Resin enhancement

[amirjabri]

whhoo a dollar per liter Thats ambitious .. I love it ... can you tell us more?

I talked to the owner of manitoba harvest, and he said he sells hemp oil at 1$ per liter. Hemp oil can be converted to an epoxy resin in air using a non-toxic manganese catalyst (like manganese dioxide you can get for free from used batteries: I took apart a used panasonic C battery and got over 20 grams!). You also get several grams of pure Zinc metal which can be used for many applications: don't throw away your used batteries anymore they are full of amazing valuable and pure chemicals! (I'm thinking of using it help to stop my car from rusting).

You can obviously add the most active known photocatalyst for epoxies which can be made easily or purchased separately for around 20$ per kg from suppliers advertising on alibaba http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?..._en&fsb=y&sq=y (you only need less than a percent by mass of resin though so it doesnt add more than a few cents on the dollar).

I'm also working along those lines, but also trying out more hacker-friendly recipies using virgin oils made in canada and recycled chemicals like from batteries etc.

Mix those two things together and you have a perfect bio-degradeable, cheap, food-safe, and totally green resin. I used to work in a chemistry lab for 15 years, where I made polymers for industry so this is no problem! I have a small lab set up near my home where I have a controlled heater and I'm testing variations on the curing. I found definately flaxseed oil is naturally photocatalytic and can slowly harden in the sun over the course of a few hours (nothing happens in the dark). I'm trying also to add a simple catalyst to speed up the process so that possibly your peachy printer could use a virgin flax oil and catalyst for 3d printing. Its also nice with flaxseed as you cant really cure more than a thin layer because it is self-limiting as it needs oxygen from the air to cure along with the light. Once a layer is cured it stops untill a new layer is exposed to air and light and the curing starts again.

I started years ago looking into natural based plastics like flax fiber composites, and catalysts for making such plastics, and recently thought it would be so cool to convert a natural oil into a 3d printing resin after the Peachy Printer project was born and inspired me to get involved into it. Plus I teach children and I wanted to let them use the Peachy Printer, however I was worried that the resins available were probably toxic and not safe for children to use.