IPA cleanning. Ultrasound Vs. Magnetic stirrer

Hello everyone,

I’m thinking of “automating” a bit the IPA cleaning with a “poor man’s” solution :slight_smile:

I found this video for a DIY magnetic stirrer. The solution seems to be quite cheap.

On the other hand, I found out some people use a ~3 Liter ultrasonic cleaner with IPA. Those are also cheap on eBay.

So the question is… which gives a cleaner part for the time and the buck?

I have to point out that I’m not comfortable with the non-sealed lid of the typical ultrasonic cleaner if full of IPA. I’m not concerned about it catching fire, it is just the fumes/smell of the Alcohol that will evaporate all the time are not nice to breathe.

We use a magnetic stirrer for cleaning and rinsing our Rigid Resin prints and only have the best experiences so far. No experience with ultrasonic yet. But one has to keep in mind that IPA in a ultrasonic cleaner may present a huge safety risk due to off-gassing. You would have to use a sealed container:

I clean parts with ultrasounds. It’s very effective and fast. I just put the part in a large beaker (full of IPA) in a distilled water ultrasonic bath and close the lid. 2 washes for 1-3 min gives good results.
The only issue is for relatively large parts that do not fit in the beakers.

Very interesting, thanks for your post! So you don’t use IPA at all? Do you have any problems with sticky surfaces after post-curing?

You can’t put IPA into an ultrasonic bath directly without risk of fire. Some have put the ipa in a bag with the part and submersed that into water in the ultrasonic cleaner but that would reduce your capacity and leaky bag can be a problem. Ultrasonic cleaning with solutions like Yellow Magic has worked very well for me.

It seems safe…

If too busy to watch, jump to this segment:

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Sorry, yes I use IPA which I place inside the beaker which is in the US bath. (I edited my post)

Thanks for the clarification :slight_smile:

Just found out this. I think it is very interesting:

This is the product that he is using:

http://www.resinaway.com/

I’m doing the same with resinaway in the ultrasonic. It works really fast. Better than the FormWash, which takes longer but is a bit more convenient in handling.

It’s more 2x more expensive than IPA for me. 86€ for 5L vs. 36€ for 6L - is it really worth it?
IPA - Amazon 6L

Same thought… except for me it costs ~10x more…

I bought recently 6L of IPA for 15.88 EUR

ResinAway in Germany costs 55 EUR for 2 Liters or 106.20 for 5 Liters. That is a HUGE price difference to justify.

IPA: 2.64 €/L
ResinAway: 21.24 €/L

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Same thing here. It’s much less expensive in Switzerland to use IPA than some other specialised solvent. We can deal with the elimination and the smell but would welcome a less risky and cheaper option.

We switched because it is safer to use, does not seem evaporate in de formwash and seems to be working for a much longer time. Also the surface finish from the resinaway is much better.

If it boils down to cost… yes IPA is better in that sense.