Hello all

[Othisforince]

Hello all,
Does anyone here know of a plastic to use that is extremely smooth for 3D printing? I'm talking about something that is as smooth as glass when you touch it. You shouldn't feel any rough texture on it when you touch it. I'm new to the 3d printing scene and am trying to understand the types of plastics out there.


I appreciate any help I can get for this.

[fred_dot_u]

ABS can be post processed with hot acetone vapor which results in a very smooth, almost reflective surface. Polysmooth by Polymaker also purports to provide a similar surface, using vaporized isopropyl alcohol, but I have no experience with that.

I bought a glass cookie jar from the big box store, put a frying pan of water on a hot plate and put the jar in the water. Adding a half inch of IPA and allowing it to vaporize resulted in an obvious condensate on the walls of the cookie jar, letting me know how far up the vapor had progressed. I built a metal "cage" with a handle, opened the jar and lowered the cage to the surface, without the part touching the liquid.

Thirty seconds later, smooth as silk. One loses detail using this method, as the hot vapor melts the surface, allowing surface tension to remove layer lines. My most recent smoothing project was a banana and it was beautiful.

I dropped a small part into the jar in error and discovered that hot acetone vapor stings like crazy.

Oh, yeah, do this outside. Hot acetone vapor is explosive. NO OPEN FLAMES!

[airscapes]

3d printing is not injection molding and by design it makes items one thread and layer at a time, so other than has been mentioned above, the finished item is never smooth no matter what the material. The term for this type of plastic fabrication is FFF which stands for Fused Filament Fabrication. You did not mention what you are making or the finished product requirements. ABS is great for many things but as you can guess Acetone and other chemicals will melt it.. so not good for products that will be exposed too said chemicals. abs also will degrade in sunlight UV over time... Abs is also nice as it can be readily sanded and wet sanded to remove the layer lines if you want to really work that hard... This fabrication method is a tool, but it is not always the best tool for the job.