My lab is currently working on a project involving 3D printing some anatomical parts like bones and some soft tissue. So the plan is to print bones in Durable V2 resin and the soft tissue from Elastic 50A resin. Now I am stuck at a stage where I need to bond both the parts.
All the previous posts talk about gluing parts but with same resin. I tried gluing them with goop (silicone glue) - doesn’t work. Now I am trying to glue with some elastic resin and curing the parts - I will update this thread on how it goes.
In the mean time, does anyone have any other suggestions? Highly appreciate it…
401 because it adapts to every material. I use it as a universal solution since I work with all sorts of materials but you may try to find one that’s specific for your needs. They do have a lot to choose from!
You should still be able to bond the parts with more resin. Shouldn’t matter much which one you use as the bonding agent. Though maybe a mixture of the two might work best. Or a 3rd resin type. Easy enough experiment to set up and evaluate. I’d expect it might work best on “green” prints, before post-curing.
Bonding with resin should produce a better joint than an adhesive. I would eschew Cyanoacrylate. I use this adhesive on a lot of different projects, and it does not survive when bonded to something that has a lot of flex. If you must glue, an Epoxy would probably be more durable. You’d want to rough up the mating surfaces. And you’d want to do it post-cure.
But cured resin will bond to almost anything. There are in fact a slew of resin-based adhesives like Bondic that are basically the same kind of photopolymer as the printer uses… just optimized for lower curing energy and higher viscosity so they’re easier to work with. I’ve used Formlabs resin to bond stuff together in a pinch. Just needs a fair amount of UV to get it to kick off… (I have a small ~250mW UV/Blue laser I use for this kind of thing).
I doubt there’s anyone who’s used a Formlabs printer, hasn’t discovered how well the resin will bond to Aluminum. I have a 2" wide wood chisel I need to use every once in a while to chip the more stubborn remainders off my build plate. There aren’t a lot of adhesives that’ll stick to Aluminum. Resin has no problem.
I don’t like the really low viscosity of the 401 so I generally use 431. It’s a bit easier to fill gaps and not get it to run everywhere. It cures a bit slower so gives you a bit more time to align the parts.
