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 again. Ugh.
This video is sponsored by PCBWay. 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 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 6 reels of it, we'll get to
that. So the basic premise is that PVB, or
Polyvinylbuterol, 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 vapour
smooth it with moderately non-dangerous
chemicals, we'll get to that. It's a semi-transparent
slightly waxy looking plastic that I couldn't get
any of in completely natural colour 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 PETG. 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
dye of some sort, is more like this stuff. This also kind
of looks like PLA. I've got in total
2 reels of Prusament PVB in these kind of natural colours,
and I've got 3 reels of other branded
PVB in more solid normal colours. 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 3 test tubes, I put 3 pieces I printed into the 3
test tubes, and I'm about to awkwardly
add isopropyl into the left one, which is
99% alcohol by volume, poisonous alcohol,
whisky 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 ethanol 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 control 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 Prusament 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 celsius. In terms
of bed temperature it is imperative, and this is not
optional, you have to have the bed at about
80 degrees 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 80 c
for the first layer then you are going to
be making spaghetti, it will not stick to the bed, it will
just lift. Side note, this is also a problem
for enclosed machines because at these temperatures, pvp,
yeah it's a fast way to get heat creep in your
nozzle, and I did get a blocked nozzle and I got a blocked
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 pvp that is also not optional.
The printed finish on pvp 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 do it anyway, and it does
have a pretty striking effect as you'll know from the
thumbnail, the smoothed pvp does look
significantly different, at least when it's done properly.
There's quite a few ways to smooth pvp
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. 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 you seal
the container. In this case I have a cloche 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 situation.
I think if I had a comment about the vapour 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 vapour 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
vapour 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 spraying.
[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 you're 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. 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 be careful, especially with
method three which is spraying. I would recommend goggles
for this because not only you're 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 arm's 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 stay in
the box so you're kind of getting a bit of free vapor
smoothing in the deal. The spray method is
probably overall the best 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 have to spray to get
any kind of decent effect here I think.
The last method is dipping which is actually not as bad as
it sounds when you actually do it. It
carries extra hassle because when you dip pvp 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 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 terrain and this goes for resin
as well 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 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 avoid 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 strip board 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 PCBWay. 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 PCBWay. You can even put cool
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PCBs for your projects. All the links are below. Thank you
as always PCBWay 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 recommend
printing Prusament 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 reels
in fact all of the ones that weren't Prusia ones were
popping and steaming 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 degrees
and not for too long either. It's very very sensitive to
drying. If you do what's advised here
and dry at 60 degrees C at least for most
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 degrees for about four
hours and it was fine so I guess that's
a lesson learned for 17 pounds. 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 Isopropyl 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 Prusament PVB. So
ornaments like the balloon dog here
are great applications as could jewelry
PVB. Buttons on an arcade stick and
controls things like that could be
really nice if they're smooth and also
there's vases 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!