Hi all,
I need to treat the surface of my printed parts with clear resin in order to reach the maximum of transparency.
I have used sandpaper from 320 to 1000 for smoothing the surface but the model is still opaque…
Any suggestion for reach my goal?
Thanks for any help,
Alessandro
I assume that you are talking about a print made from the clear resin. If you have it down to 1000 grit you should easily be able to get it very transparent using a polishing compound designed for plastics. I find Zam polish works very well on plastics. This is a product that you would use with a polishing wheel. I use a loose muslin wheel charged with Zam. Do not use too fast a speed (if you are using like a variable speed Dremel tool to spin the polishing wheel) and not too much pressure. In other words, keep the part you are polishing cool, if you don’t follow those guide lines your polishing wheel could actually melt the material and you will have a scarred surface that will be very difficult to fix and re-polish.
Personally I run a relatively large buffing machine (1 HP, 10" loose muslin wheel, 1800 RPM) but this would not be a common machine out there I would think most would have access to a Dremel or similar.
Clear polishes up to near glass like transparency if you can polish all sides and use the method described above.
You should check out our post on making functional camera lenses to see the procedure for creating optically transparent parts. Both polishing with increasingly high grit sandpaper and coating with optically transparent epoxies are viable methods to improve transparency.
I was having the same question. Your reference link seems to be very helpful. 
Micromesh cloths can also do a good job of getting it more transparent–the ones I have go up to 12,000 grit and as long as you can reach the surfaces easily then it smooths very well.