Does anyone have good software that has dual extruder with pva support. I’m tired of trying to figure out PVA as support structure using Slic3r. I don’t care what software it is, it needs to be able to plug and play. Thanks for everyones input.
Hello ReddFoxx. I am not sure that any program is going to be plug and play for PVA support. I have been using Cura to print with PVA support today on a PLA print, and it is not easy. The main difficulty is getting the PLA to stick to the PVA. ABS and HIPS are even more difficult because of the temperature differential between them and PVA which prints below 200C. One key feature in Cura is the Dual Extrusion overlap, which allows you to squish the material down on the PVA support and allow it to stick. I hope this is helpful!
Thanks, I’ll give this a try.
I am having the exact same problem. Got the dual extruder to work well using single ABS prints. while I have spent several hours trying to get ABS + PVA prints to work. I can get both to extrude simultaneous and even managed to get Slic3r to set up the print right (in terms of what it attempts to print and what is shown in the slice model that was generated).
The problem is I cannot figure out how/where to change hotend temperature settings independently of each other.
This is the frustrating workflow:
Preheat the bed 110 C, the hotend 1 (ABS) to 230 C, and the hotend 2 (PVA) to 190 C. (through pronterface or Taz 4 LCD)
With dual extruder settings chosen, I select “Print” in pronterface.
The bed temperature has a new goal of whatever I told it in Pronterface settings (I’m happy with this)
Then the hot end 1 stays put at 230 C / would heat up to 230 C as I told it (Also, a win! 
)
Then 
the hot end 2 (PVA) goes to 230 C. (very bad)
I have read online that overheating PVA can lead to awful clogs due to pyrolysis.
As fast as I can I use the LCD to Control -> Temperature -> Nozzle2 -> 190 C.
If the machine would understand what I wanted after that step I would not be nearly as frustrated/confused.
Occasionally the printer resumes at 230 C at some point (like when changing from first layer to second).
I would love to know how to set the hotend temperatures before the print is running, and for them to be followed for the entire print.
I’ve used Simplify3D (not free, nor open source) with relative success doing dual PLA/PVA (I may have tried a few ABS/PVA too, can’t remember). Simplify has an easy setting to ‘print supports with second extrduer’ - it actually has support for something like 8 extruders. The other thing i’ve done, is I use a larger nozzle (0.6mm) for the secondary extruder, and I don’t align the two extruders to be perfectly flat with each other. Keeping the PVA nozzle ever so slightly higher causes the main extruder to squish into the PVA structures a bit more.
I’ve also found that printing on bare glass (I have two beds that I swap out - one with PET, one without) and a good amount of first layer squish helps a lot. Obviously not for ABS, though.
I will give Simplify3D a try. Seems like Pronterface/Slic3r needs to be updated to include better control of dual material prints.
I just realized Simplify3D is expensive. I was hoping to find a freeware program or even developmental project for performing dual material prints with characteristics that solve the problem in the earlier reply I made.