Thank you guys so much for watching! I am surprised that this video has so much attention given that is was mostly a test.. Because the question has been asked a few times: I am using a 100 grade cheesecloth. But I do not know if the grading is identical internationally. Aaand.. Please sub to the channel!
Nice tip, I actually was doing this just using drop cloth material and or cloths I have around the house. It seems anything will work at varying levels of efficiency. The best thing about dry cloths and such is that they do not clog up as easily.
Nice tip, i was doing this just only reusing the clear ipa and getting rid of the goo. Btw I was thinking that most probably there is a lot of oils and other stuff that remain in the ipa even after "curing" it, the recycled IPA tends to feel very saturated with whatever nasty residuals keep accumulating in it. as a first wash it will be fine but after a while it will not clean from resin anymore i guess. Hope you update this video with your gained experiences. Cheers
Avoid using latex gloves!! The resin will eat through latex. Find yourself some nitrile gloves (or vinyl if you can't find nitrile) to protect your hands! You also really need to cure the dried goo with UV light before it is safe to dispose. I really like the idea of using the cheesecloth though! I'll have to pick one up at the store.
@@m3chs_makes Yeah it doesnt help that even printer manufacturer's ship their printers with Latex gloves so people assume that's what they need. Being a chemist myself I immediately bough 2 boxes of nitrile ones and never used what they sent me.
Fun fact but the gloves only slow down the resin getting onto your skin, Nitrile or Latex doesn't matter (double up if need be). Make sure you wash your hands with non abrasive soap afterwards and you should be fine. For increased protection use Neoprene gloves. Source - Chemist
Watching this video after it being recommended to me, I thought that you had a catalogue of previous videos. I was surprised to see that this is your first video. Your presence on camera is confident and your editing is good too. Plus you have made a video on a topic widely searched for and showed a new method I don’t think any other uploaded has shown. Keep up the good work!
I saw that funnel and decided to design my own. It's similar but with a more shallow bowl and has a longer tube at the end so it will stay in my bottle without tipping over.
I place my cleaning container on the magnetic mixer next to my UV box and run it slow while exposing it to the light. There is no mucus, only cured particles, and When finished I run it through the coffee filter which catches the resin particles, may not be the best, but it’s working so far
I've been playing this game for 3 years. The bottom line is that alcohol is less dense than any resin I have used. Therefore the only tool needed to reduce the concentration of resin in alcohol is gravity and time. Depending on the resin, all that is needed is from over night to a few days for sufficient gravity assisted separation of resin and solvent to reuse the solvent. If anyone is interested I am happy to expand on my methods. I use 3d resin printed parts in my products.
Same. It all gets dumped into gallon water jugs and it sits for a month or so. Resin settles. Siphon off the top, and it's perfectly good for initial washing of parts. A spray bottle full of clean alcohol as a rinse if anything is still shiny and you're good to go. Being patient pays off.
Thorough, thoughtful, mindful, and helpful. When I started out 3D printing, I got a ton of water washable. The need to constantly sanitize the water seems to make me be a little bit careless with my own safety (My brain: its just water, whats the issue if I touch this or that) I try my absolute best but I still find myself screwing up. Been wanting to try ABS finally after a whole year of printing, and you just fixed my NUMBER ONE problem with switching. Very interesting. And yes, get yourself some thicker, waterproof nitrile gloves! I cannot stand getting lose water/liquid in my gloves.. doesnt seem safe. Nitrile is pretty good even just for the usual exam glove type.
i found that the IPA recovered from all the squeezing is just not worth the effort- so what I do instead is pour it through the cheese cloth, let whatever is going to drain through it naturally into the container, then dump the wet goo into a separate container that I then take outside and allow to harden completely in the sun. after that I just toss the dry bits of resin into the garbage.
I did something similar, I cured the bits and then filtered it through a multi-staged soda bottle filters, using cotton to plug the holes and then using activated carbon to filter it. After the first two passes it was pretty much clear. I've also tested this without curing the resin and it went from green to a off-clear with a bit of white.
If you prefer a more passive approach there is a simple way to limit clogging of your coffee filters. As stated, the microparticulates will clog the pores, however agitation during the curing stage will help the resin agglomerate into larger particles. Even though cured, the particles remain slightly sticky and will flock together. I have a plastic soda bottle on the windowsill with a few M8 nuts inside to help agitate the liquid, scrape the sides of the container and act a a low intensity ball mill. So before filtering, I shake it for a bit, stuff it in the refrigerator to settle (probably unnecessary but colder temperatures should lower the solubility somewhat) until there's a visible clear fraction on top. After this treatment about a litre and a half will cleanly come through one coffee filter, including the yoghurt at the bottom of the bottle. You can go really hard core and use a flocculent such as aluminium sulphate (a particular type of alum, there are several so get the pure stuff) to knock, essentially everything, out of solution. If I recall, about 10ml of saturated aluminium sulphate solution will treat 1l of IPA. Any dilution of the IPA should be negligible.
Great video and apparently it was your first one making it all the more impressive. One thing though, I would suggest others not simply throw their leftover micro plastics in the trash/recycling without checking with local guidelines. Here I have to bring micro plastics to HW facility.
Thank you for this informational video, you have helped me figure out how to reduce waste during manufacturing. I wish you all the luck in your endeavors!
I found that the best is to cover windows with UV blocking sheet and have resin printing station in the corner behind the cover, used the same IPA for a few months that way and nothing hardened, perfect liquid (but very grey/black because of resin color), no particles on washed objects, but the second I moved to another room for renovation purposes my IPA became "plastic cheese" and became unusable after one hour
I haven't tried it yet (just printed my first bottle of resin ever), but I already noticed how fast the alcohol get polluted by uncured resin (not as fast as yours apparently, but still). Also filter don't work well at all (perhaps I should try the cheese-cloth trick too, if it allows me to squeeze the residue ... though I feel I'll need much more than what I accumulate from one 1L bottle of resin). But I noticed that the alcohol clears quite well when it sits undisturbed for a longer time. Trouble is it's really easy to mix at least part of the resin on the bottom when touching it. Decanting works ok for the top half of the IPA, but when I need to tilt it more to pour more IPA the resin starts mixing back. I'll try it next, but I have a feeling syphoning would work much, better, as the bottle (or whatever container you use) can stand still, and you only have to trigger the syphon to start draining the clean IPA on top. Since it doesn't disturbs the fluid & resin inside so much you can drain more clear IPA before reaching the resin rich layers. Now obviously starting the draining with your mouth is not recommended, since both the IPA & resin can be quite toxic and irritate your tissues. But fortunately there are pumps that can trigger syphoning safely. Quick search shows they cost between $10 & $15 on amazon. But that separation made me think of how can we optimize it. It's obviously due to gravity. Resin is about 11% heavier than water, but alcohol is about 22% lighter than water, so there's over 30% difference in weight between alcohol and resin, already seems like a good start. But what if we can increase that 30-ish % difference several times? I'm not sure if it'll make the IPA on top any clearer (though in principle it should), but at least it would make the separation much faster. All you need is improvised centrifuge. You can use two identical bottles filled (with dirty IPA) to the same level to keep it balanced, and attach them on a carousel style centrifuge with their cap-ends to the center. You'll need also a hinge that allows the bottles to hang vertical when not rotating, and to raise up to 90° when rotating. The bottles doesn't have to rotate at high speeds attached by their caps only of course. There can be a basket (similar shape to your bottles/containers) attached to the hinges and the bottles can stay in these baskets when rotating. The other trick is to use a controller that can gradually increase and decrease rotation speed (it's really important to gradually slow down. If resin gets mixed up when starting the centrifuge it's ok to just leave it spin for a bit more). The point is when slowly reducing spin speed the "Down" of the bottle would very slowly tilt from near-horizontal (depending on your max speed) to vertical (when completely stopped). Then you can syphon the cleared IPA with minimal interaction with the resin on the bottom. Hopefully using a centrifuge would made the resin become denser and contain less IPA in it - ie get better separation. This whole thing can even be automated to clean a lot more IPA (or clear it repeatedly, by syphoning only the clearest IPA on the top). For that there needs to be a small logic circuit that switches between (re)filling with dirty IPA, stop filling, and spin for a while at high rpm to get good separation, and finally syphon out (which btw can be done even while spinning; or can gradually slow down to a stop and then syphon of course)
Love this! And yes, I got up to the part where I've been siphoning off the clear IPA. Sucking to start the process though lol so I think I need to invest in a siphon with a pump!
@@Fasty , yes you need siphon with a pump for sure. I got mine for ~8 euro. It's meant for wine siphoning, I think it's the same as beer siphon and perhaps gasoline siphon. All of these are easy to find around.
@@Fasty , update, what's even better than siphon tube with manual pump (that still makes me disturb a bit the settled resin) is electric pump :) For about the same price you can get one of those pumps for the large water bottles. So this way there'll be no disturbance to the resin (besides the suction itself, depending on how close to the bottom you dip the end of the tube). But I discovered an even better way to separate resin from clean alcohol and do it continuously. Using an oil filtration centrifuge. It's a very simple design. Basically a cylinder spinning at high RPMs, with closed bottom, with few holes close to its center, and a ridge. The ridge is much closer to the cylinder's wall, so when the liquid (ie IPA) is spinning in the centrifuge it'll be mostly flat against the wall (with the heavier resin particles depositing firmly against the wall), but pouring more fluid will eventually make it overflow over the ridge (think about the simulated gravity, and that simulated "down" pointing outwards of the cylinder). So you just pour more and more fluid, and the cleanest of it overflows over the ridge, while the heavy particles will settle on the walls. When you turn off the centrifuge, the fluid (with the resin) remaining to the walls (that couldn't flow over the ridge) will flow to the bottom plate (without the centrifugal effect of the spinning) and will flow out of the holes on the bottom that are near the center. There's also a housing (usually another cylinder) fixed and slightly larger than the spinning one, tall enough to catch all the clean fluid flowing over the edge of the spinning cylinder w/o spraying it outside (a lid could also help). The bottom of the fixed housing-cylinder had 3 areas separated by 2 ridges: - the very center one - a hole to allow for the motor axis to reach & rotate the inner cylinder; - the outer one collects the clean fluid that has overflow the spinning cylinder ridge and has accumulated on the walls of the outer-cylinder (or dripped directly down, but still in the outer area of the housing-cylinder bottom) has few holes to allow the clean fluid to flow out to a clean container. - the middle area (separated by 2 ridges) is under the holes of the inner cylinder, so when stopped and the remaining dirty fluid flows out it's collected there, and guided to a different (dirty) container again with few holes. Ideally the bottom of the housing-cylinder could be conical to facilitate faster flow of the fluids (with the drain holes in the lowest perimeter of course). And that's it. You only need a strong enough stand to hold it all and few tubes and 2 containers (clean & dirty) for the two out-flows. The height of the ridge of the spinning cylinder should be as high as to prevent resin & dirty alcohol to escape over it, and low enough to minimize the amount of remaining dirty fluid (that would need to be filtered additionally, either thru a coffee-type of filter, or ran again thru the centrifuge if there's additional fluid to displace it). Actually when all of the IPA has passed thru the centrifuge, one way to push the rest of the dirty IPA over the edge is by adding water. Water is ~21% heavier than alcohol, so it'll go the walls of the spinning cylinder with the resin, and will push the IPA higher enough to flow over the ridge. The cool thing is also that knowing the dimensions of the cylinder you can estimate pretty well what amount of water you need to displace the most of the alcohol (formula for cylinders volume is trivial) - enough to push as much alcohol as possible , but little enough so that the water itself wouldn't flow over the ridge. NOTE: oil filtering centrifuges usually have a heating of the oil, which in the case of alcohol is not needed (nor recommended!).
Thank you so much for this tip! It saves me days, hours and Weeks :D! I'm using this clothes over a rise sieve (big diameter, like 300mm) with 16 layers of the clothes and it works awesome. needs for 10 Liter like 1,5 hours? On every other way that I testet I needed one week + and if some of the paper had a crack, the whole work is over :D thanks again!! Amazing!
Hi, use a (in German) Saugflasche and a (also in German) Nutsche mit Rundfilter bzw. giebts im Laborbedarf Trichter mit "Hilfsrinnen" da kommt eine aus Rundfiltern gemachte Filtertüte rein und eine z.b. Wasserstrahlpumpe an die Saugflasche. Giebts alles im Laborbedarf. Grüsse
@@benjamineisenhofer8174 Ich habe bei "einem großen Online Händler" das "eFond Passiertuch, 50x50cm Käsetuch Feingewebt Dichtegrad 100 Mulltuch" bestellt. Wobei du denke ich jedes Käsetuch mit einem 100er Dichtegrad nehmen kannst.
Thank you m3chs for your posting this video. I have a question...would it be okay to use denatured alcohol as the rinsing solvent? it has very very little smell and it seems to work for me okay, but wanted to ask you and the "internet" what you think about it. Thanks in advance for your reply.
Well denatured alcohol is also about 94% Ethanol. If anything makes trouble using it for cleaning prints it would be the 6% addetives. I am no chemist but I would just try it out in a well ventialted room. If you see no reaction with the prints surface I would say you are fine. Like, print something small with fine details, toss it into the denatured alcohol and let it sit for half an hour. If it still looks good and nothing weird happened.. 🤷 check out uncle jessys channel. He did quite a bit of testing with different kinds of rinsing liquids.
I usually let it sit in the sun for a day so that the resin solved in the IPA cures. But during the winter I have a box with 405nm leds glued to the inside that do the job
I normally just leave it on the window ledge for a couple of days and all the particles stick to the sides or sink to the bottom, then I just pour off the IPA into another old 5L IPA bottle!
I'll have to give the chees cloth idea a run for its money as I'm using IPA for my cleaning of resin prints. I tried the water washable when I first got my machine but had a lot of failed prints so I only use IPA washable resins and have very good results. I'll sub your channel and give you videos a go through to see what common interests we may have. I'm new to the 3D printing scene but have become addicted to printing figures. 🙂Thomas over at The Model Hobbyist
Yeah me to then I went to standard resin and switched slicers as well going from Chitchu to Lychee. I ran with Lychee and never looked back they are super cool. :-)@@luxferre5546
Nice idea. Thanks for posting. This basically looks like making cheese except you want the liquid. Have you tried using a cheese press or similar device? Cheers.
Thanks! I actually have not. So far I had no real reason tu purchase a press. But I am currenty working on a different video for this channel for which I need a press that kann output a ton or two of pressure... If I purchase one I might give it a shot. Resin-Cheese.. the stuff of nightmares ^^
Where did you get the large container? I'm looking for a good large but shallow airtight/watertight storage container to let my used IPA settle before filtering.
Both steps that you just descriped are enough. It never really cloggs the cloth so that it becomes useless. The Cloth itself has rather big pores compared to filters. Thats why you need to stack it to prevent particles from passing threw. And the nice side effect is that the particles never clogg the cloth.
To remove that mix a flocculant like aluminum sulfate mixed with a little bit of water to cause it to clump together at the bottom and pour out the less dense alcohol off the top. I saw that in a different video. Using both methods would probably create the best results
In general resin can not be recycled (one of its big issues). So it needs to be burned. In the german trash separation system there is a black trashcan just for that. I do not know how it works in the US though. Sorry
Does putting it in the trash as a bunch of microplastic really prevent it from getting into the ecosystem? I wonder if it should be baked/fused before discarding.
I dont know about the handling of trash in other countrys but in Germany we have 4 trashcans at home. Recycling, Paper, Bio and "Other". Sinc resin does not fit into any of the first 3 categories it goes into the "Other" trash and that kind of trash gets 100% burned here for energy (and the toxic air filtered). Instead of being in a landfill or being flushed down the toilet.
I have not tried that but I am very certain that a centrifuge would help. I am pretty sure that the cured resin particles are heavier then the IPA so they should seperate nicely. If you give it a try and have some feedback for the comment section that would be awesome.
I'm actually genuinely curious if this dried up goo can be used for anything. I mean, if it can be further cured into a solid mass with UV, maybe it could be used as some kind of putty to put inside silicone molds and then be tossed into a curing machine to harden it.
in theory its possible, but remember that there would be a lot of shrinkage as the IPA dries, so it wouldnt be useful for accurate moulds. However, you could flatten it out and make it into resin sheets, cure it in the sun or under a uv light, then make stuff out of it.
Some people make disks with it and use it as bases for miniatures. As it ends up looking rough and irregular once it cures (and shrinks) it's perfect to simulate terrain
Latex gloves, no face mask or glasses to keep possible spay out of your mouth and eyes.. yeah, you need a safety course before you destroy your health..
You mean the floating cured resin in the container / white fluffy stuff? Its unfortunately not really sticking together. Its pretty much just floating particles and when you try to use a spoon or sth like that you will only get very little of it out and on top of that also remove a lot of IPA that is floating in between the particles
U have to repeat it 2 times. And as long the Resin is not hard it is toxid and nothing for the normal garbage. Ich weiß, blöde Argumentation, aber solange Resin und Reste noch flexibel sind diese toxisch. Dein IPA/ Resin Klumpen hat im Hausmüll nichts zu suchen. Nur voll ausgehärtet. Ist aber nat. nur meine eig. Meinung Gruß aus S-H
2 things: 1. When I produced that video thanks to corona that stuff was veery expensive. 2. (To me) Recycling is important to protect the environment. Just because something is cheap does not mean it needs to be wasted.
Thank you guys so much for watching! I am surprised that this video has so much attention given that is was mostly a test.. Because the question has been asked a few times: I am using a 100 grade cheesecloth. But I do not know if the grading is identical internationally.
Aaand.. Please sub to the channel!
Nice tip, I actually was doing this just using drop cloth material and or cloths I have around the house. It seems anything will work at varying levels of efficiency. The best thing about dry cloths and such is that they do not clog up as easily.
Nice tip, i was doing this just only reusing the clear ipa and getting rid of the goo. Btw I was thinking that most probably there is a lot of oils and other stuff that remain in the ipa even after "curing" it, the recycled IPA tends to feel very saturated with whatever nasty residuals keep accumulating in it. as a first wash it will be fine but after a while it will not clean from resin anymore i guess. Hope you update this video with your gained experiences. Cheers
I'm using a random cheesecloth and it seems to work fine.
Avoid using latex gloves!! The resin will eat through latex. Find yourself some nitrile gloves (or vinyl if you can't find nitrile) to protect your hands! You also really need to cure the dried goo with UV light before it is safe to dispose. I really like the idea of using the cheesecloth though! I'll have to pick one up at the store.
did not know about the glove issue, thx for letting us know!
@@m3chs_makes absolutely! Thanks for the idea of using a cheesecloth!
@@connorparrish3799 Cured resin is thankfully much less reactive. Still, really good to lean towards being cautious.
@@m3chs_makes Yeah it doesnt help that even printer manufacturer's ship their printers with Latex gloves so people assume that's what they need. Being a chemist myself I immediately bough 2 boxes of nitrile ones and never used what they sent me.
Fun fact but the gloves only slow down the resin getting onto your skin, Nitrile or Latex doesn't matter (double up if need be). Make sure you wash your hands with non abrasive soap afterwards and you should be fine. For increased protection use Neoprene gloves. Source - Chemist
Watching this video after it being recommended to me, I thought that you had a catalogue of previous videos. I was surprised to see that this is your first video. Your presence on camera is confident and your editing is good too. Plus you have made a video on a topic widely searched for and showed a new method I don’t think any other uploaded has shown. Keep up the good work!
Thank you for the kind words! I will do my best
Your little chuckle about beer made this all worth while
I saw that funnel and decided to design my own. It's similar but with a more shallow bowl and has a longer tube at the end so it will stay in my bottle without tipping over.
Great idea. The funnel that I am using really is not the best because it is rather narrow in its design.
I didn't imagine the cheesecloth would be reusable, good to know, definitely seems better than coffee filters
I place my cleaning container on the magnetic mixer next to my UV box and run it slow while exposing it to the light. There is no mucus, only cured particles, and When finished I run it through the coffee filter which catches the resin particles, may not be the best, but it’s working so far
How long do you run the curing?
5-10 minutes
Great method, I think I'm going to give this a shot. Also, use Nitrile gloves when dealing with IPA!
That's criminally underrated: it's by far the best system, that doesn't involve distillation or aquarium products (that'll dilute the IPA).
I've been playing this game for 3 years. The bottom line is that alcohol is less dense than any resin I have used. Therefore the only tool needed to reduce the concentration of resin in alcohol is gravity and time. Depending on the resin, all that is needed is from over night to a few days for sufficient gravity assisted separation of resin and solvent to reuse the solvent. If anyone is interested I am happy to expand on my methods. I use 3d resin printed parts in my products.
Same. It all gets dumped into gallon water jugs and it sits for a month or so. Resin settles. Siphon off the top, and it's perfectly good for initial washing of parts. A spray bottle full of clean alcohol as a rinse if anything is still shiny and you're good to go. Being patient pays off.
Thorough, thoughtful, mindful, and helpful. When I started out 3D printing, I got a ton of water washable. The need to constantly sanitize the water seems to make me be a little bit careless with my own safety (My brain: its just water, whats the issue if I touch this or that) I try my absolute best but I still find myself screwing up. Been wanting to try ABS finally after a whole year of printing, and you just fixed my NUMBER ONE problem with switching. Very interesting. And yes, get yourself some thicker, waterproof nitrile gloves! I cannot stand getting lose water/liquid in my gloves.. doesnt seem safe. Nitrile is pretty good even just for the usual exam glove type.
i found that the IPA recovered from all the squeezing is just not worth the effort- so what I do instead is pour it through the cheese cloth, let whatever is going to drain through it naturally into the container, then dump the wet goo into a separate container that I then take outside and allow to harden completely in the sun. after that I just toss the dry bits of resin into the garbage.
I did something similar, I cured the bits and then filtered it through a multi-staged soda bottle filters, using cotton to plug the holes and then using activated carbon to filter it.
After the first two passes it was pretty much clear.
I've also tested this without curing the resin and it went from green to a off-clear with a bit of white.
Do not eat the forbidden yogurt!
Damn... I loled hard
If you prefer a more passive approach there is a simple way to limit clogging of your coffee filters. As stated, the microparticulates will clog the pores, however agitation during the curing stage will help the resin agglomerate into larger particles. Even though cured, the particles remain slightly sticky and will flock together.
I have a plastic soda bottle on the windowsill with a few M8 nuts inside to help agitate the liquid, scrape the sides of the container and act a a low intensity ball mill. So before filtering, I shake it for a bit, stuff it in the refrigerator to settle (probably unnecessary but colder temperatures should lower the solubility somewhat) until there's a visible clear fraction on top. After this treatment about a litre and a half will cleanly come through one coffee filter, including the yoghurt at the bottom of the bottle.
You can go really hard core and use a flocculent such as aluminium sulphate (a particular type of alum, there are several so get the pure stuff) to knock, essentially everything, out of solution. If I recall, about 10ml of saturated aluminium sulphate solution will treat 1l of IPA. Any dilution of the IPA should be negligible.
Thank you very much for the cheesecloth idea. I'm gonna try it out
Hi there. Great tip. You can use a "juicer press" to do the squeezing part of the process, BTW.
Awesome method ! Thanks for the tips, it's very clear, and I'll try it this weekend with my (now very dirty) IPA !
Thank for the helpful advice. I knew the sun would cure it, but filtering was an issue with plain filters.
Great video and apparently it was your first one making it all the more impressive. One thing though, I would suggest others not simply throw their leftover micro plastics in the trash/recycling without checking with local guidelines. Here I have to bring micro plastics to HW facility.
Thank you.
I always wondered about using cheese cloth instead of paper filters.
Thank you for this informational video, you have helped me figure out how to reduce waste during manufacturing. I wish you all the luck in your endeavors!
Thanks for this! Wasted a lot of IPA since getting my printer!
Nice, thanks for sharing.
Good quality video. Well presented. Keep up the good work! :)
I found that the best is to cover windows with UV blocking sheet and have resin printing station in the corner behind the cover, used the same IPA for a few months that way and nothing hardened, perfect liquid (but very grey/black because of resin color), no particles on washed objects, but the second I moved to another room for renovation purposes my IPA became "plastic cheese" and became unusable after one hour
Original funnel design was by @VogMan : th-cam.com/video/5U1IshPqmak/w-d-xo.html
Gute Arbeit und danke für den Tipp!
I wonder if you could injection mould that goo into a form then harden it so you have zero wasted
I haven't tried it yet (just printed my first bottle of resin ever), but I already noticed how fast the alcohol get polluted by uncured resin (not as fast as yours apparently, but still).
Also filter don't work well at all (perhaps I should try the cheese-cloth trick too, if it allows me to squeeze the residue ... though I feel I'll need much more than what I accumulate from one 1L bottle of resin).
But I noticed that the alcohol clears quite well when it sits undisturbed for a longer time. Trouble is it's really easy to mix at least part of the resin on the bottom when touching it.
Decanting works ok for the top half of the IPA, but when I need to tilt it more to pour more IPA the resin starts mixing back.
I'll try it next, but I have a feeling syphoning would work much, better, as the bottle (or whatever container you use) can stand still, and you only have to trigger the syphon to start draining the clean IPA on top. Since it doesn't disturbs the fluid & resin inside so much you can drain more clear IPA before reaching the resin rich layers.
Now obviously starting the draining with your mouth is not recommended, since both the IPA & resin can be quite toxic and irritate your tissues.
But fortunately there are pumps that can trigger syphoning safely. Quick search shows they cost between $10 & $15 on amazon.
But that separation made me think of how can we optimize it.
It's obviously due to gravity. Resin is about 11% heavier than water, but alcohol is about 22% lighter than water, so there's over 30% difference in weight between alcohol and resin, already seems like a good start.
But what if we can increase that 30-ish % difference several times?
I'm not sure if it'll make the IPA on top any clearer (though in principle it should), but at least it would make the separation much faster.
All you need is improvised centrifuge.
You can use two identical bottles filled (with dirty IPA) to the same level to keep it balanced, and attach them on a carousel style centrifuge with their cap-ends to the center.
You'll need also a hinge that allows the bottles to hang vertical when not rotating, and to raise up to 90° when rotating.
The bottles doesn't have to rotate at high speeds attached by their caps only of course. There can be a basket (similar shape to your bottles/containers) attached to the hinges and the bottles can stay in these baskets when rotating.
The other trick is to use a controller that can gradually increase and decrease rotation speed (it's really important to gradually slow down. If resin gets mixed up when starting the centrifuge it's ok to just leave it spin for a bit more).
The point is when slowly reducing spin speed the "Down" of the bottle would very slowly tilt from near-horizontal (depending on your max speed) to vertical (when completely stopped).
Then you can syphon the cleared IPA with minimal interaction with the resin on the bottom.
Hopefully using a centrifuge would made the resin become denser and contain less IPA in it - ie get better separation.
This whole thing can even be automated to clean a lot more IPA (or clear it repeatedly, by syphoning only the clearest IPA on the top). For that there needs to be a small logic circuit that switches between (re)filling with dirty IPA, stop filling, and spin for a while at high rpm to get good separation, and finally syphon out (which btw can be done even while spinning; or can gradually slow down to a stop and then syphon of course)
Love this! And yes, I got up to the part where I've been siphoning off the clear IPA. Sucking to start the process though lol so I think I need to invest in a siphon with a pump!
@@Fasty , yes you need siphon with a pump for sure. I got mine for ~8 euro. It's meant for wine siphoning, I think it's the same as beer siphon and perhaps gasoline siphon. All of these are easy to find around.
@@Fasty , update, what's even better than siphon tube with manual pump (that still makes me disturb a bit the settled resin) is
electric pump :)
For about the same price you can get one of those pumps for the large water bottles.
So this way there'll be no disturbance to the resin (besides the suction itself, depending on how close to the bottom you dip the end of the tube).
But I discovered an even better way to separate resin from clean alcohol and do it continuously.
Using an oil filtration centrifuge.
It's a very simple design. Basically a cylinder spinning at high RPMs, with closed bottom, with few holes close to its center,
and a ridge. The ridge is much closer to the cylinder's wall, so when the liquid (ie IPA) is spinning in the centrifuge it'll be mostly flat against the wall (with the heavier resin particles depositing firmly against the wall), but pouring more fluid will eventually make it overflow over the ridge (think about the simulated gravity, and that simulated "down" pointing outwards of the cylinder).
So you just pour more and more fluid, and the cleanest of it overflows over the ridge, while the heavy particles will settle on the walls.
When you turn off the centrifuge, the fluid (with the resin) remaining to the walls (that couldn't flow over the ridge) will flow to the bottom plate (without the centrifugal effect of the spinning) and will flow out of the holes on the bottom that are near the center.
There's also a housing (usually another cylinder) fixed and slightly larger than the spinning one, tall enough to catch all the clean fluid flowing over the edge of the spinning cylinder w/o spraying it outside (a lid could also help).
The bottom of the fixed housing-cylinder had 3 areas separated by 2 ridges:
- the very center one - a hole to allow for the motor axis to reach & rotate the inner cylinder;
- the outer one collects the clean fluid that has overflow the spinning cylinder ridge and has accumulated on the walls of the outer-cylinder (or dripped directly down, but still in the outer area of the housing-cylinder bottom) has few holes to allow the clean fluid to flow out to a clean container.
- the middle area (separated by 2 ridges) is under the holes of the inner cylinder, so when stopped and the remaining dirty fluid flows out it's collected there, and guided to a different (dirty) container again with few holes.
Ideally the bottom of the housing-cylinder could be conical to facilitate faster flow of the fluids (with the drain holes in the lowest perimeter of course).
And that's it.
You only need a strong enough stand to hold it all and few tubes and 2 containers (clean & dirty) for the two out-flows.
The height of the ridge of the spinning cylinder should be as high as to prevent resin & dirty alcohol to escape over it, and low enough to minimize the amount of remaining dirty fluid (that would need to be filtered additionally, either thru a coffee-type of filter, or ran again thru the centrifuge if there's additional fluid to displace it).
Actually when all of the IPA has passed thru the centrifuge, one way to push the rest of the dirty IPA over the edge is by adding water.
Water is ~21% heavier than alcohol, so it'll go the walls of the spinning cylinder with the resin, and will push the IPA higher enough to flow over the ridge.
The cool thing is also that knowing the dimensions of the cylinder you can estimate pretty well what amount of water you need to displace the most of the alcohol (formula for cylinders volume is trivial) - enough to push as much alcohol as possible , but little enough so that the water itself wouldn't flow over the ridge.
NOTE: oil filtering centrifuges usually have a heating of the oil, which in the case of alcohol is not needed (nor recommended!).
Thank you so much for this tip!
It saves me days, hours and Weeks :D!
I'm using this clothes over a rise sieve (big diameter, like 300mm) with 16 layers of the clothes and it works awesome. needs for 10 Liter like 1,5 hours? On every other way that I testet I needed one week + and if some of the paper had a crack, the whole work is over :D
thanks again!! Amazing!
Vogman designed this filter.
Hi, use a (in German) Saugflasche and a (also in German) Nutsche mit Rundfilter bzw. giebts im Laborbedarf Trichter mit "Hilfsrinnen" da kommt eine aus Rundfiltern gemachte Filtertüte rein und eine z.b. Wasserstrahlpumpe an die Saugflasche. Giebts alles im Laborbedarf. Grüsse
Hello, thanks for this video! This is helpful! what grade cheesecloth are you using?
Tanks! I am using one with a 100 grade. I do not know if the grading works the same internationally though.
Danke, das klingt so viel praktischer als die Filterung durch Papier mit ewigen Wartezeiten!
@m3chs, kannst Du noch sagen, wo man so ein Tuch bekommt oder nach was genau man gucken muss? Sind alle Käsetücher geeignet??
@@benjamineisenhofer8174 Ich habe bei "einem großen Online Händler" das "eFond Passiertuch, 50x50cm Käsetuch Feingewebt Dichtegrad 100 Mulltuch" bestellt. Wobei du denke ich jedes Käsetuch mit einem 100er Dichtegrad nehmen kannst.
@@m3chs_makes Ah nice, dank Dir sehr! Ich hab hier ein 3 l Einmachglas von Weck voll weißer Brühe, die dringend gefiltert werden will. 😁
I use that exact same curing station lol
Can you summarize the steps? I cannot get to the goo step, my IPA looks like milk even after leaving it outside in direct sun for two weeks.
Thank you m3chs for your posting this video. I have a question...would it be okay to use denatured alcohol as the rinsing solvent? it has very very little smell and it seems to work for me okay, but wanted to ask you and the "internet" what you think about it. Thanks in advance for your reply.
Well denatured alcohol is also about 94% Ethanol. If anything makes trouble using it for cleaning prints it would be the 6% addetives. I am no chemist but I would just try it out in a well ventialted room. If you see no reaction with the prints surface I would say you are fine. Like, print something small with fine details, toss it into the denatured alcohol and let it sit for half an hour. If it still looks good and nothing weird happened.. 🤷 check out uncle jessys channel. He did quite a bit of testing with different kinds of rinsing liquids.
you need to make your own filter holder with more holes in it
I'm curious... do you cure the ipa/resin mix before filtering? Previous attempts at that have left me with the plastic gel.
I usually let it sit in the sun for a day so that the resin solved in the IPA cures. But during the winter I have a box with 405nm leds glued to the inside that do the job
I normally just leave it on the window ledge for a couple of days and all the particles stick to the sides or sink to the bottom, then I just pour off the IPA into another old 5L IPA bottle!
I'll have to give the chees cloth idea a run for its money as I'm using IPA for my cleaning of resin prints. I tried the water washable when I first got my machine but had a lot of failed prints so I only use IPA washable resins and have very good results. I'll sub your channel and give you videos a go through to see what common interests we may have. I'm new to the 3D printing scene but have become addicted to printing figures. 🙂Thomas over at The Model Hobbyist
Same here. I wish the waterwashable resin would work better but almost all my prints failed with it.
Yeah the way I found to be able to use the water washable was to add it slow to the Vatt a little at a time with regular.
@@luxferre5546
Yeah me to then I went to standard resin and switched slicers as well going from Chitchu to Lychee. I ran with Lychee and never looked back they are super cool. :-)@@luxferre5546
Danke für die Tipp! Wo hast du das Käsetuch gekauft?
Gerg gern, in diesem Fall bei Amazon. Einfach nach Käsetuch suchen, da kommts direkt. 100er Grad in meinem Fall.
@@m3chs_makes Super, Danke!
Nice idea. Thanks for posting. This basically looks like making cheese except you want the liquid. Have you tried using a cheese press or similar device? Cheers.
Thanks! I actually have not. So far I had no real reason tu purchase a press. But I am currenty working on a different video for this channel for which I need a press that kann output a ton or two of pressure... If I purchase one I might give it a shot. Resin-Cheese.. the stuff of nightmares ^^
Where did you get the large container? I'm looking for a good large but shallow airtight/watertight storage container to let my used IPA settle before filtering.
I bought it on amazon. It is from the brand "lock & lock" or "locknlock" and does a good job. The dimensions are 295mm x 230mm x 118mm.
@@m3chs_makes Thanks for the information about containers.
P.S. Go for nitrile gloves and no latex.
So after you wring out the goo and scrape most of it from the cheesecloth how would you go about cleaning the cheesecloth for the next use?
Both steps that you just descriped are enough. It never really cloggs the cloth so that it becomes useless. The Cloth itself has rather big pores compared to filters. Thats why you need to stack it to prevent particles from passing threw. And the nice side effect is that the particles never clogg the cloth.
Unfortunately, filtering does not remove the parts of the resin that have been dissolved in the IPA.
To remove that mix a flocculant like aluminum sulfate mixed with a little bit of water to cause it to clump together at the bottom and pour out the less dense alcohol off the top. I saw that in a different video. Using both methods would probably create the best results
Hi, how can the resin residues be disposed of after the isopropyl alcohol purification process?
In general resin can not be recycled (one of its big issues). So it needs to be burned. In the german trash separation system there is a black trashcan just for that. I do not know how it works in the US though. Sorry
Does putting it in the trash as a bunch of microplastic really prevent it from getting into the ecosystem? I wonder if it should be baked/fused before discarding.
...Or even stored for 10-25 years until we have responsible disposal available
I dont know about the handling of trash in other countrys but in Germany we have 4 trashcans at home. Recycling, Paper, Bio and "Other". Sinc resin does not fit into any of the first 3 categories it goes into the "Other" trash and that kind of trash gets 100% burned here for energy (and the toxic air filtered). Instead of being in a landfill or being flushed down the toilet.
Can a centrifuge help collect particles on the sides of a container?
I have not tried that but I am very certain that a centrifuge would help. I am pretty sure that the cured resin particles are heavier then the IPA so they should seperate nicely. If you give it a try and have some feedback for the comment section that would be awesome.
ekhm...Latex gloves do not work on resin, it leaks through latex, you need blue or black nitryl gloves for that job :/
I'm actually genuinely curious if this dried up goo can be used for anything. I mean, if it can be further cured into a solid mass with UV, maybe it could be used as some kind of putty to put inside silicone molds and then be tossed into a curing machine to harden it.
I too would like to know if the goo can be cured further?
in theory its possible, but remember that there would be a lot of shrinkage as the IPA dries, so it wouldnt be useful for accurate moulds.
However, you could flatten it out and make it into resin sheets, cure it in the sun or under a uv light, then make stuff out of it.
I'd be less curious about trying to use it for anything and more interested in curing it into a solid for disposal.
Some people make disks with it and use it as bases for miniatures. As it ends up looking rough and irregular once it cures (and shrinks) it's perfect to simulate terrain
before throwing it away make sure to fully cure it.
If Mark Wahlberg and Matt Damon had a baby. (Meant as a compliment).
ahm thanks, I guess? hehe
I feel like this cat has resin everywhere.
CHEESE CLOTH?
Latex gloves, no face mask or glasses to keep possible spay out of your mouth and eyes.. yeah, you need a safety course before you destroy your health..
Nitrile gloves. Latex is porous.
Why not just reach inside and remove the larger pieces? ...
You mean the floating cured resin in the container / white fluffy stuff? Its unfortunately not really sticking together. Its pretty much just floating particles and when you try to use a spoon or sth like that you will only get very little of it out and on top of that also remove a lot of IPA that is floating in between the particles
Never use latex....
Resin is not a plastic even if cured
Very good Vid ! But my Englisch is not de yellow of de Egg ! Can You make the Vids with German Subtitel ??
Danke ^^ ich habe gerade mal checheckt, die automatisch generierten deutschen Untertitel sind ganz gut
Dankeschön !
OCD much?
Stop using latex gloves!
eeeew
U have to repeat it 2 times. And as long the Resin is not hard it is toxid and nothing for the normal garbage.
Ich weiß, blöde Argumentation, aber solange Resin und Reste noch flexibel sind diese toxisch.
Dein IPA/ Resin Klumpen hat im Hausmüll nichts zu suchen. Nur voll ausgehärtet.
Ist aber nat. nur meine eig. Meinung
Gruß aus S-H
Funnel is from Vegoilguy
Why do you care about ever milliliter of IPA? You buy it by the gallon?
2 things:
1. When I produced that video thanks to corona that stuff was veery expensive.
2. (To me) Recycling is important to protect the environment. Just because something is cheap does not mean it needs to be wasted.