What Kind of Alcohol?

That comment is from a while ago (4 or so years), but we’d recommend against using acetone for finishing parts. It’s one of the most effective solvents for attacking resin and will weaken your parts. It can also be a bit more aggressive than IPA as far as health concerns and volatility goes.

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oop, sorry. 4 years indeed. :blush:

John, not sure you got answered on this and you may have already figured out that you should just keep reusing the IPA in the wash tanks until you notice a derogation to it. Basically when the parts don’t seem to come clean quickly.
I find that when tank one, the first one the parts goes into get dirty first. So I dump that one and then swap tank two to position one and after cleaning tank 1 it becomes tank 2 with fresh IPA.

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Hey all;

I know this thread is a bit old but I found it while searching for something.

Anyways, at the time I am writing this, the coronavirus pandemic is active and IPA is really hard to come by, since it’s being snatched up for use as sanitizer.

After confirming solubility with a quick test in denatured alcohol, I’ve used it on about 50 parts so far, manually with the finishing kit. It’s been performing excellently. The only thing I’ve noticed is I have to shorten soak times by 2-5 minutes depending on how delicate the details are on the parts, as soaking for too long definitely muddles detail and 10 minutes soak and rinse for standard resins is way too much. But it works perfectly as far as dissolving resin goes.

I haven’t put denatured alcohol in the Form Wash only because I could not get confirmation from Formlabs that it wouldn’t damage the Wash, and so I’ve been playing it safe. My gut says it would be fine but my brain says don’t mess with it. Your call.

Also I’d definitely leave the supports on until after washing and curing, at least with Gray V4 (haven’t tried others yet) – and if you care about the finish only handle with gloves and don’t pat dry with any textured cloth. The soak does sometimes soften things up and the finish becomes very easy to mess up; and it’s easy to crack or deform things when removing support or cause blemishes when patting dry. After curing, however, the issues disappear, and it’s a lot easier to work with without damaging the parts.

But yes, denatured alcohol works great, the only difference with IPA is it is a bit harsher and faster acting so it’s not as forgiving to oversoaking.

As for those old comments regarding acetone: Yeah, way too harsh. Also, fwiw, on the alcohol side I tried gasoline as well (more ethanol) and it also destroyed the parts – although I didn’t spend much time experimenting and shorter soak times could be OK. The reason I didn’t experiment more with gasoline is that I wasn’t sure what affect any additives would have and I don’t understand chemistry.

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