Glow in the dark ABS and limonene

[hamster]

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?

[raysspl]

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

[hamster]

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.

[raysspl]

@hamster, let me know how it goes! Curious to find out. Material production does differ from manufacturer to manufacturer.

[iDig3Dprinting]

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.

Curious to see that results of your experiment.

[hamster]

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.