I am working on creating anatomical prints out of flexible resin. With that I have two question that I am hoping someone has done something similar or has some ideas.
Having a hard time cleaning off the supports. When I am doing so because of all the angles and curvatures I am finding that it either is taking me a really long time to do so or I am left over with divots or pegs left over on the print itself. Even with using a scalpel blade for removal from the surface of the print it is still not ideal. With doing the sanding after its taking a long time and I am not particularly happy with the end result.
Has anyone tried glueing the parts of flexible resin together? If so what glue have you used. I have tried a cyanoacrylate, gorilla glue and an ASI instant adhesive. All 3 failed.
Printing out multiple sets of RC car wheels in flexible forced me to learn how to remove supports and sand more quickly. Because the touch point sizes on flexible are larger than other materials, flush cutters or a scalpel are your best bet. I’ve ended up with a few failed prints when reducing the touch points much lower than the default settings. Soaking a little longer than usual in IPA helps to soften up the support points and makes them easier to remove. This may change the mechanical properties of your parts a bit so you’ll want to experiment for your application.
As for sanding, you might try sticking your parts in the freezer for a while. Once they’re frozen, I like to use a file to remove the larger burs and then finish by wet sanding with 250 grit sandpaper.
One of the tricks we use for attaching parts together, is to place a dab of resin and then cure it with a UV laser. I haven’t done this on flex, but if you’re having trouble with other adhesives it might be something to try. You should post your models in Projects and Prints when you get them finished!
And yeah, the best possible adhesive is more resin. The resulting join, properly cured, is as strong as if you’d printed it that way. You can also bond dissimilar resins together using either of the types involved. The one problem is that for thicker parts, a small handheld laser doesn’t penetrate well so it’s hard to get a cure through the entire contact area. When I want to bond two large faces together I use sunlight. And of course, it’s hard to get total cure if the print is an opaque resin like Black. But Flexible is clear enough it shouldn’t be a problem (I’ve only done a few prints with Flex and I used this method once to glue parts back together when I tore the print while testing its flexibility. But I have used this trick a lot with Clear and Tough and 3rd party Vorex which is translucent).