Also interesting…some of the scratches are still black but once you get under the outer layer they change noticeably. Thoughts on this @Sophia_M ? They may wash off (can just try water or wipe down with >95% IPA) but my guess is they are going to still appear white-ish in this case unfortunately. I think if scratch resistance and aesthetics is key for you you may have to look into additional post processing steps. Perhaps black Cerakote or a clear acrylic spray.
Thank you. We are printing approximately 300 parts per build plate, so additional spray coating or Cerakote post-processing is unfortunately not feasible from a production and scalability standpoint.
To be completely transparent, this has been extremely disappointing from a material-performance perspective. We invested into the full Formlabs ecosystem expecting production-grade results and surface durability representative of the supplied resin swatches. However, the actual printed parts behave completely differently, developing visible white scratching and surface marking even after extensive testing with multiple wash, dry, and cure workflows following Formlabs recommendations.
At this point, it appears the supplied molded swatches are not representative of the real-world performance of printed V5 parts after standard Formlabs post-processing. For a premium production ecosystem, this level of cosmetic surface fragility is very concerning.
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We do production on ~ 2500 Black V5 parts per month (currently ~ 40L of black V5/month), so we’ve seen this on occasion.
For reference, most of our parts are large - 20-30ml/part, though we have some very small (160+ pc/build plate).. We handle all parts the same, and have virtually NO soft/damage issues.
Some thoughts.
- The cleaning system needs to be consistent.
- Blowing air (cold or hot) - IMO, not a good idea. we had trouble with finishes with it.
- Cure time changes surface hardness.
We’ve given up on the standard ‘wash’ system as a fast/economic model for production - it just is not a viable production level system and I’ve got doubts FL is taking this seriously enough to address it.
We use SimpleGreen in our $200 wash system (high volume multi-nozzle pump system thru a 5 gallon bucket) for 5-30 minutes. The agitation removes a significant amount of the waste resin.
We then hand-swish it around in a small tub of ‘trash’ IPA (this tends to have both SimpleGreen and IPA), to clean off the majority of the SimpleGreen and to clean up the surface quite a bit.
Then it goes into a 5 gallon of IPA - same/similar to our bucket pump system for SimpleGreen.
This cleans extremely well. 5minutes in this.
We then run thru the standard Cure.
The pumps actually both run thru large wall mount Culligan water filters which reduce/remove most of the sludge. Of course we still have to recycle our IPA on a regular basis, but it’s far less than prior arrangements - arguably we’ve reduced the amount of ‘wet resin’ by 60%+, so it’s got a lot less work to do.
We have little/no surface damage issues with this, although you may have to consider an acrylic for max protection against UV and surface hardness.
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Thanks for sharing your workflow. One question — are you using the Simple Green full strength, or are you diluting it with water? If diluted, what ratio are you running in your wash system?
Also, are you using regular Simple Green or one of their industrial variants?
SimpleGreen 2.5 gallon Concentrate from Lowes…
No water, no dilution.. full strength.
We now done significantly over > 300 liters of Black V5 and Tough 1500 thru this process, and have probably bought 60 ish liters of simple green. MOST of the SimpleGreen is still in use - we have some that has been set to the side for gravity separation (it takes 3-5 days to separate vertically). And we’ve got a pair of 5 gallon wash systems running it at full strength (so 15-18L each)…
We might have 5 L that’s so gunked up it’s not useful.. But honestly that “not useful” is a bit of a euphemism for “it’s easier to buy another $22 jug than it is to spend 2hrs figuring out how to best filter this heavy concentrate of goo”..
Thank you for your time answering me.
Do you think the Form Wash V2 can be used effectively with full-strength Simple Green for this process, or would I need to move to a different wash setup entirely?
Can full-strength Simple Green safely be used in the Form Wash V2 system? If not, can you please explain specifically why it is not recommended and whether the concern is related to the pumps, seals, material compatibility, or wash performance?
I gave this some more thought last night. Most logical answer is that the white chalkiness appearing in the scratches because the dust produced is stressed a fair amount during particle generation, and that stress will produce a lighter color (same deal with sanding or bending the parts). That is unavoidable, and something I would expect with any black polymer to some extent.
I tried a similar test with Tough2k post cure, since pre-cure will always scratch. Fingernail scratch in the center leaves barely visible marks and key scratch in the bottom left scratch marks and white powder, but I was able to wipe away the white powder with my thumb easily. This resin is 76D hardness so the result checks out. There have been several threads about Rit dyeing parts which could be a rapid option to get the color you desire without painting.
What is your use case? The pictures you have look like you are making a lever of some sort?
why are you using a clip?