Washing with TPM & IPA

General Discussion
1

I thought I’d share my experiences on washing parts after they’ve come off the printer.

I used to wash them in very used IPA in the wash kit, then slightly used IPA, then clean IPA in a Form Wash so I didn’t contaminate the cleanest fluid. but it didn’t work very well - the IPA always got mucked up with (for eg) black specks on while objects, and became much dirtier than I wanted.

When I used TPM it left parts sticky, and whatever I did they stayed like that. So it wasn’t a solution on it’s own.

So lately I’ve bought another Form Wash and filled it with TPM. Parts get left to drain on some kitchen paper for a couple of hours, then put in the TPM for 20 mins. They’re washed under the tap, left to dry somewhere warm, and then washed in the IPA for 20 mins and dried again. This works very well - the TPM gets a bit contaminated, but lasts longer than IPA and doesn’t evaporate. So far after lots of washes, the IPA is still clean and parts come out very well. The process is much less faff than using the wash kit.

I did wonder about putting a UV source in the TPM wash to harden specks of resin and let them precipitate out, but haven’t got round to that yet. Has anyone tried it?

2 Likes
2

Hi nwalker,

We use both TPM (for commercial work) and IPA only (for medical orientated work).

Cleaning parts in TPM is good but a couple of things that we have learnt ourselves or taken advice from community.

We clean in TPM at 30 degrees C. Dirty wash followed by clean wash. We do use ultra sonics of 2 x 5mins per wash. We then rinse in warm water at 30 degrees C. 5 mins ultrasonics . We add 1/2 tsp of dish detergent to 1 litre of water for rinse.
We fling off water and then quick dip in clean IPA to absorb moisture. If we do not use IPA for a dip, the parts (TOUGH 1500) is sticky till cured.

We have dedicated containers for each resin wash to reduce cross contamination.