AnyCubic Wash & Cure Machine - Anybody have one?

[Chris333]

Well having never even taken a sip of coffee I know nothing about it. I just hit up the dollar store and paid... wait for it...  a dollar.

What are the magic numbers?

[wazzou]

I can’t 100% say for certain, but the numbers have something to do with the amount of filtration, think stronger or weaker coffee.

[peteski]

If the alcohol is not flowing through the coffee filter, is it possible that it is so saturated with liquid resin, that it clogs the filter?
Also, this type of filter, it will only remove the solids.  If resin is dissolved in the alcohol (like sugar dissolves in water), that will not get filtered out.  At least that is my take on this.

[Chris333]

When I pour it in there is a little rush out the bottom, but then a fast drip and then a slow drip. All while the filter is full to the top.

[C855B]

Exactly. The suspended (not dissolved!) resin clogs the filter quickly. That's why I went to the larger commercial filters.

[Chris333]

Have a link to the filters I should use?

[narrowminded]

When I pour it in there is a little rush out the bottom, but then a fast drip and then a slow drip. All while the filter is full to the top.

Sounds like you had some pretty contaminated resin.

That's kinda' the point of filtering with something finer than the paint filter.  The fact that it's plugging suggests to me that it's working.  I have seen that slowing effect but not to that extreme but I've also filtered mine long before it looks really bad.  I did that because of the amount of alcohol that the wash holds, about a gallon, and not wanting to have to replace it too often if I could help it.  It's also easy enough to do.  I do see traces of pigment in the filter when I'm done but I'm not sure pigment alone is really much of an issue unless you're printing contact lenses.

[Chris333]

I use a two tub system with the first wash getting much dirtier than the second. My second wash is still clear and it still barely went thru the filter.

I have tried putting the used alcohol in a 1 liter bottle and setting out in the sun. That does work, but it seems like I would need to put it into another liter bottle and repeat about 5 times before I got good clear alcohol.

And those bottles end up looking like the bottom of my tubs that I keep replacing. That is why I cannot believe these wash systems can ever stay clean. You would need a gallon just to clean it.

[Chris333]

I make sure that there's just enough alcohol to cover the parts which is often less than a third full.  Let them soak for a few minutes at most, give them a swirl, another minute or so and another swirl, nothing too vicious or for very long, then rotate from the first wash to the newest, used as a final wash.  In the final I might give it a swirl but by then it's not doing much, evidence how long that wash lasts.  The fresh, final wash, becomes the first rough wash when it gets cloudy.  Sometimes with a lot to do I'll do a third rotation, oldest solvent first. 

I know this quote was before you got the wash station, but in my eyes this method would not work at all for me. 

My first dunk is in a $1 buck container with a lid. I scrub the crap out of the parts with a chip brush. Then I use a compressor with a blow gun to blow it mostly dry.  Now I put it into my clean $1 buck container with a lid and scrub the crap out of it again with a chip brush. Then blow it off till it is dry. When I blow it of I can see resin still creeping out of all the little holes. So most of the time I re-dunk it into the clean tub 3 or 4 times and scrub it and blow dry each time. So there are items that can take 4-5 times total of scrubbing and blowing dry before the parts are even clean. If I just put the parts in the tub and swirled it around that would do basically nothing.

And after about a month of cleaning parts the bottom of the tubs have about 1/16" thick white sludge at the bottom. So I can spend more time and money cleaning out the tubs or just toss them because they were a buck. This is how I cannot understand how these cleaning station could ever stay clean. If you are just swirling parts well maybe then it would stay clean I guess.

And I just rigged up the coffee filters so I didn't need to stand there and hold them. About 90% eventually went down. But still $2 bucks for a quart of 91% vs a half hour trying to filter the resin out. I'll just stick to tossing it out.

[narrowminded]

I know this quote was before you got the wash station, but in my eyes this method would not work at all for me. 

My first dunk is in a $1 buck container with a lid. I scrub the crap out of the parts with a chip brush. Then I use a compressor with a blow gun to blow it mostly dry.  Now I put it into my clean $1 buck container with a lid and scrub the crap out of it again with a chip brush. Then blow it off till it is dry. When I blow it of I can see resin still creeping out of all the little holes. So most of the time I re-dunk it into the clean tub 3 or 4 times and scrub it and blow dry each time. So there are items that can take 4-5 times total of scrubbing and blowing dry before the parts are even clean. If I just put the parts in the tub and swirled it around that would do basically nothing.

Even with multiple washes as described in my old post and experimenting with brushing vs: not brushing as well as ultrasonic cleaner, and even a final soap and water wash, ultrasonic and not, I can't say that I ever saw a difference in the final finish or dimensions.  One thing that's true is I wasn't working much with through holes and when I did it was usually very small, .012" and less, which I gave up on with the Photon and just assumed I'd be drilling those out.  With the newer Mono and the much lower cure times I think there will be a chance but haven't yet tried anything requiring that.  One thing that IS different, I think, is I've always used 99% IPA and never used anything else as far as the alcohol wash.  I'm not sure that makes that much of a difference but maybe it does.

[parkrrrr]

I got one a few months ago.  I have filtered the 99% IPA through doubled coffee filters twice, as it looked a little gray and have had no trouble with anything after 30 or so washes.  The propeller in the wash bottom spins as freely as could be and because of how it's driven with magnets no harm should come from it if it ever did seize.  I had some concern about that when reviewing the unit but that concern has been put to bed since I've had and used it.

I have just been leaving the 99% iso in mine between uses, because that container dribbles everywhere when I try to pour it out. So the bottom had gotten a good thick layer of resin everywhere, and it was kicking up a fog every time I used it. I decided to clean it out today, and while I was doing so I took a couple of pictures.

Pictures here: https://imgur.com/a/HmxwJdn

The resin layer itself scraped off easily with the tip of a plastic automotive trim prybar and a stiff nylon brush from Harbor Freight. At first I was having difficulty getting the propeller cleaned without making it spin, but I realized the whole thing is held in by a single T15 screw so I removed it to finish cleaning it. I also flipped it over and took a picture of the bottom - it looks like the bearing is held in by a pair of small hex screws, so could be easily replaced should it seize up.

[GaryHinshaw]

I've stopped using the wash cycle on my Wash & Cure 2.0 entirely.  I now use a manual 2-step process that works much better for me: it's faster and it requires much less solvent cleaning. 

Step 1. I have the Wash & Cure bucket ~half-filled with 99% IPA and I just plunge the build plate with the printed parts on it until it's about and inch below the surface, raise & lower it by hand several times, pull it out and inspect, and repeat until the parts look mostly clean (as much as you can tell while they're still wet).  This takes less than a minute, and usually less than 30 seconds.   This process leaves any uncured residue near the bottom of the vat rather than agitating it back into the relatively clean IPA.

Step 2. I remove the parts from the build plate and give them a quick dip in acetone, which I keep in a sealed wide-mouth glass jar.  This dip takes no more than 5-10 seconds per part (or group of parts on a common base).  After this dip, I hit it with a quick shot of compressed air with my airbrush to speed the evaporation of any remaining acetone, though that is not essential.   The whole process takes a few minutes per print run.

Here is a part that went through this process yesterday:



It might be hard to tell from this shot, but it's squeaky clean, and the .25 mm holes in the walkway are all free of any residue.  (For scale, the base of this part is a little over an inch square.)  Even better, the need to change cleaning fluid is *much* reduced.   Basically, the IPA does 80-90% of the work, and the acetone finishes it off very quickly.  Once I see signs that the parts have a bit of residue on them, I'll change out the acetone and its good as new.  I haven't changed the IPA at all since I started this process, maybe 20 or more prints ago.

[narrowminded]

Nice, Gary.   The original Anycubic resin and I'm sure some others seem to stand up to acetone very well with no ill effects.  What concerns me is that some of the newer more shock resistant resins or flex agent additives that I've read about and have started to experiment with seem to strongly suggest not using acetone.  Apparently some of the additives used to accomplish the flex or shock resistance are things like styrene which acetone dissolves. 

For example, Siraya Tech is one brand that recommends 95% IPA, possibly methyl alcohol, but be sure they contain NO acetone.  This is for most if not all of their resins.  Here's a link to their support page.  https://siraya.tech/pages/support  Select any of the resins to read their use recommendations and scroll towards the bottom of the page where curing recommendations for each resin are made.  This is where I've seen the instruction to not use acetone or an acetone mix.  They also suggest no more than a two minute soak in the alcohol. 

I definitely used acetone around the original Anycubic resin with no apparent issues, not so much for cleaning fresh prints but as a solvent for the Pliobond glue I've used on the printed tie beds.  I've had that material soaked pretty good in some of those experiments with no apparent ill effects.

[Chris333]

Think speed is the secret, and the air dry right after.

[GaryHinshaw]

Very good point about the newer resins @narrowminded - I neglected to mention that I am using Anycubic's basic resin here.  (I tried printing with a number of other ABS-like and Blu resins and never got nearly as crisp a print as I do with the basic resin, despite trying many different exposure recipes.)  As far as brittleness goes, I cure small parts like this for a minute, at most.  The results are at least as strong as the styrene parts they are replacing.  And if something like a stirrup breaks off, I can print another.