I’ve been pretty happy with the Form Cure & Wash. More happy with the cure than the wash to be honest. I find that the wash doesn’t do a super great job of cleaning parts, and the agitation could be stronger.
Aside from the wash not cleaning super well every time (depends on material & geometry), I print in a lot of different resin types. My wash station often has little flakes and particles of black, tough, durable, etc. I sometimes get black flakes that end up on durable parts and when they air dry, ends up looking really ugly.
Does anyone have tips on either preventing this from happening, or quick, easy, ways to clean and filter out the wash?
I hear you on the particles getting on your prints. I just had to clean mine out really well. I’m not sure how but glitter got inside of mine so whenever I cleaned a print it would come out with glitter on it. I say just remove what you have in there and just really give it a good cleaning. I ran water with just a pinch (I mean a literal pinch) of dish soap in it over 2 hours. Rerinsed with just plain water then set it back up and good to go.
I’ve resorted to accepting that the wash tank will always leave an unacceptable amount of residue on my prints. So now I have a squeeze bottle (from the finishing kit) with clean IPA that I immediately rinse over the part - with the IPA washing straight into the Form Wash. This removes the residue and helps top up the Form Wash at the same time. I haven’t cleaned out the wash tank in months now, but haven’t had an issue with my new method. Using the squeeze bottle can also help clear uncured resin from tricky internal features that the form wash doesn’t clean well. After the rinse I like to immediately blast the part with the air compressor - mostly coz it means I can chuck it straight into the cure station, but it also helps blast out any other particles or resin.
Thanks guys. I think my wash station is far due for a cleaning and its on my todo list.
I’ve also started keeping a squeeze bottle of IPA specifically for this purpose. However, it kind of defeats the purpose of having an automated washing station because it means I HAVE to be there when the wash finishes otherwise the particulates dry on the part and they’re hard to remove afterwards.
I guess I’ll just try to clean it more often and maybe use a strainer of some sort to filter out particulates before each use or something…