Ideas for lasers and resins

[amirjabri]

The way you're explaining it makes it sound easy... But I assume it's very much not.

If the catalyst and oil are both non-toxic, would there be a likelihood of the end result being food-safe? Or does the polymerization process tend to make the result more toxic?

I'm kind of weird like that, but I'm not interested in a project unless it is tricky...so that probably explains this obsession. In general if the monomer is non-toxic the polymer should be no? It's alot harder to digest anyways so it probably passes through you. I'm pretty sure it is bio-degradeable from what I read but I'm too lazy to look up a reference. If I actually can polymerize flax oil into linoleum with a non-toxic catalyst I'll be so glad I'll eat some myself! :-)

[glauco]

I'm kind of weird like that, but I'm not interested in a project unless it is tricky...so that probably explains this obsession. In general if the monomer is non-toxic the polymer should be no? It's alot harder to digest anyways so it probably passes through you. I'm pretty sure it is bio-degradeable from what I read but I'm too lazy to look up a reference. If I actually can polymerize flax oil into linoleum with a non-toxic catalyst I'll be so glad I'll eat some myself! :-)

Actually this looks very healthy. Printing food!! If these kind of experiment works, I would try even hemp oil because is the most healthy thing in the world... but not here in Brazil, it is forbidden to have hemp of any kind...

[amirjabri]

Actually this looks very healthy. Printing food!! If these kind of experiment works, I would try even hemp oil because is the most healthy thing in the world... but not here in Brazil, it is forbidden to have hemp of any kind...

Well I just got back from vacation in Brazil, and man you have a beautiful country!!!! I live in the coldest city in the world (Winterpeg), and when my car isn't falling to rusty pieces I can drive down to my local hemp processing plant and pick up hemp oil at 1$ per liter! Sure beats the priciing of 50-100$ per liter on some of the resins I find.

[glauco]

Well I just got back from vacation in Brazil, and man you have a beautiful country!!!! I live in the coldest city in the world (Winterpeg), and when my car isn't falling to rusty pieces I can drive down to my local hemp processing plant and pick up hemp oil at 1$ per liter! Sure beats the priciing of 50-100$ per liter on some of the resins I find.

Hey amir, I'm glad you enjoyed my country! I'm not a traveller guy, but if you live in Brazil, you can't go too far from your home without facing beauty nature.
To get hemp oil in Brazil, you would pay $50 per liter and need to have hope to not have the Federal Police to deliver personally in your home... you really go to the jail. As I'm just a poor latin american guy, I would rest in jail as a "dangerous guy" for at least 6 years for International Drug Traffic. Imagine that

[amirjabri]

Hey amir, I'm glad you enjoyed my country! I'm not a traveller guy, but if you live in Brazil, you can't go too far from your home without facing beauty nature.
To get hemp oil in Brazil, you would pay $50 per liter and need to have hope to not have the Federal Police to deliver personally in your home... you really go to the jail. As I'm just a poor latin american guy, I would rest in jail as a "dangerous guy" for at least 6 years for International Drug Traffic. Imagine that

No worries, if I was in Brazil I would try using Tung oil, which is apparently produced there in large quantities. Tung oil can be treated almost identical to acrylic resin, or be mixed with it to make it more renewable. The same catalyst should work with tung oil so if you have an interest try it out! I'm still figuring out how to work with linseed oil, which is more complicated. Good news is most alkaline batteries are full of manganese dioxide, zinc, and potassium hydroxide! These are three ingredients I can use to make a catalyst for linseed oil 3d printing hopefully and I find kilos of dead batteries in the recycling of my own apartment building!

[amirjabri]

Geez this tread is turning into my chemistry notebook I'm really sorry: A few things we can talk about are photocatalysts and monomers (resin). One interesting photo-catalyst known is curcumin, which is a bright yellow dye extracted from tumeric. It has been shown to be a good natural non-toxic photocatalyst for polymerization. Here is some of many references:

http://www.rpitechnology.com/attachm...0_Mkt_Lead.pdf

http://www.researchgate.net/publicat..._and_mechanism

They used a synthetic monomer but others such as Tung oil may work well instead. Would be interesting to see if pure tung oil mixed with curcumin could give a 3d printing resin. It is considered food safe when cured. I'm also interested in using Curcumin with manganese to make a photocatalyst for linseed oil. I found out you can make a good extract of curcumin from tumeric or buy it, then you can use manganese to make a complex using this procedure. It is similar to another manganese photocatalyst which is proven to work well for linseed but this one is also non-toxic!

Here is the procedure I found, but I'm sure an easier one can be made:

Curcumin manganese complex, CpCpx. Manganese ace-tate (0.165 g, 0.65 mmol) was dissolved in ethanol (1 ml) and heated at 60°C . Curcumin (0.240g, 0.65 mmol) in ethanol (15 ml) was added drop-wise to the solution of manganese acetate and the reaction mixture was allowed to reflux for 3 h. The solid obtained was collected by filtration, washed withcold ethanol and dried at room temperature to afford red powder (0.150 g, 54.55% yield).

[Londonship]

More than two years on, and I am wondering if you ever were able to produce some edible or soy oil based materials that was able to be catalyzed forming some new materials.