Following the water-soluble PVA filament, Ultimaker has introduced a new support filament, Breakaway. What are its features and uses?
Today, we're going to show you the benefits of printing with breakaway filament!
First, we'll use our dual-nozzle Ultimaker 3 printer to print a half-drill model. The bottom part will be printed with our breakaway support material. Remember to enable the prime tower when dual-material printing!
Here, we set the layer height to 0.2mm and infill density to 15%. This print took approximately 19 hours.
Once printing is complete, you can start removing the supports!
For many, removing supports is a nightmare, often requiring a lot of time and tools to pull and pluck. It's also impossible to remove the entire support in one go; usually, you have to remove each part individually. Now, using Breakaway for support makes everything much easier!
The removal process is the same: use a pair of needle-nose pliers, grip the support material, and firmly pull it away from the main body. Most of the breakaway support material will come off in one complete piece, even from recessed areas. Only a very small amount of support will need to be peeled off, and the surface of the removed area will be very smooth.
Compared to PVA water-soluble support material, it saves a lot of time by eliminating the long soaking process. Compared to using regular filament for support, it also saves time on removal and sanding.
The image above shows the contact surface after support removal, with surface quality that barely requires post-processing or sanding.
The image above shows the removed Breakaway support material.
Isn't that convenient?
Go ahead and try a roll; you'll likely fall in love with this easy support removal method, making your next support removal experience much better, saving both time and effort.