Acetone Finishing on PLA

[cloakfiend 995]

Hi, Edel I also only print with 0.06 or 0.04, and one thing i always try to emphasis is the cleanest most clinical quality of the print that you can possibly achieve, i.e. perfectly clean nozzle, clean plate, steady temp in the room, clean area, no drastic temp changes, etc.... this is to make sure the walls of your prints look good, as in no large vibration lines or (overheating lines) and that you see no visible imperfections as you will still see them after. A dip must not be for longer than 45 seconds, and if you want to brush it like i do then you can after like 10 minutes or even 5. there is no strict rule to this, but the longer you leave it then the more pointless it is as the main point is that you want to brush it when it is still kind of soft from the acetone/ethyl.

I also want to say I have been doing this for so long now that the reasons I do things to have blurred together. I also ramble far too much in my videos and cut this out, (maybe i should just leave it in) I also tend to run out of batteries quite a lot mid filming which is quite annoying as is running out of space on memory cards as i cant re-shoot due to it being too late once i've noticed.

Just to let you know I like red transparent colorfabb filament. Traffic red is also good as is leaf green nad marine blue or dutch orange, but to be honest each filament has properties that affect the model. Ive recently been printing a lot in dutch orange but have been getting terrible elephant feet on the tops of ANY geometric flat shapes and did not with any other color. Dutch orange works well for over extruding though and organic shapes.

The girls faces in at the end of my ethyl acetate video BTW have ZERO sanding and brushing. Its just a step i do to improve little bits that may affect the model if you are going to spray it or use it as a cast as it really needs to be perfect to use as a reproductive mold.

I do things so fast now that filming it all and talking the same time makes me ramble for some reason as i cant say as much as i want. Looks like i need to do another video, lol.

My old company has just asked me to make a 3d printed award for them, and cast duplicates in transparent acrylic resin, so ill do my best to document that, as they obviously want a perfect finish with ZERO lines and fully glass like. So you will be able to see my entire process from start to end.

end of essay.....lol.

.....but i promise i will try my best to do a complete multipart tutorial once and for all, as i don't want to do a 5 or 8 minute tutorial as i simply cant explain everything i want to. A lot of people complain at long videos and i hate uploading long videos due to the time/quality compression limitations of my internet connection but im getting some time off my new job soon so will have some time. Also dont forget im doing this on an old machine that i've battered and tampered with too! an old UM2 with the old feeder and even before i was using the same process for the very first release of the UM2. Ive noticed the UM3 is far more stable on the vibration side of things so would get away with printing at a faster speed of 50mm/s but with the um2 OB I wouldnt go quicker than 30mm/s. Im going to remove my OB when i get time as my conclusion while it is great for hot swappable nozzles, it also reduces the surface quality of the more detailed finer prints due to holding more heat because of its larger size block and nozzle. I used to print everything at 50mm/s before with no issues. but i get too much vibration lines now.....there i go rambling again......lol.

here is my selection of Colorfabb filament, they really should send me some for free for the amount of free advertising i give them, however as @neokto has pointed out, their filament colours don't always match from reel to reel, and their diameter is not always apparently perfectly 2.85 or whatever, but this has never really bothered me to tell you the truth, just thought id throw some cold water on the colorfabb free advertising for the hell of it.

So inofill made the old UM filament did they? hmm such a shame i have none left, someone needs to get the recipe and make some more, because that filament was THE KING of all smoothable filaments. made colorfabb look rubbish and your prints looked great.

Again sorry for the ramble, unfortunately I write like I dream, not chronologically. Adding things in as they spring to mind.

[cloakfiend 995]

My colorfabb filaments im using at the moment..

What my nozzle looks like after over a years use.

and the way I print off the roll. (I highly recomment this due to snags and tangles which affect the print).

[Edel 5]

Hey Cloakfiend,

thank you for your tipps

0,04 and 0,06 is no ptoblem for me, thats my standart

so please allow me to copy your old instructions, which i wrote down to complete the missing points. I think this would also be a good help for others.

Way 1 Dipping.

- Dipping not longer then 45 secounds, depend on filament color, but e.g. 40sec for warm red...

 

but then my importan question: put it directly out, no cleaning of the wet part? let all aceton on the part? how long did you leave it and let it try, before you brushed it with a toothbrush?

-then directly primar your plasti kote and painting.

- is this all correct or forgot i something?

so the white is no froth up of the pla? i m not so sure in the moment...

you mean its only a change of the color to white?

Way 2

- sanding,

- cleaning of dust

-brushing with aceton, quick, one brushing only, one layer

- 5-10 min.

- brushed it

you still use the mequire polish? i not sure about this before painting, because there is wax inside, or?

My best print quality i dont get with colorfabb, i tested it with the colors silver, white and black.... all are a lot worser, then with inofill filament.

But i know this is only PLA with not PHA

 

I do things so fast now that filming it all and talking the same time makes me ramble for some reason as i cant say as much as i want. Looks like i need to do another video, lol.

but such a quik video would be nice, no talking, only do it , later you can write something to it

but same short questions are open, i made them bold, that you find it better...

did you show my video of the chloroform?

[cloakfiend 995]

Lol ill do a really quick video just for you! lol.  With no talking! lol.

Ok here goes, again, but be ready for some rambling and repeating myself, i will however not explain why i do things ( which is bad for you ) but just my process.

Step 1.

Print your model with the best surface quality you can achieve go for either 0.04 or 0.06 (yes long time prints). If you have lots of uneven lines thats bad.

Step 2.

Take your model off the plate and clean it up to make it as smooth as you can with sandpaper (i use 180 first for nasty bits and 240 as a secondary smoother but this is for flat or plain areas only, you obviously should not sand any detailed areas away!)  

Step 3.

Either dip your model in acetone for 45 seconds (no matter what the colour) or brush on acetone/ethyl actate with a clean brush in a thick layer once, and leave to absorb. If its a delicate model then dont lay it on thick or else it WILL warp badly. This is where YOU need to learn what too much is.

Step 4.

After a minute or so the model has absorbed the acetone/ethyl and is no longer wet, so you can pick it up and brush it with a hard brittled tooth brush or scrubbing brush (but not so hard that it leaves marks on the softened PLA) then after youve brushe dit up, leave it for one hour.

Step 5.

You can now examine your object and decide whether you want to sand any areas further and if you do use fine sandpaper like 240, and then simply brush on some acetone or ethyl to remove the fine sanding marks. Then wait one more hour for the acetone ethyl to evaporate.

Step 6.

You're pretty much done by now, You can either polish it up with the rubbing compound if you are going down the ethly acetate route, or just primer it if you are going to paint it.

Thats it, there's nothing to it. This WILL remove vibration marks to an extent but only if they are slight i.e printing at 30mm/s or maximum 50mm/s max, printing at 70 mm/s is a no no in my honest opinion.

BTW not sure if you are into car detailing, but the rubbing cmpound is not wax, its basically liquid sandpaper, it may have wax in it but its not wet once it dries, when you polish a car, you wax it afterwards to protect the hard work of polishing you have carried out, the wet look on a car is the wax not the polish. however as another step, you can wax your models with carnauba wax as well, lol for that concourse look

So there you have it! now when you watch my non talking ultra quick video you will know what im doing. Ill upload one more video with the faces that i did before i do this though.

One thing though i didnt mention in my last post though is that my PLA NEVER goes as white as in your pictures, just parts here and there. Mind you going that white is a good sign, my old Ultimaker filament went that white, as you could see from pictures in my early posts. Might buy some silver colorfabb just to see for myself.

On a final note though is that if you overdoo the acetone you model might split later, yes even weeks later, but you will notice very quickly if you spray it first. Spray paint sometimes accelerates the splitting i think, i might be wrong but whatever, just though id throw that in to confuse you lol!

Have fun!

Ciao for now! check my channel for any video updates.

Edited October 31, 2016 by Guest

[cloakfiend 995]

did you show my video of the chloroform?

 

Im sure it pretty good, but...I'm not too interested in Chloraform as its too hard to get hold of casually and i need a registered business address and none of my friends want to order any for some weird reason, even if they know what im doing with it, but they know me too well, lol ;)They know i will probably experiment with it and knock myself out!

Anyways, it would probably be too aggressive, and with acetone or ethyl, you keep the sharp edges. Ethyl acetate and acetone are dirt cheap and easy to get hold of in large amounts with no questions asked.

I tend to go for the easy option, and i can get acetone from boots (a shop in England) in small bottles if im in an emergency! but you have to ask at the counter!

Edited October 31, 2016 by Guest

[KevinMakes 22]

Heya cloak. Long time no see. I see you're still doing beautiful works.

[cloakfiend 995]

Thanks dude,

This is my first resin cast of my acetoned Unicron print, old resin, a bit yellowy in the center but i've ordered a new batch of different resin as i need it to be like glass.

Edited November 2, 2016 by Guest

[cloakfiend 995]

My second attempt at a new clear cast was a failure, and it killed the mold too! :(, I have a lot to learn; room temp, amount of hardener, air contact, mold composition....hopefully Ill get there. this resin doesnt like air! so while it is hard, the surface is ultra tacky.

Edited November 4, 2016 by Guest

[Edel 5]

Hey Cloadfiend,

thanks for you Post....

Tomorrow will be the big day for testing.

In the moment 10 small UlitimakerRobots in 0,04 are printing ....

But in Colorfabb Natural Color!!!

This was a Pack which i had already here...

But back to the quality... my printquality is not bad with inofill (with colorfabb is a little worser...)

But here is e.g. a inofill grip directly out of the printer

but to get those perfect smooth condition, which i need, this took me nearly 10 hour of sanding, coating :( :( :( so i must find a better new and faster way!!!

so i hope this works because otherwise i dont see any chance for 3d printing here for me with this time-intensive finishing

[Edel 5]

This is in the moment my problem :(

https://ultimaker.com/en/community/30365-bad-problem-of-shrinkage

[cloakfiend 995]

10 hours sanding and coating is total overkill for that. If ultimaker still used their acetone friendly inofill pla then than would be a 5 minute job. Now with colourfabb its a bit longre and you need to sand a touch for a good surface,, but for a perfect reflection surface you are gonna need elbow grease. Whatever the printer. unless you coat in some resin or something, but you cant escape polishing. also you need to learn how to apply modelling putty to fill tiny gaps and imperfections. It saves you hours of polishing and leaves a perfect surface if done right. It unfortunatley does take practice and going through levels of sandpaper.

3D printing is easy, getting perfect results isn't. The latest predator and all the UM2 and FORM resin print combos are amazing in the print section, and I love the Predator, but looking at the pics, while its cool and amazing, it still isn't perfect, I can see layer lines all over it (its whether they are acceptable to you or your audience that is the issue). People don't seem to realise how difficult it actually is to achieve a mirror finish. I didn't have ANY noticable layer lines on my later UM2 filament prints just general noise wall instability that needed sanding for refinement I still have a bit of that filament saved for a last few special prints, lol. I can't say the same for colorfabb.

Perfection is in the eye of the beholder. Not everyone has the same standards. Just look at people who slap tons of make up on them on a friday night thinking they look great when they are going out. (now imagine they had no idea how to apply makeup), they would look far worse than people who did. Just like 3d printing. Its knowing how to use a variety of tools around you to make your work look better. If you've ever looked into a womans hand bag you'll see how many tools they have, and 'need', lol.

Edited November 6, 2016 by Guest

[cloakfiend 995]

second attempt at resin cast. damn this stuff is sticky.

Better than the other, but the biro ink dye hack I used broke apart in the resin and pigmented, i think it was too old or something, i went out and bought some new pens and it seems to have worked a treat third time round. The thing is tacky to touch though as RTV molds hold moisture which contains air, and the resin im using hates air. will make a vacuum mold next for best 'Mirror finish surface'

these are colour tests by the way (the air bubbles and imperfections are due to the mold type and other factors. I salvaged it from the bin after the last failure, ill do a separate thread for making the casts from scratch (print) to finish..... to no fill this thread too much of loose acetone related material which now is becoming redundant in terms of the early posts when i used UM filament that you now simply cant.

note the fingerprint...

Edited November 6, 2016 by Guest

[cloakfiend 995]

P.S. dont print stuff to small. and the robot is not a good test subject imho

not for acetone/ethyl anyways.

Edited November 6, 2016 by Guest

[cloakfiend 995]

The latest acetone mold casts. The red dye was not the colour i wanted, but the light makes it look cool in certain angles. The mold is failing and bubbles are somehow forming as it cures, oh well.

Time to create a new and improved Unicron print!

I may spray undercoat on them too see how the form looks, the exterior bubbles look quite weird on them.

Edited November 7, 2016 by Guest

[cloakfiend 995]

Just tried a newer cura out 2.1.something , but was shocked to see an increase of 3 hours for the same print, I'll see how it turns out, but thats even at a faster speed?

Looks like I'll be going back to cura 15.04.2 It just seems to work for me. With acetone you need good surface smoothness, but I'm not going to sacrifice that crazy amount of time for what I expect will be a minor if any improvement considering the faster print speed that I would normally do. It just doesn't seem to be printing at the speed I've selected and changing speeds for the outer shell and infill and inner shell. Very annoying. even after three hours i could restart it in the old cura and it would still take less time than if I'd left it, even printing slower! :/

Edited November 8, 2016 by Guest

[neotko 1,417]

If you unhide the speeds it now uses down speeds and plays with outline width and does many tricks, like @nallath said is "for the 99% of the users", the 1% must find his own way.

The speed profiles for um2+ use slower speeds for outlines and top/bottom to increase the quality (ofc slower is always better no brainer). Also the default line width for 0.4 nozzle is extruding like if was a 0.35, so it must print more time to make the same mm width.

[cloakfiend 995]

Im no master of playing with settings like you! but I would like to get the same speed with the new cura as with the old, or even close, as this 'extra' print time is seriously longer than i can accept. going back to the old cura will most likely be my first port of call. I will look into all the line width stuff and slow down, and hope I can turn it all off. I'll wait and see how my print looks though first.

[cloakfiend 995]

Im happy with the results of old Cura now I've done a comparison test. and the old quicker default print times are welcome, I've no time to play with all these settings in the new cura at the moment as they don't seem to benefit me at all (cant see how they benefit anyone else imho but hey whatever), and am about to do a stupidly long print due to a tall request, we'll see...

[Edel 5]

Ok, i made now same videos for you of the process and yes it worked better with the color natural then with the silver

i sent you now a messege with the videos, because in the momenten, i dont want to show here wrong things

please give me a feedback

[cloakfiend 995]

My next print is an award they want in resin, and done on a printer they have, the 'UM2' !

Its my mission to get it to look the best i can, and that means acetone.

ITs very tall and with my settings will use 19m of filament and take 55hrs to print which gives plenty of time for errors, im just thinking of breaking it up into two unspooled rolls of 10 and feed it through as it runs out or something, 19m is pretty heavy. And i need the in fill and thick walls due to me reducing the large scale warping or reducing it to non existance levels....

Damn I hate long heavy prints!!!!

[cloakfiend 995]

OK so heres my 20m of red colorfabb on the 'extended DIY' filament holder.

I decided not to split the roll just in case. I dont want any lines and dont feel like risking it.

So far so good....!

Edited November 12, 2016 by Guest

[cloakfiend 995]

All done! 0.2mm (13HRSApprox) vs 0.06mm(53hrsApprox in old cura 15.04.2)

came out just fine thank god! no snags of course as it was not printed on a roll, and now for the ACETONE!!! YAY!!! LOTS OF IT!!!! no brushing as I need to get in all the gaps between the letters and a brush is no good as it also can create rough areas were you have over-brushed if you're not careful and dipping is more consistent, especially on geometrical objects. Organic stuff is fine to brush.

Edited November 13, 2016 by Guest

[xeno 108]

My second attempt at a new clear cast was a failure, and it killed the mold too! :(, I have a lot to learn; room temp, amount of hardener, air contact, mold composition....hopefully Ill get there. this resin doesnt like air! so while it is hard, the surface is ultra tacky.

 

To get the best results with transparent resins you need to use Platinum based silicone molds (more expensive)

Tin base rubbers (most common) reacts with the resin to create a tacky surface.

as far as I know only epoxy clear resin has no problems with tin based rubbers.

http://hapcoweb.com/wordpress/why-silicone-molds-can-inhibit-the-cure-of-clear-resins/

[cloakfiend 995]

Yeah thanks! wish you told me that a while ago! now I already know, lol. However I found that if you heat up the mold of a regular RTV silicon mold its not too bad, but not easy to predict the results either as you may also introduce moisture by heating it up!. I was advised to use an addition cure mold which is what i have, so we'll go from there....if not a platinum based silicon. All the unicrons above where made from the same mold which is now in the bin. the mold did really well, considering i made candles from it as well! All these different materials and its still pretty good. I was also told that neat washing up liquid would remove the tackiness, but imho thats a load of crap. The only thing that reduces tackiness is the absence of air in the curing part of the resin. the more air tight it is the better.

The equal parts ratio resin worked fine for me in the silicon mold, but the water clear resin did not, i've now bought 5 litres of it so im stuck with it, lol. I bought two tubs of addition cure and will turn to platinum if that does not work out as expected. I'll document my project as I need to cast 9 of these awards in transparent red. I already have numerous dyes and the biro ones also, so it will be down to experimentation for that part.

Edited November 13, 2016 by Guest

[cloakfiend 995]

Oh dear i forgot to clean the print before made the mold, oh well. Ill see how it goes anyways.