Kind of a weird question, but are there any 3rd Party resins with properties close to the Formlabs Durable AND that are available in a flesh tone? Cost is less of an issue than physical qualities and color.
I’ve been making these little action figures and I love working with the Durable resin, but it would save me a ton of time to be able to just print the figures in a base flesh tone. The slight translucency of colored resin vs dead opaque paint would also be nice.
I don’t know if there are resins out there that meet your goal, but, on a vaguely similar level of risk to using a 3rd-party resin (no warranty expressed or implied), Formlabs Durable resin may have some tolerance for you playing with the color simply by mixing in some pigments.
It might be a lot of work if you want to get repeatable color across multiple cartridges, in terms of dialing in your own recipe and testing to make sure it prints, or you might just get the results you want right away. If consistency isn’t super important (after all, there’s a lot of possible flesh tones), you could even vary your pigments print-to-print to get some different tones.
I’m not sure I would agree that 3rd party resins have a similar level of risk, considering the resins themselves are formulated by chemists instead of mixed blind by a layman. Durable resin has radically different properties than the standard resin, and from what I’ve seen folks have had a lot of printing issues when they attempt to color the durable.
Are there any companies offering custom mixes at all? even if I have to mess with print settings, it would still be a great step up from just hoping pigments are chemically compatible.
EDIT: Has anyone had experience printing Anycubic resin through a Form2?
I’m also looking for this exact thing. Has OP had any luck finding a resin that fits the bill?
I’ve had generally good luck so far tossing mineral pigments into Durable resin in an LT tank, but I haven’t gone for a flesh tone yet. Maybe I’ll get ahold of some yellow ochre, umber, red iron oxide, and titanium dioxide and take a pass at it?
I have seen some folks using Smooth-On So Strong pigments so I’ll be testing that. I’ll be trying to match Formlabs Dental Model resin, which I’ve been using for parts that don’t have the same mechanical qualities.
Glad to hear it. Did you find a 3rd party resin that is comparable to FL Durable yet?
Not yet unfortunately
I’ve got a pale fleshtone dialed in!
Smooth-On So Strong
-white
-flesh
Padico
-pink
The mix is mostly white, with a small portion (1-15%) flesh and pink. Subsurface scattering is warm.
Mixed pigment should be slightly pinker than your goal because warm tones tend to be muted during printing and processing.
Darker fleshtones have been harder because brown liquid pigment is bleached out a lot more extremely than even pink. I am testing with powdered earth pigments now, though the recipe will also likely include Padico Pink for the subsurface scattering effect.
So you got this working with durable resin? Are you using a Form2 or 3?
I’m using a Form2.
I also got the darker tone I was looking for to work!
I used powdered burnt umbre, some So-Strong White, and some Padico pink. I also added some 3DResyns Cure Accelerator I.
Burnt umbre is a UV blocker so you want to use as little as you can get away with. Titanium Dioxide, like in So-Strong White, is also a UV blocker but it fluoresces so it actually helps the resin cure while adding opacity. I also added about 50 drops of the cure accelerator, though I had a successful print before that I wanted to be safe. While I usually print with .30 touchpoints my larger parts needed .45 for this mix, but I’ve noticed no other differences or issues.
That’s awesome! Thanks for answering my questions. I have a couple more. Did you just mix an entire cartridge of durable or did you use open mode to manually pour the mixed resin into the tray? Also, what is “Padico Pink”? Is Padico a brand?
I mix a cup worth first, then the rest of the liter is the print works. I know this voids the warranty on the cartridge but it’s still worth it to me to keep automatic filling, mixing, and heating.
Padico is a Japanese UV resin brand, it’s mainly for crafters but it’s also useable in DLP/SLA resin. The only downside is the red-brown family bleaches out in printing and processing, but less so than epoxy resin or offbrand Chinese resin pigments.
Incredibly awesome. Do you guys have a background in chemistry?
As a new user, I love the closed ecosystem of Formlabs, but will we, owners of Form 3, ever be able to enjoy OpenMode as well?
No no, I just experiment a lot. You remember material qualities at a certain point.
Experiments are expensive with this resin, so I happily share what I learn.
I dunno if Form 3 will ever get Open Mode, but I don’t use it. The functionality loses aren’t worth it.
No Open mode? So you are using this modified resin with the standard parameters for printing Durable on your Form2?
I am, the only adjustment I do (and I’ve only had to do it with the darkest tone) is add cure accelerator to the resin.
