SMOOTHING 3D prints with isopropyl alcohol

so do you remember that video i made a while back where we took basically took a fan showdown fan and we printed it three times once in pla twice in abs to see how it performed when it was smooth like the surface was smooth because there's a lot of questions about does the layer lines on a 3d printed fan her performance and for the most part in that test we found that it performed about the same but it was a little bit quieter but even before making that video i've always been kind of fascinated with the whole smoothing process of prince taking something that's obviously 3d printed where you can see all the different layer lines and then give it a nice smooth you know shiny surface finish i just think it looks a lot better problem is with acetone smoothing you got to use abs and abs can be a pain in the print with uh it smells when compared to pla it likes to warp if you just think about like anything cold you just think ice cube just falls off the build plate stuff like that now it's a little better if you use an enclosure but uh it could be a little bit tricky i have printed it on my prusa it's not like impossible to do but it's not as easy as pla but i recently found out that there is this filament that does exist in the world that was specifically designed to be smoothed that's what we're going to take a look at today and it's made by polymaker now originally polymaker reached out and asked if i was interested in trying out some of their new polyterra pla this is essentially a pla that's a bioplastic that was designed to be sustainable for the uh the environment it's got this nice cardboard spool holder it's a bioplastic and it was also designed to be easy to print and for the most part while using this i thought it would work just like pla if you actually go back to season two episode seven of the fan showdown this is the exact filament that we use it's a polyterra pla it's got it's a the color is called mint and it worked well the prints turned out good the support came off easy and the fans performed just as well as they would if they were just used regular pla but while looking at this filament i came across another one they sell called poly smooth and this is the stuff that trigg intrigued me this stuff is specifically designed to be post-processed after the printing process it's a lot of processes to give that nice shiny finish that i they do love a lot so essentially you get the same surface finish that you do when you acetone smooth abs but you don't get to deal with all the annoying aspects of abs like the smell the warping all the good stuff and for the last week now i've been printing different models with this to kind of give it a shot and for the most part i would agree i didn't notice any goofy characteristics it didn't smell the only thing i did notice when i originally started testing it with my pla setup uh this stuff does not like to stick to the build plate i used the fl sun sr to do all these prints and right out of the gate fell off i had to use a little bit of a glue stick up the bed temperature to 70 degrees and from that point forward no problems other than that i did increase the hot end temperature just slightly i normally print my pla around 200 205 for this stuff i kicked it up to about 210 and it worked a little better so for the smoothing part for abs you use acetone for polysmooth you use isopropyl alcohol and they recommend to get the best results to use this piece of equipment that they also sell called the polysure now what this thing does is you put your model in there and it seals it in this little enclosure and there's a nebulizer in the back that takes ipa that we got right here and it creates a fine mist that goes inside here and the model spins around there evenly coating the entire surface and eventually smoothing out to a nice glossy sheen i've only tried it once to see how the machine worked on a print that failed and it seemed to work so i'm really excited to try it on an actual print to see what it does turn out to look like and i know you're also thinking this because i was this thing could probably also work with uh acetone for abs and no a lot of the parts on this are actually made of abs so that's a bad idea so here are all the models that we're going to try to smooth to see how they turn out one of course the benchy we gotta try the benchy and then i want to try one of these print and place models to see if the smoothing process seizes the whole deal up so right now it's just normal everything flops like it should uh we'll smooth it out and see if it stays all flappy then i got a nice little vase the reason i wanted to try vase is that if you print with fdm printers often you'll know that they are not watertight and if you put water in this they just sleek out so if we smooth it i want to know does it be does it make it doesn't make it waterproof or watertight because that might have implications for future projects and i'm just looking down this thing right now and there's there's more holes in this and there's probably plastic so it's not looking good and then lastly i printed this nice big bust of deadpool and the reason i want to try this one is that it's pretty much at the limit to what this machine can can hold also it printed very well without support and it has a lot of detail that i want to see if it's maintained after the smoothing process so how this thing works is you turn it on like it already is you hit open you wait ah it could be a little faster i won't lie on the top here you got this little removable build plate where your model goes set that in there like so this plastic cover can be removed pretty easily and what you got to use is this little turkey baser that they send with the the unit and there's a little tank in there you fill it up with ipa uh have to put your model on it like this little benchy we'll set our timer with this dial and the dial shows a bunch of little squares above it each square represents about five minutes and per the manual they recommend about 20 to 40 minutes and that's kind of based on your model size so for like the benchy we'll start with like 20 minutes see what happens for deadpool here if he fits in there we'll probably go like 40 then maybe longer in the top here you do have some led lights that are controlled from here the nebulizers in the back and you got a little rgb light that they added back there just so you can see the mist it looks it looks super cool at least i think so let's fill the tank and see what happens [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so we got them all done this one was a little tight we got them to fit in there but let's let's start with the old benchy because that's what we did first and everybody's pretty familiar with a with a benchy and for the most part it turned out pretty good everything is smooth i mean you can kind of see layer lines up close but you do have that nice gloss glossy look we didn't lose too much the detail on the smoke stack and in my defense this was my first go at using this machine and i could have probably left it in longer but it's very it's very tricky if you've ever smoothed abs you know if you don't leave it in long enough it just looks like a 3d print that's a little glossy too long and it just melts away so this was not too bad for the first attempt the octopus turned out much much better i think uh the the head is very smooth it's got that glossy look to it but because it's a print and place model you can see that the legs no longer they no longer move like they used to they they still can and i guess if you went through and manipulated every single one of them you could probably break it free what happens is that where they touch and where they touch when it's being smoothed it kind of just starts to dissolve and they kind of weld themselves together if you can look at this pla one you see how they move this guy can pretty much stand up on his tentacles now so if you want to smooth out a print in place just be aware that you don't want to overcook it and then after you get it out and it dries you want to manipulate everything to kind of get everything broken up i could probably use an x-acto knife too but in the end not too bad the vas or vase i actually think this one looks the best out of the three this was my third attempt so i was kind of getting used to it at this point and i think this one turned out really well now it's still not waterproof but i don't believe that's because the smoothing kind of sealed it up i think it's the model itself because if i look down it everywhere that these points come together i can see a hole there and it's just too big for it to fill but i think if it was a nice even print and there was very very tiny gaps and you smoothed it out i do think it would uh you'd have a better chance of sealing it up also i did notice i used to have oh this is a really this is a really big vase that i did on the sr and if you ever printed vases or vases or whatever you'll notice that when you print them it's just one layer thick so if you squeeze it you can pretty much destroy it very easily the layers just kind of break apart but since it's been smooth everything is a lot it's like it's like almost like a rubber now it's kind of cool it's much more durable i think than when it's just a 3d printed one so that might be a benefit too now deadpool here this this is about the limit of this machine to get it to fit i had to put it in there one without the the platform so the little stand that it comes on which was good because it fit but bad in that after it did smooth out it was pretty much welded to the platform and i had to well one the elevator couldn't come up and then after i got up a little bit i had to open this up and try to pry it out there without breaking anything luckily i got it off but yeah if it's i wouldn't recommend using this thing without the platform these little teeth that it's on here are there for a reason they help you know keep it elevated and therefore it doesn't get stuck to it and even with the platform out this guy was very close to the top here where the lights are and you'll notice that on the bottom like on the base it's overcooked i mean there it was in there way too long all the detail is almost just melted away and then on top of his head where it was almost touching the surface you can still see the layer lines in the middle though it doesn't look too bad but definitely you want to you want to stay within the uh the size constraints of this machine if you're going to use it and i don't think you actually have to this this thing's awesome don't get me wrong it made the process way easier than when i did the abs smoothing with a vapor and like a sealed container that i couldn't see into i had to just keep opening and closing it and make sure i kept refilling all the acetone as it evaporated away this thing you just fill up the tank turn it on and just watch it if you're new like me just watch it until you can see it's to the smoothness level that you want to be at and then once you get used to it you can probably just set it and forget it but yeah i think it's for the most part pretty awesome and overall if i compare my limited experience doing abs smoothing and smoothing with this this is a lot easier it's a lot easier to print it doesn't smell like crap it doesn't warp like crazy it's just all around an easier product which makes sense this is specifically designed to be easy to print and to smooth and i think the uh the look is very very appealing it takes some take some getting used to to fine tune the time limit you want to leave it in there but a little bit of practice i'm sure you'd be great at it if you're interested in any of this this pla the polyterra pla this poly smooth this machine itself the old sr that i printed this stuff on i'll leave links in the description below but in if you have also if you have any ideas what we should do with smoothing if you have any specific projects in mind let me know we'll we'll give it a shot also i did notice i didn't even think about this until now i printed this with a very thin wall and you can see the gyroid infill through the sidewall especially now that it's smooth and it's got a nice gloss you can see all the lines so if i guess if i was going to do this again i would definitely print it with a thicker wall just so you couldn't see that infill and lastly you might be thinking with all that ipa vapor it smells bad but surprisingly this thing is sealed pretty well and i couldn't smell pretty much any ipa while it was in process and i was pretty blown away by that but yeah i like it until next time you

Channel: Major Hardware

Views: 302,732

Keywords: 3d printed projects, 3d printing, smoothing 3d prints, how to smooth 3d prints, how to smooth 3d prints pla, polymaker, polysmooth, smoothing abs, smoothing pla, smoothing polysmooth, what is polysmooth, polysher polymaker, polysphere, polysher, best material to smooth, smoothing prints made easy, polymaker polysher, polymaker polymax pla, polyterra pla review, polyterra pla, 3d printing smoothing, how to smooth 3d printed parts, best 3d printed material to smooth, pla, smooth

Id: Swxp6LFpPhg

Length: 13min 43sec (823 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 23 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Redwraith323]

If you are not scared of Post Processing why not buy a resin printer?

Also polysmooth is quite expensive afaik, you could go with either normal pvb or abs. Pvb can be smoothed with isopropanol alcohol and abs with Aceton. Perhaps it would even work with hipps and limonene.