 6 and have a dual head but still trying to get S3D dialled into using the Taz 6 but its doable…