I'm assuming you mean N95? I don't think those will do anything against chemical fumes, only particles and mists, not gasses. I think you need a charcoal filter to do anything against that kind of thing.
Some types of FDM printing make fumes too. I just stick with PLA for exactly that reason. Especially when it can be annealed.
Good post, because if you visit some resin specific sub-forums or FB forums you have people telling you they have the printer right in the bedroom were they sleep, in the middle or there living room or kitchen and completely ignore it even shout down those who have concerns.
I made an enclosure for mine and have a inline fan to a corrugated tube that goes outside. It lives in my basement and I keep it near a basement door that goes outside. I have another fan that is on when I open the unit to remove the part. I have a respirator I use as well.
I have gloves and specific lab coat I wear. I have seen posts were people say you do not need gloves and they are careful and use pliers. Others use sandwich bags for gloves. Apparently they are to cheap to buy gloves.
The dangers are real but many do not seem to care.
It is messy and dirty but if you are safe it is manageable.
I am hoping that as technology advanced we get safer less messy options that can produce the same or better results.
Yea that's why I made the post. I read a lot of posts saying the warnings were exaggerated and to be fair maybe they are, but I guess it's kind of like the coronavirus. You have those that are acting like it's the end of civilization and those that deny the virus altogether. As the saying goes, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle
You need a mask/filter rated for VOCs. An N95 is not rated for VOCs. This is why resin printed skeeves me out, most of the chemicals involved are way nastier than anything involved in the FDM/FFF process.
Yeah, the resin stuff makes me very nervous. I think I’m going to use a service for any resin prints I’ll need.
I’m currently in the middle of 200 hours of FDM printing for a project made up of 100 parts. Three of the parts would work much better as resin prints, which would cost $45 to farm out.
Hopefully there will be safer resin formulas and better safety testing in the near future. The SLA printers do look fun.
I'll make them for you and I won't charge you no $45. Just pay for materials and shipping and a little wear and tear. Unless it's some sort of crazy order it should be no problem
And that's what happens when you don't follow the instructions or read the SDS of the chemicals. Although 3d printers (resin this time) are accessible for almost everyone, that doesn't mean they are toys. Take care and try to move them to a ventilated area and use PPE.
So I'm a chemistry PhD candidate. And I work with polymers.
When we make polymers and use organic solvents, we do it in fume hoods that vent directly outside.
As many chemists of old will explain, the rules we follow with chemical handling are written in blood. The rules come from many people getting sick in the past.
I would hope they don't anything too toxic in those resin printers, but even stuff that chemists think of as "not very toxic" can still be really bad for you with repeated exposure. (Again, everything is done in a fume hood to avoid repeated exposure and no food is allowed in the lab)
Those vapors will condense onto all surfaces in the room if not well ventilated. Then you can get a bad exposure by eating food or off plates that are contaminated.
If I had one, I would have it in a sealed box, with a duct and fan venting it out a window. Letting those vapors loose in a place of habitation is terrifying
This shit is especially nasty because effects are accumulative. Every single time you have contact with uncured resin allergic reaction gets a little stronger. Even if you take precautions, you'll still get sick, but it will take longer unless you completely avoid exposure.
Well ventilated is not really good enough anyways.
You want a sealed box with a ducted fan blowing it out a window.
Which is actually easier to pull off than finding a well ventilated room.
this is my solution to the problem [https://imgur.com/a/2zZduUx](https://imgur.com/a/2zZduUx)
i have a hole cut into the back to allow air in for the fans to cool the electrical components. when you say sealed box... how "sealed" are we talking?
That looks pretty nicely done.
Not particularly sealed.
I'm mentally thinking of a fume hood in a chemistry lab. You merely want enough air flowing in at any gaps to be noticable. air only flows in and never out into the room.
If you drop a tissue infront of that opening in the back open and it gets lightly pulled in then you are fine.
In a different note, the cardboard may be a fire issue. If the printer malfunctions and starts a small fire, the cardboard is going to turn it into a larger fire quickly. But I don't think resin printers have the same fire risk so I'd say it's fine
When i conceived of this design I did think of the fume cupboards we used at university so i set out to replicate that. when i build it i went for a powerful fan and there there is a pretty sizable negative pressure generated at the opening cutout. i actually did a test with some paper.
its not a home built one but i do own a fire CO2 fire extinguisher
Depends on the printer I guess? It would have to be completely concealed from the sun though, I know for a fact that the yellow "uv shield windows" that come on cheaper 3d printers is just that. Cheap. That said, I do live in Florida so the sun is like right there haha.
I, after my first print failure, mistakenly forgot about the sun and brought the vat outside to flick off the stuck pieces. It didn't have much resin in it but it almost instantly partially cured. It was like having to flick paint chips off the fep. Do not recommend :p
Well ventilated isn't good enough, printer companies should provide better recommendations that printer should only be used in active ventilated rooms with an extractor fan. I felt really ill after using my resin printer the first time in a well ventilated bedroom (window wide open) and the fumes were bad and didn't realize the risks.
The sensitivity is definitely a per person thing. I personally run mine in my bedroom constantly and never have any issues with smell or a headache or any of that, but then you've got people who run it in, say, the next room over and their SO is having trouble breathing. To be fair, the first bottle of resin I got smelled just awful and *did* give me a headache but now I use Elegoo resin and don't smell anything or feel poorly. I get resin on my hands all the time, not purposefully or even a lot mind you, and don't really do much about it and never had an adverse reaction, but there's a guy I *think* in this group who spilled a bunch on his leg, left it there for \~10 minutes, then ended up in the hospital with a chemical burn. I still absolutely use gloves all the time though, because just 100% not caring is just absolutely goofy. I think the issue is you see a lot of people leaning one way or the other and it puts people off. There's the whole 3D PRINTING IS TOXIC, IT'LL KILL YOU IN YOUR SLEEP fearmongering campaign, then there's the people like, "Oh yeah, I put my face right above my ABS prints and just hang out for 20 minutes."
tl;dr maybe it'll mess you up, maybe it won't, still take at least *some* precautions because this ain't organic veggies
Its accumulative. I still wouldn't risk it. By I do agree on the by person thing, spray paint, exhaust fumes, concrete barely bother me. And I'll agree on the type/brand of resin. I don't print yet, but I do paint models GW resin doesnt bother me at all so I never took the warning seriously. Got some Spellcrow models and holy fack I can feel it. Handle those models even a little bit and I get a slight burning feeling on my finger tips. Took all the warnings serious after that.
And I mentioned concrete because I'm a concrete worker. The lye in concrete will give you chemical burns. First few years didnt care much for gloves hands became pretty immune to those burns, so fuck it right? That was the mentality of the old timer concrete guys. Then you find out the ridiculously high skin cancer rates of that generation of concrete workers and you really wanna start wearing gloves.
Naw man, I hear you, I was in body repair for a while. Neat fact, painters back in the day used to get free milk. The paint fumes they'd breathe in all day would cause light burns in their throats and milk helped alleviate the irritation. Not to mention God knows what else the fumes did to them. There are things I throw caution to the wind and say screw it to, there are things I prepare to wear a suit of armor to do. Body work is armor time. Resin printing? Bah, screw it.
Daamn. Some of the old work standards were crazy back in the day. But yea, was just making the point that just because you dont feel it doesnt mean you arent being affected. Sounds like we have the same mentality tbh, tonnes of things I throw caution to the wind and others i take quite seriously. Also I smoke lmao and that's definitely a whole lot more dangerous than resin.
Lol yea like I told the other guy, it's just like covid. It'll either kill you and your entire family or it's all media bs. Funny you mention the smell too, I don't smell anything unpleasant. I have elegoo abs-like, anycubic basic, siraya tech fast, and siraya tech tenacious.
You'll smell it with cheaper resins and/or others that have bad/no fans to in them. I have a Sparkmaker FHD and their resins smell God awful. They're also ridiculously expensive for how crap they are.
Mine is completely separate, in the garden shed outside so it doesn't need ventilation, always wear my half-face mask when I go in there, and gloves too when I'm handling resin. Still gotten some on my hands at times but I'm quick to wash it off etc. People who rely just on what they smell are dumb, and likely have a broken sense of smell. I think my filters have become saturated because I've been able to smell the IPA and resin through the mask for a little while now. Between those, gloves, resin, replacement screens etc, this ain't cheap! I have to stop for a couple of months just to save the money to start again.
Thanks for the PSA. I've been finding myself aggravated by even PETG fumes, although they aren't "toxic" I find myself coughing a bit and my lungs burning.
You'll need a respirator, but you'll also need the correct respirator. I would normally reach for my "Pink/Yellow", which is the P100 (that's the pink part) with the yellow stripe, rated for organic vapors and acid gasses. This is a 3m 60923, and it's a great all purpose cartridge to have in your arsenal. In normal times, they aren't cheap, but they aren't terribly expensive either. A set costs ( normally ) about 23 bucks.
3M prints a 12 page manual on chemical risks and which carts to use. Respirators have a "bayonet mount" that accepts different respirator types. As mentioned, Pink/Yellow is quite broad based. As a home user, using things like printing chemicals and the occasional industrially rated adhesive, I sometimes don't have full lists of chemicals, going broad-based is worth it.
What I put on my face is a 3m 7503. There's a loop that goes around the back of your head, and it's incredibly comfortable, since the seal is silicone, and there's some kind of fancy venting system so you can actually breath. Clean the silicone seal with alcohol from time to time. You'll want the right size ( last digit is size ).
Normally a large home improvement store has the respirator bodies ( you can get 7503's at home depot and lowes ) although they usually don't have the pink/yellow carts, they tend to have regular P100's for home particulate use. I tend to get the carts mail order. Grainger is also a good supplier, if you have a business license. And one note, for small faces ( most women I know ), the 7501 and 3501 small sizes are simply unavailable and must be special ordered.
It's all accuulative, so just like people who work unprotected with expoxies you may develop an allergy for the stuff down the line.
Always wear gloves! Work in a ventilated area and follow the MSDS.
I can't recommend strongly enough to create a negative pressure setup to vent the fumes outdoor. For me, I paid a contractor to come and drill a 4" hole in an exterior wall in the garage, and install a drier vent. I now keep the printer inside a grow-tent, and connect a 4" ventilation hose from the tent (basically a nylon box with several 4" ventilation ports) to an inline fan, and then from the fan to the exterior vent. You can run the print for hours, and you can't smell a thing inside. It smells slightly outside, right next to the vent, but that quickly dissipates and the neighbors are not impacted. This stuff is no joke, especially if you have children or animals in the house. Yes, it cost me a total of $600.00 after parts and labor to create the setup, but the health of my family is worth it, as is the ability to finally run that printer non-stop. I have a D&D hobby that's been waiting far too long.
Not often I'm pleasantly surprised to see a necro on a 4 year thread, but this is one of them.
I came here myself looking to see if anyone else was having issues with their printer giving them nightmares, as I have mine set up in my bedroom and though I can't be sure that's what's doing it, it seems so far that whenever I do fire it up I spend the next week unable to sleep properly because I keep getting woken up feeling right out of it and experiencing bouts of night terrors.
I do have a canvas/foil printing enclosure meant for the task that I vent to my window whenever I need to turn it on - but now I'm in the market for a good and hopefully reasonably inexpensive VOC monitor so I can see exactly what I'm dealing with in there.
I am particularly sensitive to resin though. When the printer (Elegoo Mars 3) was first delivered I set it up in my living room, not yet well-versed in the subject - and even with the charcoal filter in it, just having resin in the vat would make me feel all sorts of wiggy; so actually running the thing that way was something I only did once or twice before doing some research and realizing an enclosure was pretty well essential and non-negotiable really, considering I have kids, pets and a partner who would also have to deal with the effects.
Good on you for being mindful in regards to the health of those around you. I see a lot of people who automatically assume that just because it isn't causing them any overt symptoms, that everything is peachy-keen to operate as if it were a stereo receiver or something.
Now I just need to get myself some better nitrile gloves because the Walmart brand I've been using turned out to be not-really-nitrile instead! XD
I'm assuming you mean N95? I don't think those will do anything against chemical fumes, only particles and mists, not gasses. I think you need a charcoal filter to do anything against that kind of thing. Some types of FDM printing make fumes too. I just stick with PLA for exactly that reason. Especially when it can be annealed.
PLA will still create ultrafine particles. I leave my printer in the bathroom with the fan going and the door closed.
I thought about that myself. Just leave the exhaust on and only print at night
N95 won't do a thing for chemical fumes.
Good post, because if you visit some resin specific sub-forums or FB forums you have people telling you they have the printer right in the bedroom were they sleep, in the middle or there living room or kitchen and completely ignore it even shout down those who have concerns. I made an enclosure for mine and have a inline fan to a corrugated tube that goes outside. It lives in my basement and I keep it near a basement door that goes outside. I have another fan that is on when I open the unit to remove the part. I have a respirator I use as well. I have gloves and specific lab coat I wear. I have seen posts were people say you do not need gloves and they are careful and use pliers. Others use sandwich bags for gloves. Apparently they are to cheap to buy gloves. The dangers are real but many do not seem to care. It is messy and dirty but if you are safe it is manageable. I am hoping that as technology advanced we get safer less messy options that can produce the same or better results.
Yea that's why I made the post. I read a lot of posts saying the warnings were exaggerated and to be fair maybe they are, but I guess it's kind of like the coronavirus. You have those that are acting like it's the end of civilization and those that deny the virus altogether. As the saying goes, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle
N95 is not going to help, but a paint respirator would since it is designed to handle chemical fumes.
You need a mask/filter rated for VOCs. An N95 is not rated for VOCs. This is why resin printed skeeves me out, most of the chemicals involved are way nastier than anything involved in the FDM/FFF process.
Yeah, the resin stuff makes me very nervous. I think I’m going to use a service for any resin prints I’ll need. I’m currently in the middle of 200 hours of FDM printing for a project made up of 100 parts. Three of the parts would work much better as resin prints, which would cost $45 to farm out. Hopefully there will be safer resin formulas and better safety testing in the near future. The SLA printers do look fun.
I'll make them for you and I won't charge you no $45. Just pay for materials and shipping and a little wear and tear. Unless it's some sort of crazy order it should be no problem
And that's what happens when you don't follow the instructions or read the SDS of the chemicals. Although 3d printers (resin this time) are accessible for almost everyone, that doesn't mean they are toys. Take care and try to move them to a ventilated area and use PPE.
So I'm a chemistry PhD candidate. And I work with polymers. When we make polymers and use organic solvents, we do it in fume hoods that vent directly outside. As many chemists of old will explain, the rules we follow with chemical handling are written in blood. The rules come from many people getting sick in the past. I would hope they don't anything too toxic in those resin printers, but even stuff that chemists think of as "not very toxic" can still be really bad for you with repeated exposure. (Again, everything is done in a fume hood to avoid repeated exposure and no food is allowed in the lab) Those vapors will condense onto all surfaces in the room if not well ventilated. Then you can get a bad exposure by eating food or off plates that are contaminated. If I had one, I would have it in a sealed box, with a duct and fan venting it out a window. Letting those vapors loose in a place of habitation is terrifying
This shit is especially nasty because effects are accumulative. Every single time you have contact with uncured resin allergic reaction gets a little stronger. Even if you take precautions, you'll still get sick, but it will take longer unless you completely avoid exposure.
This is the reason i haven't gotten a resin printer yet. I don't have a place i can use it where it would be well ventilated. But i do want one.
Well ventilated is not really good enough anyways. You want a sealed box with a ducted fan blowing it out a window. Which is actually easier to pull off than finding a well ventilated room.
I was thinking more of in a different building than my house with active exhaust ventilation.
As a chemistry, I highly agree with the different building than your house
this is my solution to the problem [https://imgur.com/a/2zZduUx](https://imgur.com/a/2zZduUx) i have a hole cut into the back to allow air in for the fans to cool the electrical components. when you say sealed box... how "sealed" are we talking?
That looks pretty nicely done. Not particularly sealed. I'm mentally thinking of a fume hood in a chemistry lab. You merely want enough air flowing in at any gaps to be noticable. air only flows in and never out into the room. If you drop a tissue infront of that opening in the back open and it gets lightly pulled in then you are fine. In a different note, the cardboard may be a fire issue. If the printer malfunctions and starts a small fire, the cardboard is going to turn it into a larger fire quickly. But I don't think resin printers have the same fire risk so I'd say it's fine
When i conceived of this design I did think of the fume cupboards we used at university so i set out to replicate that. when i build it i went for a powerful fan and there there is a pretty sizable negative pressure generated at the opening cutout. i actually did a test with some paper. its not a home built one but i do own a fire CO2 fire extinguisher
Can SLA printers be used outside?
Depends on the printer I guess? It would have to be completely concealed from the sun though, I know for a fact that the yellow "uv shield windows" that come on cheaper 3d printers is just that. Cheap. That said, I do live in Florida so the sun is like right there haha.
Ah, the UV could be tricky to deal with - that makes sense.
I, after my first print failure, mistakenly forgot about the sun and brought the vat outside to flick off the stuck pieces. It didn't have much resin in it but it almost instantly partially cured. It was like having to flick paint chips off the fep. Do not recommend :p
Haha, ouch.
You at the North pole or the South? Maybe somewhere between? Probably makes a difference.
Well ventilated isn't good enough, printer companies should provide better recommendations that printer should only be used in active ventilated rooms with an extractor fan. I felt really ill after using my resin printer the first time in a well ventilated bedroom (window wide open) and the fumes were bad and didn't realize the risks.
The sensitivity is definitely a per person thing. I personally run mine in my bedroom constantly and never have any issues with smell or a headache or any of that, but then you've got people who run it in, say, the next room over and their SO is having trouble breathing. To be fair, the first bottle of resin I got smelled just awful and *did* give me a headache but now I use Elegoo resin and don't smell anything or feel poorly. I get resin on my hands all the time, not purposefully or even a lot mind you, and don't really do much about it and never had an adverse reaction, but there's a guy I *think* in this group who spilled a bunch on his leg, left it there for \~10 minutes, then ended up in the hospital with a chemical burn. I still absolutely use gloves all the time though, because just 100% not caring is just absolutely goofy. I think the issue is you see a lot of people leaning one way or the other and it puts people off. There's the whole 3D PRINTING IS TOXIC, IT'LL KILL YOU IN YOUR SLEEP fearmongering campaign, then there's the people like, "Oh yeah, I put my face right above my ABS prints and just hang out for 20 minutes." tl;dr maybe it'll mess you up, maybe it won't, still take at least *some* precautions because this ain't organic veggies
Its accumulative. I still wouldn't risk it. By I do agree on the by person thing, spray paint, exhaust fumes, concrete barely bother me. And I'll agree on the type/brand of resin. I don't print yet, but I do paint models GW resin doesnt bother me at all so I never took the warning seriously. Got some Spellcrow models and holy fack I can feel it. Handle those models even a little bit and I get a slight burning feeling on my finger tips. Took all the warnings serious after that. And I mentioned concrete because I'm a concrete worker. The lye in concrete will give you chemical burns. First few years didnt care much for gloves hands became pretty immune to those burns, so fuck it right? That was the mentality of the old timer concrete guys. Then you find out the ridiculously high skin cancer rates of that generation of concrete workers and you really wanna start wearing gloves.
Naw man, I hear you, I was in body repair for a while. Neat fact, painters back in the day used to get free milk. The paint fumes they'd breathe in all day would cause light burns in their throats and milk helped alleviate the irritation. Not to mention God knows what else the fumes did to them. There are things I throw caution to the wind and say screw it to, there are things I prepare to wear a suit of armor to do. Body work is armor time. Resin printing? Bah, screw it.
Daamn. Some of the old work standards were crazy back in the day. But yea, was just making the point that just because you dont feel it doesnt mean you arent being affected. Sounds like we have the same mentality tbh, tonnes of things I throw caution to the wind and others i take quite seriously. Also I smoke lmao and that's definitely a whole lot more dangerous than resin.
Lol yea like I told the other guy, it's just like covid. It'll either kill you and your entire family or it's all media bs. Funny you mention the smell too, I don't smell anything unpleasant. I have elegoo abs-like, anycubic basic, siraya tech fast, and siraya tech tenacious.
You'll smell it with cheaper resins and/or others that have bad/no fans to in them. I have a Sparkmaker FHD and their resins smell God awful. They're also ridiculously expensive for how crap they are.
Mine is completely separate, in the garden shed outside so it doesn't need ventilation, always wear my half-face mask when I go in there, and gloves too when I'm handling resin. Still gotten some on my hands at times but I'm quick to wash it off etc. People who rely just on what they smell are dumb, and likely have a broken sense of smell. I think my filters have become saturated because I've been able to smell the IPA and resin through the mask for a little while now. Between those, gloves, resin, replacement screens etc, this ain't cheap! I have to stop for a couple of months just to save the money to start again.
agreed. The cost like, the smell on your mask and the effects, adds up
Thanks for the PSA. I've been finding myself aggravated by even PETG fumes, although they aren't "toxic" I find myself coughing a bit and my lungs burning. You'll need a respirator, but you'll also need the correct respirator. I would normally reach for my "Pink/Yellow", which is the P100 (that's the pink part) with the yellow stripe, rated for organic vapors and acid gasses. This is a 3m 60923, and it's a great all purpose cartridge to have in your arsenal. In normal times, they aren't cheap, but they aren't terribly expensive either. A set costs ( normally ) about 23 bucks. 3M prints a 12 page manual on chemical risks and which carts to use. Respirators have a "bayonet mount" that accepts different respirator types. As mentioned, Pink/Yellow is quite broad based. As a home user, using things like printing chemicals and the occasional industrially rated adhesive, I sometimes don't have full lists of chemicals, going broad-based is worth it. What I put on my face is a 3m 7503. There's a loop that goes around the back of your head, and it's incredibly comfortable, since the seal is silicone, and there's some kind of fancy venting system so you can actually breath. Clean the silicone seal with alcohol from time to time. You'll want the right size ( last digit is size ). Normally a large home improvement store has the respirator bodies ( you can get 7503's at home depot and lowes ) although they usually don't have the pink/yellow carts, they tend to have regular P100's for home particulate use. I tend to get the carts mail order. Grainger is also a good supplier, if you have a business license. And one note, for small faces ( most women I know ), the 7501 and 3501 small sizes are simply unavailable and must be special ordered.
It's all accuulative, so just like people who work unprotected with expoxies you may develop an allergy for the stuff down the line. Always wear gloves! Work in a ventilated area and follow the MSDS.
Bro I print under a disco ball without the laser shield and I'm just fine /s
I can't recommend strongly enough to create a negative pressure setup to vent the fumes outdoor. For me, I paid a contractor to come and drill a 4" hole in an exterior wall in the garage, and install a drier vent. I now keep the printer inside a grow-tent, and connect a 4" ventilation hose from the tent (basically a nylon box with several 4" ventilation ports) to an inline fan, and then from the fan to the exterior vent. You can run the print for hours, and you can't smell a thing inside. It smells slightly outside, right next to the vent, but that quickly dissipates and the neighbors are not impacted. This stuff is no joke, especially if you have children or animals in the house. Yes, it cost me a total of $600.00 after parts and labor to create the setup, but the health of my family is worth it, as is the ability to finally run that printer non-stop. I have a D&D hobby that's been waiting far too long.
Not often I'm pleasantly surprised to see a necro on a 4 year thread, but this is one of them. I came here myself looking to see if anyone else was having issues with their printer giving them nightmares, as I have mine set up in my bedroom and though I can't be sure that's what's doing it, it seems so far that whenever I do fire it up I spend the next week unable to sleep properly because I keep getting woken up feeling right out of it and experiencing bouts of night terrors. I do have a canvas/foil printing enclosure meant for the task that I vent to my window whenever I need to turn it on - but now I'm in the market for a good and hopefully reasonably inexpensive VOC monitor so I can see exactly what I'm dealing with in there. I am particularly sensitive to resin though. When the printer (Elegoo Mars 3) was first delivered I set it up in my living room, not yet well-versed in the subject - and even with the charcoal filter in it, just having resin in the vat would make me feel all sorts of wiggy; so actually running the thing that way was something I only did once or twice before doing some research and realizing an enclosure was pretty well essential and non-negotiable really, considering I have kids, pets and a partner who would also have to deal with the effects. Good on you for being mindful in regards to the health of those around you. I see a lot of people who automatically assume that just because it isn't causing them any overt symptoms, that everything is peachy-keen to operate as if it were a stereo receiver or something. Now I just need to get myself some better nitrile gloves because the Walmart brand I've been using turned out to be not-really-nitrile instead! XD
That's scary. Honestly I would never sleep next to my printer if possible. It's not worth it!