Will refridgeration extend resin shelf life?

Back in my dry transfer and screen printing days we used to put the uv stencil emulsions in the ridge when not in use. Then take them out and let warm to room temp before using and it used to double the shelf life.

Would this work with the FL resins too?

It seems that both excessively high and low temperatures will accelerate the rate of degradation of the photoinitiator and other components so I might recommend against refrigeration. This might also make some components more likely to settle out of the solution and require extra agitation before using a cartridge again.

It has a temp range for good reason actually.

DSM advises to store their photoinitiators between 15 and 30C. Same probably applies to formlabs resin.

Below 15C you might get phase separation and if this happened you need to stir the resin very well. Above 30C can cause depletion of stabilizers which can result in polymerization(hardening of the resin).

1 Like

The photo stencils if frozen would be junk but storing them at 45F drastically increased their shelf life by double. Not sure why there would be a big difference between those and the resins.
Like I mentioned I always brought them back to room temperature and mixed them well before using.
Has anyone tested? Maybe put a small amount of a new purchase in 2 small containers. One stored in the fridge and other on shelf and see if it works? I know its a slow test that will take more than a year to see the results.