Curious if anyone here as tried dyeing this resin with alcohol inks? Specifically, dyeing it black?
Also curious if there are any gotchas or important things to know when printing w/ Tough 1500 V2, as I’ve mostly printed with V1 in the past.
Thanks in advance!
While I’ve not tried dying V2, I have been quite successful with it and have many parts already being used. Everything was done with auto supports, maybe a manual orientation or two to protecting mating faces - but otherwise I’ve been really impressed with the durability and strength, even on very very small components. I just received Tough2000 as well, and am quite impressed by it as well.
I haven’t dyed Tough 1500 but I am definitely going to try. I had to prototype some parts on Monday for a show on Tuesday and used Grey V5 (speed and cost of the print for a visually representative part, not functional). Grey V5 is lighter than Tough 2000, which in turn is lighter than Tough 1500 V2, so I don’t know how well it will translate from Grey V5 to tough 1500 V2 but for my use, it doesn’t matter too much if it’s not perfect.
I used octopus (iirc) alcohol ink at 2% by mass in IPA. I put the mixture in a shallow tub where my parts would be completely covered. I did let parts dry for half an hour before dying, after blowing the IPA off after the wash cycle but I didn’t use a dehydrator. I know @leonhart88 would probably do this and I think it’s a good idea to increase reabsorption of the ink/IPA mixture.
I left the parts submerged at room temperature for 15 minutes and then blew off the excess liquid with the electric air duster, leaving a pretty even hue.
One interesting finding: resin that was in contact with the build plate did not absorb the dye solution. Probably too highly cured. For me it didn’t matter as these faces weren’t visible to the customer. But worth bearing in mind when you set up the print for dying. I also think the surface penetration is pretty shallow - I did some deburring after curing and it left undyed resin along some edges.
Overall, I was very pleased with the results and will keep trying to dye other resins. The success of the dying was one reason I was hopeful there would be a UV stabiliser which could be applied in this way.
running a test now
Did you attempt to dye them before or after UV curing?
Also, I’m actually mostly interested in adding alcohol ink to the resin BEFORE printing (although if others are successful in post dying, that would also be of interest).
I’ve done this before with turning Biomed Durable a blue color, but curious if anyone has done something like this with the very dark pigmented materials.
Very much before curing. As per the Formlabs guide IIRC.
I assumed so, just wanted to check, thanks!
i did one cured one not and they both turned out great with rit dye
Interesting, thanks for sharing that!
