On today's Makers Mash up, we're recycling IPA from our resin wash
fast and easy.
Welcome back, Makers!
today we are talking about recycling our IPA from our resin wash.
This is honestly one of my biggest frustrations in 3D printing.
Resin printing requires a good amount of IPA or isopropyl alcohol
that's used to wash the prints before the final cure.
And while there are alternatives available like water
washable resin IPA does such an outstanding job.
It really remains my go to for parts clean up and in my workflow,
I maintain a two stage wash process
where I have a primary wash and then a secondary wash
that's much cleaner to clean up the final parts for curing.
Now this process for me requires over four gallons
of IPA in my wash and cure, which is not a trivial investment.
So I want to be able to reuse and recycle
as much IPA as possible from my wash process.
Like many of you,
I have seen a number of people who have tried things from coffee filters
to distilling the IPA to vacuum processes, and it all seems to work OK.
But the process it seems to work well for everyone is decanting your IPA.
But the problem with that process is that it can take weeks
for all of those resin particles to settle in the IPA.
And if you're not filtering your IPA, you may have seen these white flakes
show up on your prints.
I know I struggled with this myself early on, and using clean or even Virgin
IPA right before curing is critical for getting great results.
So today I'm going to show you
how to recycle and clean your IPA in just a few hours,
and this will get you back up and running with clean IPA in no time.
So with all that said, let's get to work.
IPA recycling is not unlike the recycling
we do on our waste water every day.
Wastewater treatment plants process over 60
billion gallons of water every day in the United States.
These treatment plants remove contaminants and return freshwater
into local waterways, where it's returned to nature.
Returning clean water is key to prevent damage to our environment.
Those of us who own fish tanks or pools are familiar with water treatment.
We've always been looking for ways to get sparkling
clear water for our friends and family.
This is what got me thinking to how I was recycling my IPA.
I've used clarifiers before, and I wondered
if there was a way to add something to my IPA to clear it up.
So I tried a small amount of fish tank clarifier in some of my resin wash.
Now I don't recommend that any of you try this.
In retrospect,
it was a terribly reckless idea for me to mix them together
without consulting a chemist or doing some research.
But my gamble did pay off, and in just over a day
I had alcohol that looked as clean as the day I bought it.
However, something in the fish tank clarifier turned my resin particles
yellow.
So before I shared any of my results, I decided I had to do some more research.
So I turned to the material safety data sheets,
or MSDS of the fish tank clarifier and discovered
the active ingredient was aluminum sulfate.
Aluminum sulfate, or often referred to as alum, is a common food additive
and has been repeatedly proven safe for humans,
which is probably why I found it in the fish tank clarifier.
But this has been used for decades to clean water in waste treatment plants.
With that information, I reached out to Chemistry Stack Exchange
and was able to confirm the safety of aluminum sulfate
and how it would react with alcohol and photo polymer resins.
Aluminum sulfate is only slightly soluble in alcohol
and in everyday quantities, not reactive with alcohol.
So I started researching how wastewater treatment plants
used aluminum sulfate in the process of cleaning water.
Aluminum sulfate works by causing small particles
to coagulate together for easy removal.
The water treatment process involves far
more than just adding a single chemical, how the water is mixed
and for how long plays a big part in the process.
So over the next couple of weeks, I spent time researching and testing
different concentrations of aluminum sulfate in the resin
wash to see what worked best for coagulating resin particles
and removing them from my isopropyl alcohol.
I was most successful using a process that added
25 grams of aluminum sulfate to.
150 grams of distilled water
water dissolves the aluminum sulfate into a solution
that I then added to my resin what I then needed to mix the solution
at a high speed for about ten minutes and then a slower speed for 30 minutes.
This mixing helps the aluminum sulfate to coagulate the small resin particles
after mixing for about 45 minutes.
You simply need to let the solution rest and wait
for the large particles to fall to the bottom of your container.
You can see how quick this process is
just moments after adding the aluminum sulfate solution.
You can see big clumps forming in the beaker, while the slow mixing continues.
You can see these particles starting to collect at the bottom.
Once you let it rest a few hours or even overnight,
the results really speak for themselves.
It's clearer and doesn't contain those flakes that can affect our prints.
Now, 150 milliliters solution
treated one liter of resin in about four hours.
Once the particles settle, you simply need to decant
the IPA off the top and save the contaminants for disposal.
Now, while I
used a magnetic stirrer and a beaker here, you can do the stirring yourself
or you can let a wash and cure do all the mixing for you.
If you mix the aluminum sulfate solution by hand
and then add it to your wash and cure container,
you can use your wash station to do the mixing for you.
Just scale the recipe for a larger amount of resin wash.
There is one liter here and I keep about seven to eight liters in this container.
Then you're going to want to let this run for about 20 minutes, shut it off
and then manually stir it occasionally for about another 20.
Once you let it all settle, decant the IPA into another container.
I found that ordering a second one of these works
great makes the process super simple.
Now, make sure once you do decant that IPA
into a separate container, you immediately clean out your wash station.
You don't want any of the resin sludge to start solidifying at the bottom.
As that may damage your wash and cure,
I recommend the beaker approach, but I had good results using either.
Also, save the alcohol in your waste container as well.
After about a day, the particles settled in that container
and I was able to decant a huge amount of clean
IPA into my wash.
In the end,
all I had left was a lot of white sludge at the bottom of this container.
I'm going to try to cure the sludge in the Sun, but if I can't,
I'll just turn it into my local hazardous waste facility for disposal.
Now, using this recycled IPA, I haven't had any problems or issues with my prints.
Many of you, I'm sure, are worried about diluting the IPA with the water.
I believe the majority of the distilled water and aluminum
sulfate is being removed during the decantation process
as water is heavier than alcohol, so we're pouring off all that good alcohol.
I've used this process now on several gallons of resin
and haven't had any problems, and I plan to make this part of my resin workflow.
Now I bought aluminum sulfate online from Amazon,
and it was food grade aluminum sulfate.
Often you'll find that there is potassium added to one of the formulations.
I tested pure aluminum sulfate here.
I did not test the one that has potassium.
I'm finding that the ones that you buy in the grocery store have that potassium,
and I can say
I have no idea how that is going to react with the alcohol or the photo polymer.
But I know that through all of my experiments here, I had no reactions
with the aluminum sulfate when it was only aluminum sulfate.
I've put links down in the description for the aluminum sulfate and all the parts
that I've used here in this video today.
I would love to hear your comments on my process for reclaiming IPA.
Let me know down below the video.
So with that is going to be the end of today's video.
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