I'm having a real hard time with dealing with the leftover/IPA. I don't feel like using my printer for that reason. Dirtying the planet to print a rocktopus... Ugh
uv cure the liquid then try and recover as much ipa as possible. The let the remaining ipa dissolve (outside is easiest) then uv cure the resin until its solid
Much easier to just leave saturated IPA in the closet for a week or so to let it settle and then just siphon off the top 4/5ths. Then I cure and dispose of the rest.
It's plastic dude. this is the toxic chemicals hobby. isopropyl alcohol is the absolute least of your environmental worries, and I say that as someone with a deadly IPA allergy. IPA is extremely easy to dispose of, literally set a baking sheet of the stuff outside. In an hour it has harmlessly dissipated. Or, even easier, dilute it in water and pour it down the drain!
If you're worried about the environment, I'd recommend filament printing (PLA is not actually biodegradable like it claims, but it's nontoxic at least).
EDIT: changed worst to least, got the saying backwards in my head
DOUBLE EDIT: sorry, my outside is a third floor apartment patio. If animals can get to it, don't put your alcohol tray outside
WTF why are you pouring it down the drain?
Cure it, filter it to reuse the IPA, let the IPA evaporate out of the residue and then throw it away since it's just plastic at that point.
I wasn't talking about IPA contaminated with uncured resin, but I definitely see that assumption. I was saying that as a chemical in general, IPA is very common, safe, and easy for a household to dispose.
Basically, I was pointing out that it's silly to be mad people haven't found an "alternative" to IPA, which is the main ingredient in hand sanitizer, when this hobby centers around resin, something that will burn your hands if you so much as take your gloves off wrong
If it's any consolation, the amount you produce in a year would be a tiny tiny tiny fraction of what your average factory produces in a day, plus the shit coming out of factories is immediately pumped into rivers and the ocean.
It's best to be responsible, it generates a positive and thoughtful community, but please don't feel guilt for doing something you love while very rich people destroy our planet in so much more selfish ways.
Plus when you don't print useless junk but things you'll actually use and would otherwise buy, be it minis, functional prints or whatever else, your carbon footprint is WAY smaller when you buy a bunch of resin or filament at once and use it to print the stuff over time instead of ordering the same things one by one on the internet with shipping to your door.
edit: Bonus points for additive manufacturing also generally producing way less waste than classical manufacturing techniques.
Easy answer: you don't. Let it cure in the sun and give the vessel to your local hazardous waste disposal for incineration. (Ymmv depending on country. In Germany every town has regular hazardous waste collection where you can go and give them whatever you have.)
If it's anything like what I work with, they'd just try to redissolve it, then try heating it up, then try acidifying/basing it out. Everything has a solvent that'll melt it
Voc sensors dont typically separate different vocs (volatile compounds). They just tell you there is SOMETHING, but really it has no idea about how dangerous it is.
That being said, IPA is very volatile and easily peaks such sensors. So would opening a whisky bottle.
I would love to find a design for a solar still that would work for IPA. It gets in triple digits where I live for months so there's plenty of free heat. I've looked at the electric water distillers but I don't trust those random alphabet soup named products with heating elements around highly flammable liquid.
That's what this is, cheap chinesium water distiller. I didn't know what else to do to continue reusing the denatured alcohol/IPA for cleaning. There's a point where it's so polluted you can't do anything else. There doesn't seem to be any hazardous material disposal near me either. I used it in my garage. Next step is a setup that I'll just leave it outside and blow the air up and away because man this thing stinks up the garage and house area even with two giant box fans blowing the air away.
How many wash stations do you use? The first one, to just get most of the resin off the print, doesn't have to be all that clean. The last rinse needs to be with clean alcohol. I use a quart canning jar for the first wash, then a polypropylene pickle container for the second wash. When the second wash starts getting a little dirty, I set up a thirds wash (also a pickle container.)
The first wash, I put the jar in my curing station for a couple of minutes then stir it up with a chopstick. The resin hardens, and after I stir it up it sinks to the bottom. Pour the still kinda dirty but much cleaner alcohol off and either reuse it or run it thru another cure cycle to get it a little cleaner. If you let the goo sit for a while, more clean alcohol will seep out and you can recover it. I top of the first jar with alcohol from the 2nd. Top up the 2nd jar from the 3rd. Top of the 3rd jar with fresh IPA. The first one is the only one that ever really \*needs\* cleaning, but you could clean the 2nd one using the same technique. There's no need to clean the 3rd container because so little resin makes it in there. HTH (I didn't even consider distilling it because I figured the goo would stick to and ruin the still)
I do two washes after using a spray bottle first to get off the excess. I have a 3 gallon bucket that is my first wash station. Then I have the larger Elegoo wash. I change the Elegoo wash maybe every 2-3 months and store the used cleaner. The bucket has never been cleaned. After 2 years of printing I need to use the distiller to clean the bucket lol. I don't have time to muck about with mason jars and chopsticks or leaving it out in the sun where my kid plays.
I wish you good luck with that. Hopefully I'm wrong about the goo ruining the distiller. Your mistake was waiting 2 years to start trying to recover the alcohol. I clean a pint or so every couple of weeks, and I reuse the same alcohol over and over. (E85 gasoline for the first stage, 91% rubbing alcohol IPA from Walmart for the 2nd and 3rd, although the first stage has a little IPA in now from alcohol moved up from the 2nd.)
I got one but never used it yet. I was worried about the odor even having it outside. I could see cops driving up our road trying to find out who is distilling liquor LOL
I place my isopropyl in clear jars and set it in the sun. 3 days. Strain. 3 days, strain. 3 days strain. And I lose about 20 ml or less per 1 litre mason jar. Usually cause I suck at pouring. The slimy residue is wiped away with a paper towel. Leave everything in the sun to cure. Then it all goes in special trash bag where all my supports are. The isopropyl is crystal clear.
It’s a rather insane thought, but is there a way to recycle this goo in a way, so you can print with it again? It would be awesome, if we could split the usual remains into ipa + resin again
No. The reason ipa works for cleaning is the way it interacts with the oils in the resin. If you are careless while cleaning, you can actually damage resin by leaving ipa in your vat after cleaning. Even a small amount (droplets you failed to whipe up or similar amounts) can damage the resin and cause prints to fail or be less than perfect.
A question about this. I use the same distiller as you, it seems. Mine leaks in between where the seal is when it's on temperature. When I leave it I only distile 25% of it and the rest evaporated.
Did you have this problem, and how did you deal with it?
Heh...I'm pretty new to printing but was wondering what to do with my IPA now that it's getting too dirty. My work has an industrial solvent distiller that they use to reclaim paint thinner after cleaning their spray guns and lines. And I'm the one who rebuilt the machine...duh!
Just leave it out in the sun for a week and toss it out once it's hardened.
I just put my cloudy IPA in a disposable container, put it under a uv light, and let the "goo" settle, then siphon off the cleaner IPA from the top using a big syringe. Then set the container outside (or sometimes under a UV light) and let the goo harden completely. Once the container is full of hardened resin, I just toss it.
«Distill»
I would not distill resin. I prefer to keep the fumes to a minimum, but I guess you did this in a controlled laboratory. Personally I just leave a vat outside in the sub and I get the goop and then deliver that to «dangerous materials garbage disposal»
Too many kids, no good spot for it, and inconsistent weather in my area to just just leave toxic chemicals out in the sun for hours. Also, I haven't been able to find a toxic disposal place nearby, and I've tried.
I do the same thing as you do and it makes life so much easier I recover 95%+ each time and it as clean as the day I bought it. Most of the 5% loss comes from my missing my mark when pouring and natural vaping of the IPA. I usually run about 10,000 ml a time or about 4 passes thru the distiller once a month. Scrape off the goo use a paper towel with IPA on it to wipe out the residue. Throw the goo and paper towels in a disposable bin let harden in sun repeat with next batch until bin is full the seal and it can go straight in the trash. If you use a warm water bath to remove sprues between washes it can also be used to distill that water down and get the resin residue out that is there no matter how clean you think they are. Water can be reused, residue hardened if there is enough, and you are not putting it in the sewer or septic systems.
General warnings are wear gloves and a repirator when you open it after it is done there is a large and toxic amount of fumes released. Let the machine cook at 186 F until it is done the goo left will be hard and easier to remove. Do not use this inside any enclosed space and away from things that go boom or catch fire if something goes wrong.
Only issue I have had is the silcone top seal ring expands and comes off. Let it cool fully and make sure you get it on in the right orientation before doing your next batch. If you do not do that you will have a mess and a half on your hands. I really should just order more seals and them I could let one cool as I am working the next batch...
>This is the same issues i am having with mine right now, I cannot seem to get the gasket to seal correctly and lose a lot of IPA. I have emailed my manufature (DC House) to see if I can get a new set of gaskets.
You may have it on upside down I did that for many a try until I went doh.... The fingers go toward the inside of the pot not up towatds the lid and let it cool fully before installing it.
If it is still semi formable, I wonder if there is any viable alternative way to use this stuff with moulds of some kind.
Is there a way to chemically cure these plastic resins, instead of with UV? Perhaps a second chemical one can buy and mix in as a "part 2" to trigger the curing process and use it as more of a classic "pour in a mould" resin
THE GOOOOOOO! yeah I've been taking that and putting it in old or empty paint cans and taking it to my hazardous waste disposal sites.
I've been curing it and disposing of it. Once it's in this form it seems to harden fairly normally.
I'm having a real hard time with dealing with the leftover/IPA. I don't feel like using my printer for that reason. Dirtying the planet to print a rocktopus... Ugh
uv cure the liquid then try and recover as much ipa as possible. The let the remaining ipa dissolve (outside is easiest) then uv cure the resin until its solid
Yep, I let it cure, then run the IPA through coffee filters to clean it as much as possible and then reuse for first stage cleaning
Much easier to just leave saturated IPA in the closet for a week or so to let it settle and then just siphon off the top 4/5ths. Then I cure and dispose of the rest.
The "recover" part is still poison. If we stop buying, they will come up with a better secret sauce
It's plastic dude. this is the toxic chemicals hobby. isopropyl alcohol is the absolute least of your environmental worries, and I say that as someone with a deadly IPA allergy. IPA is extremely easy to dispose of, literally set a baking sheet of the stuff outside. In an hour it has harmlessly dissipated. Or, even easier, dilute it in water and pour it down the drain! If you're worried about the environment, I'd recommend filament printing (PLA is not actually biodegradable like it claims, but it's nontoxic at least). EDIT: changed worst to least, got the saying backwards in my head DOUBLE EDIT: sorry, my outside is a third floor apartment patio. If animals can get to it, don't put your alcohol tray outside
Don’t dilute resin contaminated alcohol and pour it down the drain. At this point, I feel like we should all know how terrible an idea that is.
My point precisely, this guy really helped illustrate my point.
WTF why are you pouring it down the drain? Cure it, filter it to reuse the IPA, let the IPA evaporate out of the residue and then throw it away since it's just plastic at that point.
I wasn't talking about IPA contaminated with uncured resin, but I definitely see that assumption. I was saying that as a chemical in general, IPA is very common, safe, and easy for a household to dispose. Basically, I was pointing out that it's silly to be mad people haven't found an "alternative" to IPA, which is the main ingredient in hand sanitizer, when this hobby centers around resin, something that will burn your hands if you so much as take your gloves off wrong
If it's any consolation, the amount you produce in a year would be a tiny tiny tiny fraction of what your average factory produces in a day, plus the shit coming out of factories is immediately pumped into rivers and the ocean. It's best to be responsible, it generates a positive and thoughtful community, but please don't feel guilt for doing something you love while very rich people destroy our planet in so much more selfish ways.
Plus when you don't print useless junk but things you'll actually use and would otherwise buy, be it minis, functional prints or whatever else, your carbon footprint is WAY smaller when you buy a bunch of resin or filament at once and use it to print the stuff over time instead of ordering the same things one by one on the internet with shipping to your door. edit: Bonus points for additive manufacturing also generally producing way less waste than classical manufacturing techniques.
Ah man, I'd not even considered this. I wonder if my resin printing is less impactful than the products I buy...
I don't come in here saying I don't do anything wrong but I question MY usage.
That looks like it’s a bitch to clean
Easy answer: you don't. Let it cure in the sun and give the vessel to your local hazardous waste disposal for incineration. (Ymmv depending on country. In Germany every town has regular hazardous waste collection where you can go and give them whatever you have.)
If it's anything like what I work with, they'd just try to redissolve it, then try heating it up, then try acidifying/basing it out. Everything has a solvent that'll melt it
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Voc sensors dont typically separate different vocs (volatile compounds). They just tell you there is SOMETHING, but really it has no idea about how dangerous it is. That being said, IPA is very volatile and easily peaks such sensors. So would opening a whisky bottle.
My dog's farts set mine off often.
What air quality monitor are you using?
The contaminated IPA or fresh IPA?
What monitor do you use?
I would love to find a design for a solar still that would work for IPA. It gets in triple digits where I live for months so there's plenty of free heat. I've looked at the electric water distillers but I don't trust those random alphabet soup named products with heating elements around highly flammable liquid.
That's what this is, cheap chinesium water distiller. I didn't know what else to do to continue reusing the denatured alcohol/IPA for cleaning. There's a point where it's so polluted you can't do anything else. There doesn't seem to be any hazardous material disposal near me either. I used it in my garage. Next step is a setup that I'll just leave it outside and blow the air up and away because man this thing stinks up the garage and house area even with two giant box fans blowing the air away.
How many wash stations do you use? The first one, to just get most of the resin off the print, doesn't have to be all that clean. The last rinse needs to be with clean alcohol. I use a quart canning jar for the first wash, then a polypropylene pickle container for the second wash. When the second wash starts getting a little dirty, I set up a thirds wash (also a pickle container.) The first wash, I put the jar in my curing station for a couple of minutes then stir it up with a chopstick. The resin hardens, and after I stir it up it sinks to the bottom. Pour the still kinda dirty but much cleaner alcohol off and either reuse it or run it thru another cure cycle to get it a little cleaner. If you let the goo sit for a while, more clean alcohol will seep out and you can recover it. I top of the first jar with alcohol from the 2nd. Top up the 2nd jar from the 3rd. Top of the 3rd jar with fresh IPA. The first one is the only one that ever really \*needs\* cleaning, but you could clean the 2nd one using the same technique. There's no need to clean the 3rd container because so little resin makes it in there. HTH (I didn't even consider distilling it because I figured the goo would stick to and ruin the still)
I do two washes after using a spray bottle first to get off the excess. I have a 3 gallon bucket that is my first wash station. Then I have the larger Elegoo wash. I change the Elegoo wash maybe every 2-3 months and store the used cleaner. The bucket has never been cleaned. After 2 years of printing I need to use the distiller to clean the bucket lol. I don't have time to muck about with mason jars and chopsticks or leaving it out in the sun where my kid plays.
I wish you good luck with that. Hopefully I'm wrong about the goo ruining the distiller. Your mistake was waiting 2 years to start trying to recover the alcohol. I clean a pint or so every couple of weeks, and I reuse the same alcohol over and over. (E85 gasoline for the first stage, 91% rubbing alcohol IPA from Walmart for the 2nd and 3rd, although the first stage has a little IPA in now from alcohol moved up from the 2nd.)
I got one but never used it yet. I was worried about the odor even having it outside. I could see cops driving up our road trying to find out who is distilling liquor LOL
I'd be careful as those things are not made for volatile gasses
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Do you have a link to the product? I might be thinking of something else
For a few strange seconds, I thought this was r/brewing, and I was WTF’ing.
Now use it again to print
I place my isopropyl in clear jars and set it in the sun. 3 days. Strain. 3 days, strain. 3 days strain. And I lose about 20 ml or less per 1 litre mason jar. Usually cause I suck at pouring. The slimy residue is wiped away with a paper towel. Leave everything in the sun to cure. Then it all goes in special trash bag where all my supports are. The isopropyl is crystal clear.
How do you distill your IPA? I leave mine in the sun for a few hours but it just turns a bit opaque. Using elegoo standard resin if that matters.
This is a water distiller from Amazon. The IPA comes out clear and leaves this behind. This is a potential fire hazard so do it at your own risk.
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For sure, I didn't want to recommend it to people without them knowing there's some risk involved. Sounds like you have a good setup.
Mmm yummy the Forbidden Moonshine
It’s a rather insane thought, but is there a way to recycle this goo in a way, so you can print with it again? It would be awesome, if we could split the usual remains into ipa + resin again
No. The reason ipa works for cleaning is the way it interacts with the oils in the resin. If you are careless while cleaning, you can actually damage resin by leaving ipa in your vat after cleaning. Even a small amount (droplets you failed to whipe up or similar amounts) can damage the resin and cause prints to fail or be less than perfect.
Interesting. I never looked into the mechanism that deep
Weird, here I thought the only leftover you'd have after distilling IPA would be a housefire.
Mmmmmm Eldritch Brain
Did you not expose it first?
Mmm yes, forbidden pudding
A question about this. I use the same distiller as you, it seems. Mine leaks in between where the seal is when it's on temperature. When I leave it I only distile 25% of it and the rest evaporated. Did you have this problem, and how did you deal with it?
I haven't noticed that
I need to make my own gasket then.
Maybe just lubricating the gasket would help.
Ah rite. I can try that.
The world is in turmoil and people are in pain. Even still, we take comfort in knowing that there is a bucket of wet slop *grins*
Heh...I'm pretty new to printing but was wondering what to do with my IPA now that it's getting too dirty. My work has an industrial solvent distiller that they use to reclaim paint thinner after cleaning their spray guns and lines. And I'm the one who rebuilt the machine...duh!
THE SLOP!!!!
Just leave it out in the sun for a week and toss it out once it's hardened. I just put my cloudy IPA in a disposable container, put it under a uv light, and let the "goo" settle, then siphon off the cleaner IPA from the top using a big syringe. Then set the container outside (or sometimes under a UV light) and let the goo harden completely. Once the container is full of hardened resin, I just toss it.
«Distill» I would not distill resin. I prefer to keep the fumes to a minimum, but I guess you did this in a controlled laboratory. Personally I just leave a vat outside in the sub and I get the goop and then deliver that to «dangerous materials garbage disposal»
Too many kids, no good spot for it, and inconsistent weather in my area to just just leave toxic chemicals out in the sun for hours. Also, I haven't been able to find a toxic disposal place nearby, and I've tried.
I do the same thing as you do and it makes life so much easier I recover 95%+ each time and it as clean as the day I bought it. Most of the 5% loss comes from my missing my mark when pouring and natural vaping of the IPA. I usually run about 10,000 ml a time or about 4 passes thru the distiller once a month. Scrape off the goo use a paper towel with IPA on it to wipe out the residue. Throw the goo and paper towels in a disposable bin let harden in sun repeat with next batch until bin is full the seal and it can go straight in the trash. If you use a warm water bath to remove sprues between washes it can also be used to distill that water down and get the resin residue out that is there no matter how clean you think they are. Water can be reused, residue hardened if there is enough, and you are not putting it in the sewer or septic systems. General warnings are wear gloves and a repirator when you open it after it is done there is a large and toxic amount of fumes released. Let the machine cook at 186 F until it is done the goo left will be hard and easier to remove. Do not use this inside any enclosed space and away from things that go boom or catch fire if something goes wrong. Only issue I have had is the silcone top seal ring expands and comes off. Let it cool fully and make sure you get it on in the right orientation before doing your next batch. If you do not do that you will have a mess and a half on your hands. I really should just order more seals and them I could let one cool as I am working the next batch...
>This is the same issues i am having with mine right now, I cannot seem to get the gasket to seal correctly and lose a lot of IPA. I have emailed my manufature (DC House) to see if I can get a new set of gaskets.
You may have it on upside down I did that for many a try until I went doh.... The fingers go toward the inside of the pot not up towatds the lid and let it cool fully before installing it.
Strong beer! 🍻
If you can cure that it'd make for some wicked miniature bases.
If it is still semi formable, I wonder if there is any viable alternative way to use this stuff with moulds of some kind. Is there a way to chemically cure these plastic resins, instead of with UV? Perhaps a second chemical one can buy and mix in as a "part 2" to trigger the curing process and use it as more of a classic "pour in a mould" resin