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03-11-2015, 11:35 PM #1
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- Feb 2015
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Glow in the dark ABS and limonene
So far I've been printing with regular ABS, using HIPS for support and limonene or orange oil as solvent for HIPS. It generally worked out all right: though HIPS was dissolving quite slowly and I sometimes had to dig semi-dissolved material out of the hard-to-reach places, ABS remained perfectly solid and unaffected by the solvent.
I tried to do the same with green glow-in-the-dark filament. After the usual couple of hours of soaking in limonene, the piece visibly softened (to the point that you could even make impressions in it with a fingernail) and the green dye started leaking into the solvent. I took the piece out and let it dry, but apparently it irreversibly lost much of its rigidity and even started to "meld" with remaining HIPS.
I assumed that I got a bad batch of filament so I went to a local store and got another roll of glow-in-the-dark ABS by a different manufacturer. (The first one was, I think, MG, and the second one is Shaxon.) Put a piece of filament into a cup of limonene, two hours ... same story: visible softening.
Is it universal for glow-in-the-dark ABS, or are there brands that can be printed with HIPS support? Or do I need to switch to PLA? And I wonder if this is dependent on the color, e.g. maybe fluorescent yellow would not be susceptible to this problem?
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03-12-2015, 01:32 AM #2
Your problem isn't unique. It's happened with us too. Limonene degrades ABS whether glow in the dark or not. PLA is resistant to limonene, however. Case in point http://hydraraptor.blogspot.com/2012/04/abs-fudge.html
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03-12-2015, 02:47 AM #3
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- Feb 2015
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Interesting. However, in your link, they got their ABS degraded after multiple months of soaking. I had regular (non-glowing) printed ABS pieces immersed in limonene for up to a day with no apparent ill effects. Glowing ABS piece got completely unusable after 2 hours.
I'm going to put a few strands of different filaments in limonene overnight and I'll see what happens.
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03-12-2015, 03:29 AM #4
@hamster, let me know how it goes! Curious to find out. Material production does differ from manufacturer to manufacturer.
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03-12-2015, 04:46 AM #5
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03-12-2015, 11:18 AM #6
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- Feb 2015
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Curious. I have Shaxon pink, green (glow-in-the-dark), blue, and black ABS, and Flashforge white ABS and blue PLA. After a night in limonene, Shaxon's pink and green ABS filaments completely dissolved. All others appear intact.
Please explain to me how to...
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