acetone vapor smoothing (again)
Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2014 3:50 pm
I played around with this some months ago (https://groups.google.com/d/msg/makerge ... rlfqyhsPIJ), and decided to give it another go. Once again, a disclaimer: acetone vapor is highly flammable. You should not attempt this without some good ventilation.
This time I printed a platform in PLA with some top surface grooves to prevent puddling. The standoffs have slots for pennies, to try to isolate them a little bit from the bed heat. I tied thread around the legs and knotted them off at an equal distance above the platform, letting me lower and raise it level into and out of the container.
I put the jar on the bed (with lid on) and heated it to 100C. After waiting for the vapor line to rise above the height of the object, I lowered in the platform and let it sit until it was smooth, a few minutes.
Removed from heat, recondensed and recovered the acetone. The top of the print is marred because the low infill left some holes in the surface.
Interestingly, the vapor treatment seems to have warped the platform, and made it flexible.
This time I printed a platform in PLA with some top surface grooves to prevent puddling. The standoffs have slots for pennies, to try to isolate them a little bit from the bed heat. I tied thread around the legs and knotted them off at an equal distance above the platform, letting me lower and raise it level into and out of the container.
- owls-2.JPG (101.78 KiB) Viewed 6352 times
- owls-1.JPG (125.25 KiB) Viewed 6352 times
- owls-3.JPG (101.97 KiB) Viewed 6352 times
- owls-4.JPG (83.21 KiB) Viewed 6352 times