A negative (for me at least) is the use of UV curable resin. I’ve got a mSLA printer I don’t use anymore because that material is very nasty stuff. Fumes needing ventilation, spills from hell, disposal difficulty, and rubber gloves being required else the uncured resin will literally tear the skin off your fingers over time with even slight unnoticed contact. More than I want to deal with unless absolutely necessary, taking it out of the range of fun hobby stuff.
Get the water based stuff and then just put the residues outside in the sun. Also take your parts and finish the curing after washing them. You can use regular hand washing soap to wash the parts. Also before touching the part add soap to your gloves.
Water-based resin isn’t any less toxic or safer to dispose of, it’s just more soluble. You can’t put water that’s washed uncured resin down the sink until you’ve exposed it to UV for long enough for the resin to cure and precipitate out, and you still need to ventilate the fumes.
Thats the “put the residues outside in the sun”. The part that helps a lot is the part where you don’t need alcohol to wash your parts. Simply neutralize and toss the support out in the regular trash. The neutralized waster is pretty simple, just leave it out in the sun and wait for the water to evaporate and the acrylate to cure.
That’s not unique to water-based resin, though. You can leave the dirty alcohol out in the sun, and if you’re waiting for it to evaporate, that takes less time with alcohol than with water.
Alcohol costs money and the vapors are toxic. You can get cirrhosis from inhaling that.
Isopropyl alcohol is significantly less toxic than the vapours from the resin itself, even if it’s water-washable. It’s somewhat more poisonous than regular alcohol, so it’s not a good idea to actively drink it, but it’s safe to inhale in reasonable quantities and get on your skin (as long as you’ve not mixed it with printer resin), hence being the main ingredient in hand sanitiser and pre-injection swaps.
As for the cost, it’s inexpensive enough to balance with the cost saving from non-water-washable resin of comparable quality generally being a little cheaper. It’s not like you use a whole five-litre jug per print.
Its just differently toxic. Acrylate monomer can give you the joy of cancer or physical toxicity.
Here’s what happens when you drink isopropanol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMSgoppbXiU
The thing about IPA is that if you smell it you’re getting a dose of it. That goes to your liver causing damage to it.
Here’s some of what happens if you inhale MMA during a pedicure session: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVhjt8Pf6oI
Yeah both things are bad news.
Love it!
It looks like it was built from Legos and sex toys.
All the best things are! 😍
That was fascinating. Thanks!
