Dye the Flexible 50A

General Discussion
1

Hi All,

I want my part printed with Flexible 50A to be white, can I use alcohol or any other type of paint to mix it with the resin?

My printer is Formlabs 3+.

Thanks.

2

I’ve used alcohol ink in the past with varying degrees of success, mostly dependant on what color you’re looking to end up with. and it’s readily available at any craft or hobby store.

4

I want it to be white, so do I just mix it with the resin before the printing starts and keep adding along the way? And would that damage the resin tank in anyway?

Thanks a lot !

5

Hi @Abood123,

I would recommend looking over our Guide to Dyeing, Painting, and Coloring SLA Parts. Dyeing the liquid resin is a potential option depending on your use case. Sticking with the proportions of ink and resin outlined in the guide will yield the best results.

7

Thanks

I just have one more question which the guide doesn’t include, shall this process shorten the life span of the tank in anyway?

8

I want it to be white, so do I just mix it with the resin before the printing starts and keep adding along the way?

DO NOT add alcohol ink to the resin.
using alcohol ink to color parts is achieved by applying the ink after the part has been cured.

9

You can technically add it to the resin and Formlabs even sells a kit to do this https://formlabs.com/store/materials/color-kit/

You can choose to add any alcohol dye at any of the 3 stages: resin, alcohol wash, and after uv cure.

I haven’t tried it yet, but I plan to try an alcohol dye in the wash stage because it won’t effect the resin, it should allow you to use on multiple versions of the resin, and after curing I would think it’s harder to absorb the dye.

10

Hi all,

Just to briefly follow up on this - based off the article I linked previously, it should be OK to add alcohol ink to the liquid resin itself in adequate proportions (~10 mL alcohol ink per 1 L of resin). The article suggests doing so for Clear Resin and warns that doing the same for Elastic or Flexible may lead to variable results, but in my experience dyeing these resins in the same way can work very well. Alternatively, dyeing the parts after they have already been printed can also be a great option.

11

I stand corrected.
My only experience adding alcohol ink to the resin tank turned into a huge mess.
Even though the ink appeared well mixed into the resin, I still ended up with a mis-print containing mass amounts of swirl lines, prompting our team of 5 to declare this effort a fail (and a failure we all learned from).
Success was acheived when we dyed the parts after curing.(white resin/yellow ink)

12

No worries! Dyeing the liquid resin can produce variable results as this does affect the curing process, so dyeing the parts after post-curing is a good option especially if larger batches of similarly dyed parts are not needed.