Has anyone tried to score resin surfaces that were made by a FormLabs 2 SLA 3D Laser printer?
I make things in 3D out of liquid resin that is hardened and cured in to a solid by the laser printer. I want to score text onto the resin surface.
How should I expect to be poisoned?? or not!
MSDS is your friend…
Basically you look for combustion or decomposition products. I’m not an authority here but it looks like pretty standard plastic byproducts, nothing jumping out at me as a risk to the machine, but I wouldn’t want to breathe that stuff if I could help it. If your ventilation setup is really good, I’m thinking you’ll be fine.
Your lungs, your call. Maybe someone better at MSDSes will chime in here.
BTW to find this all I did was google “sla resin msds”.
The MSDS is for the resin in a LIQUID state.
It does not cover the solid state after exposure to a 405mn laser.
You’ll note there are no mechanical isotopic properties given such as compressive or tensile strength.
So not sure how this helps to establish potential hazards once the solid material is hit again with a 45W laser?
OK well it sounds like you know more about this than the average person, and clearly my answer was of no use to you, so I’ll just stop participating here.
Good luck.
You’re looking to use a blue diode laser for this?
If you were going to use the Glowforge (a 10600nm CO2 laser) then I’d suggest reaching out to @henryhbk since he’s our resident SLA guy but I don’t think anyone here has mentioned having a diode laser so you’re probably on your own. Maybe a forum for one of those lasers would have someone who knows what you’re looking for.
Good news from what I remember is the resin (cured) is generally pretty safe from a flammability standpoint. I remember asking the FormLabs guys about that, and they said it’s pretty resistant (they have many resins - check their info). I have no idea if it is transparent or absorptive at IR/CO2 frequencies. The heat resistant resins probably have some sort of fire retardant (but no idea on the safety of the decomposition products). But not to ask a stupid question, but why not print/mold the features into the resin in the first place. That’s the whole advantage if a polymerization process.
Ok thank you to all.
I’m trying to add text to a flat part of the print.
Yes I could have molded it in but to see it the text must be either above the surface or below. Still hard to see.
So I was thinking once the print is painted I can spray Cermark on the surface where the text is to be and score it on the painted resin then wash off the Cermark residue. I presume the resin surface is closer to ceramic or glass than metal.
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