Cleaning 3L Wash Tanks Tips & Tricks

Support & Troubleshooting Form 3L
1

Does anyone have some tricks and tips for cleaning their 3L wash tanks? I’m specifically talking about the non-automated one (the unit that comes with your 3L)…although I guess this topic is also open to the automated units as well as the Form 3 wash units.

I’ve been printing a ton of Rigid 10K recently and I had a distillation/cleaning maintenance run today. There was a ton of sludge at the bottom of the wash tank, making it really difficult to clean.

Wondering what other people do. I’m considering plasma cutting out a little removable wash plate at the bottom which will collect all the sludge and is removable so it’s easier to clean off. Don’t really enjoy sticking my whole arm inside the unit to clean.

Would have to be stainless or aluminum…not sure if stainless will cause galvanic corrosion with the aluminum tank though…perhaps even a laser cut plastic tray would be fine.

2

We also print LOTS of Rigid10k, I have pressure washed out my automated unit tank a few times…

Not really sure what the best way of cleaning is or should be.

3

Yeah, I have the manual finish kit and it’s a pain to clean. The vertical walls are fine, it’s the very bottom that sucks.

If I end up designing a removable cleaning tray thing I will let you know.

4

Hi all,

Thank you for sharing your experience - we went ahead to look into this a bit further for you for ideas as well.

Rigid 10k has some material that would tend to sink and sticks to the bucket, which is how the sludge is likely being formed.

The removable plate you mentioned sounds like a good idea.

One other suggestion I was given is that you could use a separate bucket - one bucket for the initial wash with the sludge (essentially, it would be the sludge filter), while the other bucket would be used to completely finish the cleaning.

I understand this may not exactly be what you are looking for, since this will still introduce a bucket with sludge but we hope this suggestion helps with additional ideas!

5

Hi @Phil.O - thanks for the details and for confirming this is mainly specific to 10K. That matches my observations with all the other resins that I’ve used and washed.

6

@Phil.O We have the automated wash unit, would you recommend the same for us? A pre rinse bucket then we put our parts into the automated unit?

I’m going to have to start buying semi loads of IPA to get the cost down LOL. This stuff goes so fast it seems like… :laughing:

7

I would highly recommend a solvent distiller. We run the Uniram URS500 and it’s great. Less $$$ spent on IPA and way better for the environment. A win-win for us.

8

Thank you everyone for the suggestions! @TJAR_Ryan, using a pre-rinse as Phil suggested could also indeed be useful for the automated wash. The initial rinse would serve to remove a good amount of liquid resin from the part surface, thus extending the lifetime of the solvent used in the automated wash.