Improve your prints with acetone smoothing

With a well-tuned 3d printer you can achieve really precise and smooth prints but sometimes that's not enough. There are things that need a perfectly smooth and glossy surface, whether it's for functional or aesthetic reasons. You've probably heard about acetone vapors smoothing. But we keep getting asked how to do it. What material to use? Does it improve mechanical properties? Well, let's take a look at it But first, keep in mind that acetone is a dangerous chemical. Do this in a well-ventilated place as far as possible from any flammable objects and use protective equipment every time you come into direct contact with it. Now, the smoothing process is pretty easy. Simply pour the acetone inside the box, place your model onto an elevated platform and let the vapors do its work. It really helps if you have a fan inside the box to evenly distribute the acetone vapors. Please keep in mind that the box must not be completely sealed to prevent pressure build-up inside. We recommend making a couple of tiny holes in the lid To help acetone fumes slowly escape. This skull was inside vapours for 20 minutes, not bad, right? Of course, this doesn't work just with Prusament ASA. We've put several abs and ASA filaments to the test and printed one sheep and one benchy for every filament. Almost every filament got smoothed in 10 to 20 minutes, with a few exceptions. ABS-T and ASA 275 had the layers always visible, even after long exposition resulting in a total deformation. Speaking of deformation: keep in mind that during the smoothing ABS and ASA will be prone to warping This might be a problem if you try to work with large and thin structures such as this medkit. Sometimes you'll hear that PLA can be smoothed with acetone too. Well, let's test that. To make the surface smooth, the plastic should really start melting. PLA will only get softer but it won't melt. We've put most of our PLA Prusaments and several other brands into our smoothing box but didn't achieve pretty much anything. Then we applied acetone with a brush and finally bathed the models for several hours and days The models truly got softer, rubbery but none of them dissolved. Instead they cracked and lost the original color. Well, are there any other options for smoothing materials? This is PVB aka polyvinyl butyral. This filament can be smoothed with IPA - isopropyl alcohol. This makes it a lot easier to use at home since the IPA is not as aggressive chemical as acetone. It requires a longer exposition but with a little bit of patience, you will get nice and smooth models with no visible layers at all What about mechanical properties? Does smoothing improve them? Well, we've done several tests. The first one is Charpy pendulum testing impact tenacity We found out that smooth objects tend to be a little bit more resilient than the untreated ones. On the other hand when testing tensile strength the force at which material tears was a little bit lower for smooth parts Finally we've tested the layer adhesion where the smooth models got way better results than the untreated ones. As you can see the acetone or IPA smoothing is no rocket science and it can boost your print qualities a lot. So go ahead, try it and show us the results. And as always: Happy printing!

Channel: Prusa 3D by Josef Prusa

Views: 1,016,539

Keywords: slicer, prusai3, Prusa Slicer, priginal prusa i3 mk3, Joe Prusa, 3D tiskárna, stavebnice, 3d tisk prusa, original prusa i3, 3d tiskárna prusa, Josef Prusa, Prusa i3 MK3, 3D tisk, Prusa MK2, Prusa Research, Prusa 3D printer, Prusa, Prusa i3, multimaterial, multi material

Id: NiG1jDEG0kA

Length: 4min 31sec (271 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 25 2020