Quote Originally Posted by Anuvin View Post
Haha Feign said exactly what I was thinking.

So, all we need is the right oil and the right catalyst? What did you have in mind for a catalyst? What do you need to test this? Will the resulting product has properties like linoleum?

Very cool stuff! Can't wait to hear more, please share anything you think up!
Ok well I'm still not 100% sure, but I've found some articles where a manganese catalyst (non toxic - its used in vitamin pills) was used instead of the regular cobalt/lead combo (very toxic!). I will dig up the reference today but they found photocatalytic properties of manganese catalysts for polymerizing the flax oil. Its not exactly that simple as you have to pre-oxidize and pre-polymerize the oil by heating it in air to accelerate the polymerization process. I was planning to buy pure virgin flax seed oil, hemp oil, tung oil, soybean oil, grapeseed oil among other oils, and test them unmodified and with different amounts of oils, pre-treatments of heat and/or air, and catalyst (I will try heating up the oil with manganese chloride to see if it reacts and dissolves to make my catalyst mixture. I know if you start out with a highly viscous treated oil then it polymerizes faster, but that might ruin the print quality. That's why I want a stronger laser beam to speed it up hopefully so you can print with virgin oil. I hope this information helps, I'm still talking out of my ass as I have the manganese and laser on order, and I only have some of the oils I need to test. I also need to compare with commercial resins, and I may mix up a batch of home-made cheap acrylate, epoxy, and polyester resins just to save money compared to buying commercial ones. Again I haven't sourced the materials but I may beg the local chemistry department to borrow some of the chemicals in small quantities.