I've done both distilling and filtering. They are both a pain. Distilling is faster but is a fire hazard. Odor is worse for distilling as well. I broke the thermal sensor on two different distillers before the first gallon. Both methods are messy as well.
Thanks fo commenting. Yeah that is sort of what I got from it. But I’m going to keep trying the filtering to see if I can get a system that isn’t too bad.
I've been using a distiller for months now. It has already saved me the money I paid for it by three times the price I pay for denatured alcohol. I distill my alcohol out in my back yard away from everything. I've had 0 issues. And cleanup hasn't been a hassle either. Due to the stainless steel basin of my distiller.
@@Nerdtronic can I suggest you try switching to bioethanol, I've been using it for years as camping stove fuel and as a cleaner. In the UK our denatured alcohol (methylated spirits) must contain no more than 9.5% of the highly toxic methanol,, 5% if industrial, in the US it's not so. Have a look at the safety data sheet for that stuff you are using, it can be as much as 50% poison, bioethanol fuel is much cleaner and smells sweet, also it's not a petrol product unlike denatured alcohol and IPA. Ethanol is also slightly safer on the skin than IPA, methanol is not safe at all on the skin.
Tall thin containers are good for letting the particulates and heavier liquid resin settle to the bottom quickly. Once the resin has settled to the bottom of the container (leave it for 24 hours or longer) expose it to UV light and then *carefully* decant the clean alcohol off the top. It'll look like you're leaving a lot behind (and you are) but the amount you salvage is worth it once you consider the time spent.
Cold temperatures are also great for different substances to settle in a stable way based on density. I use this for brewing, however not sure how it works for plastic polymers.
You really need to let the resin set first, then pour out that relatively clean part, let it set again, pour out, expose it to the sun to let the rest of the resin to polymerize, then you can filter it relatively easily. Tried it, it works, amount of waiting time is painful though.
Yes I was thinking I probably could have saved the bad batch by pouring it off and filtering it first. Then curing in the sun. Then filtering it again through my 2nd pass filter.
I almost always use a spray of solvent to clean parts rather than a dunk. A spray bottle works fine but my Iwata paint gun is even better. It is bigger than an airbrush but smaller than a regular paint sprayer. Does an excellent job of spraying solvents. Paper towels sop up the alcohol. The waste is minimal and clean up is easy and simple.
@@MakerMeraki It’s an old model, an RG-2. from pictures on the Internet it looks similar to the current model RG-3. It’s not as small as an airbrush but it’s quite a bit smaller than my full-sized guns.
I do this as well after first sopping up surface resin with a small paper towel. You save yourself so much hassle by removing as much resin as possible before the bath. I finish with an alcohol bath with a smaller insert in the ultrasonic cleaner. @Nerdtronic After curing the contaminated alcohol, you can just shake the sealed container to break up the scoby. It will settle to the bottom relatively quickly, and makes the first phase of filtration easier.
I enjoy your videos. A bit of background info on myself: I currently work for BASF. Prior to that I was a Combat Engineer. So, chemicals and explosives is kind of my calling (so to speak). A 3 stage filtration system would be a little more efficient for removing IPA/DenAl from your resin slurry. An additive for encapsulation or covalent bond would help pull the larger resin particles out. Something like charcoal would be the most cost effective route. Also, AGITATION in the 1st stage would be a MUST. I would steer clear of a bubbler/fluidizer, unless you plan on using an inert gas like nitrogen or argon, etc. Adding atmospheric air adds oxygen. And if you know anything about the "Fire Triangle", you DO NOT want to add O-2 to something that is already flammable. Slow, mechanical agitation would be the best bet. However, that costs more $ for that equipment. Unless you have kids at home who need a new chore. Now, as far as distilling goes: I've been using a distiller for 2+ years now. The very same that you spoke of in the beginning of this video. The particular model that I have is programmable. It is a feature that is absolutely necessary for nothing other than safety's sake for those who are looking into distilling their cleaning solvent with one of these machines. Both basic models and ones that are programmable state that they have an "Auto Shut-off Feature" that will turn the heating element off once the distiller is empty. DO NOT RELY on this feature. It's basically the same type of sensor that detects thermal runaway on an FDM printer. While autoignition of alcohol is 750F, I'm not willing to tempt it. At the least, a timer is ESSENTIAL. 45m to an hour for 4L is enough to distill the majority and still leave a liquid slurry in the bottom the the vessel. Put it into a bucket, leave the lid off and let the sun vaporize the rest. Another reason to not use the auto shut-off feature is because the machine will basically cook the remaining resin and you'll end up having to scrape a terrible smelling, rock hard resin pizza crust out of the bottom of the machine. I always use the distiller outside or just inside my garage with the door open and a fan blowing the fumes out. Not necessarily due to fire hazards, but because the fumes are TERRIBLE. I can absolutely understand your concern with using a distiller. I did a lot of reading on different ones and their feature before I decided to go this route. The 2 main factors that helped my decision was that 1. the model that I bought is a closed system (during the heating process all the way until the condensate drain) and 2. it is programmable and has a timer. A bit of knowledge and common sense go a looong way. Having a background in chemicals also helps. But then again, there are people out there who still believe that the world is flat.
Extra note, I used a mix of sand and charcoal powder (raw) in a 2ltr bottle and had some horrifically bad alcohol go through it and come out okay. SO it might be a better idea to do 1 filter with a light packing of that around the filter to act as a kind of... pre-filter... filter :)
Thanks for testing this. Side note denatured alcohol and isopropyl alcohol are two different molecules. The term rubbing alcohol can refer to either. Denatured alcohol is ethyl alcohol that is poisoned, usually with methanol. Thought I would point that out since you use all the above terms interchangeably and I got confused.
Your comment is way too far down the list. One other thing that bothered me about his descriptions is that isopropyl alcohol isn't poisoned, it is itself poison. Ethanol is the only alcohol that is 'safe' for humans to drink.
Seconded this. There are three alcohols: methanol (extremely poisonous), ethanol (drinking kind, mildly poisonous), and propanol (two kinds, one is "iso" which is IPA/rubbing alchohol, and fairly poisonous). "Denatured alcohol" is ethanol (drinking kind) with stuff added which is very difficult to remove and makes it more poisonous. When I say it can't be removed, it's probably an azeotrope, so it can't be removed by distilling at all. The same way ethanol can't be distilled below 4% water, and IPA can't be distilled less than 13% water because of azeotropes.
As a retired kitchen worker, let me sing the praises of the humble 5-gallon pickle bucket. The weight of the plastic is such that it is frequently used to construct armor for reenactment sorts. The lids have a gasket and clamping system that will last for many, many re-uses.
As somebody who reprocesses alcohol by putting it under the same UV cure light I use for my resin parts and then filtering it through what you described as a paint filter, it's impressive seeing how this high level of filtration is able to get you perfectly clear looking alcohol. Curing out disolved or suspended resin and using the 'paint filter' to catch that solid material still leaves my alcohol with an increasingly strong color to it as it continues to be reprocessed, and that's been a bit of a disappointment. I think what's happening for me is that resin has pigmentation particles suspended in the mixture of polymers and photoreactive molecules. As the polymers interlock within the standard resin mixture, they 'capture' the pigmentation particles within a cage of interlocked polymer bonds. However, once resin and alcohol is mixed, the carefully engineered molecular mixture gets totally dispersed in the alcohol. It does seem photoreactive components are still able to promote some bonding between polymers even when they're all interspersed in a sea of alcohol, but this bonding definitely isn't 'caging' the pigments anymore. The pigmentation particles themselves don't react to the UV light at all (which they shouldn't) and are too small to be captured by the 'paint filter', so my own reprocessing workflow just doesn't have any effect on them. What you're really up against trying to get that perfectly clear looking alcohol is getting a fine enough particulate filtration that you are able to filter out the pigmentation particles especially, although there may be some color cast to other magical ingredients in the resin mixture that might promote bonding/stability/etc but, like the pigments, fail to get compeletly captured in the polymer bonds when everything is super interspersed in alcohol. Honestly wouldn't have thought of it if I didn't see this video, though. Thanks!
For the 3 bucket system, you could fill the top bucket with loose activated charcoal as the first pass filter, then double up the ceramic filters for the second stage
at about the 8:00 mark you say that you ran it through your "other filter". What filter was this? I've got a wash & cure station that I let get way too dirty. I've had 3 bottles sitting in my backyard for over a month and they are still yellowish & there is a bit of gunk still in the Wash station's plastic tub. I'm trying to find the best way to clean it and continue to use it. Whenever I run the dirty alcohol through a paint filter, it clogs up after less than a minute, and I would have to go through a dozen filters just to finish the tub.
I made 2 of these. One with the red bucket and one with the white buckets. So I just meant the other one that had only been used for clean ipa at that point.
A couple of tips, the grey residue that sinks to the bottom of the uncured dirty resin is just the pigment, not the photo monomer. Since the photo monomer is still liquid, it is also passing through the filter with the alcohol (unless the charcoal is doing something I'm not aware of, although your results suggest otherwise). The jelly like substance after you cured the alcohol is actually a resin/alcohol matrix; it's actually possible to mix it enough that the matrix gives up a bunch of the alcohol and becomes a pulp like substance, you can also squeeze out the pulp to release a bunch more alcohol. It should also be noted that simply filtering/straining the uncured alcohol doesn't solve any of the issues of dirty resin, since it doesn't remove the photo monomer which will still give your models that tacky feel. Any IPA recycling set up must include a way to remove the uncured monomers or the cured polymers and is why the best setups I've seen involve pumping the alcohol through clear tubing wrapped in UV LED tape and then filtering it through 10" whole house water filters.
I found the best thing was to use a UV torch to shine an intense spot on top of the liquid to polymerise the resin (if the UV goes through glass the resin sets on the glass and quite quickly blocks UV transmission). It also helps make the resin formed into tiny particles rather than mucousy sheets. It looks quite cool, almost a sort of roiling look where the UV spot hits it. Once done until there is no more movement, allow to settle, and then filter through filter paper. It's good enough for a first wash tank at this point. The settled gunk can be thrown away.
Isopropyl is chemically different than ethanol. The isopropyl is very "branchy" like a tree branch which is a bit different than ethanol. This difference prevents the enzyme in our body from being able to metabolize. Methanol gets turned into formaldehyde in the body and that's what causes the most damage. But great video, You can also do something called "salting" out things that are dissolved in a liquid. I have had some decent luck with salting the alcohol first but I was running into issues of removing the salt without a distillation (I am also concerned with heating a very flammable solution.) These filters may be the answer so thank you for the advice.
I played around a bit with UV polymerisation during my PhD and early research career so have a bit of background in this (as well being a chemical engineer for over 20 years with lots of varying experience across a number of industries!). I think if you stir the alcohol/resin mixture whilst exposing it to UV it will more likely form smaller discrete particles rather than snotty gloop. Continuous stirring should allow the alcohol and polymerised resin to separate regardless and more resin to polymerise by continually turning over the jar's contents to expose all of it to UV. You could use a paint stirrer on a pillar drill to agitate or a lab magnetic stirrer or as someone suggested, aquarium air stones. Note air stones might also lift the polymer out of solution by the processes of flocculation/flotation if done right (Possibly as a separate step - you can push air through your ceramic filter in reverse to achieve this - also a great way to backflush your filter). Stirring up your filter bucket will also reduce the gelling on the filter and speed up the filtration. Reducing the amount of UV light the mixture is exposed to at any one time will likely reduce the reaction rate of the polymerisation which may or may not help avoid the snotting depending on the type of polymer. Good luck!
@@KaletheQuick worth a try on all those points. Cat litter could take out odours too. Could just use a funnel of litter to trickle the reacted wash through, would work like a sand filter.
I feel like not letting the alcohol you're working with get so loaded up it turns into snot is probably the best first step. Have enough volume around that you're not working with a completely opaque solution, so that you can expose it so it DOES settle out is IMO the best first step to keeping clean alcohol, or at least alcohol you can filter.
I agree, but also what about centripetal separation? If the mixture is let set in the sun with a medium speed stirrer, could the solids be separated if spun out?
@@saddle1940 it would depend on the relative density of the alcohol and the resin particles/snot as to whether a centrifuge works. If they separate under normal gravity settling, even over a long period of time then yes, a centrifuge would work.
You need to do fractional distillation, the same process used in the petroleum industry to separate kerosine from gasoline. It uses differential cooling rates via a fraction column to pull off different precipitates based on their boiling points.
I think you have a great idea about the double filtration. The only thing I think will help would be to have a filter that only gets the big stuff at the top, something like a fuel filter would probably work better. Then the ceramic filter would get the little stuff,
Such a fantastic video. I have buckets of IPA sitting in my closet for a few months now. For sure should try this. Also refuse to use a distiller. Seems like a massive fire Hazzard.
Just take a UV light to it and cure whats floating in it. Depending on how thick the resin is it may take a bit and a few times stiring it up. After just let it sit for a day and all the cured resin will sink and become a shick goop. Then just filter it out. I do this with all my alc though I clean mine this way after I'm done for the day. Cure the alc for like 10 minutes then let it sit over night, filter next day. I never let it get that bad. Then it just becomes a waste :/
If you've got the space, you can simply use a distiller outside. Others have pointed out that they do this, and it works well. Aside from keeping an eye on it, I think I'd unplug the extension cord and wait for it to cool down before approaching it, just in case.
Distillery may be a fire hazard but it is also how alcohol is made... So it is hard to say how safe re-distilling denatured alcohol... So I'm glad to see a less dangerous method to filter out the resin.
You should NEVER use a distiller for IPA. IPA can form peroxides after a while by reacting with air, or by exposure to light, which can explode when you heat the IPA.
Rubbing alcohol was never drinkable, its isopropyl alcohol not ethyl so its not "denatured" at all. Its just inherently poisonous like methyl alcohol and its smell is also inherent in its nature, not an additive to make it non-drinkable. So your attempt to filter out the smell is bound to fail and the fact you thought it smelled "only slightly better" after filtration either was placebo effect or it absorbed moisture from the air and became less volatile because of that. It does not take Walter White to understand there are different alcohols that are inherently non-drinkable and smell different from one another. Also with proper distillation techniques you CAN separate out the ethanol (drinkable alcohol) from the adulterants that make it poisonous. Considering that nearly all fermentation leads to some methyl alcohol in the mix the distillation of fermented mash results in various "cuts" which based on the temperature of vaporization contain mostly methyl alcohol, mostly ethanol, and mostly water. The "heads" or "leads" being mostly methanol are discarded the tails at the end of the run mostly water are either discarded or added back into the main cut to lower its proof. Again Walter White need not be present, perhaps Popcorn Sutton (rest his soul) would be a better reference for the topic at hand.
Another possibility: Make a simple solar still. Take your two bucket lids and run a wide tube/hose between them (sealed to the lids). Take one bucket with the dirty alcohol and wrap it in black plastic (or similar) and leave it in the sun. Take the other bucket and put it in the shade or - better yet - have it sitting in the ground (the bigger the temperature differential the better). It won't be fast, but over time you will accumulate distilled alcohol in the cooler bucket and the system will never heat up anywhere near combustion temperature so there's no fire risk. If the bucket lids seal well, there'll be no smell either. All you need to do is keep putting the dirty alcohol into the black bucket and emptying the clean alcohol from the cooler bucket.
@@Talashaoriginal you dont need to solidify the resin, and worse it could be stuck to the distilling container. Pour it into something after distilling to cure and throw out.
It seems to me that you couldn't simply run alcohol through filters and actually remove all, or most, the resin. Sure the particulates settle after a time, but their is still resin in suspension in the alcohol. The proof of that is that setting it in the sun will kick the alcohol and start the "sludging" process. Filtering after that, if there is still clear alcohol in the container, is then OK. This is what I have done many times. For proof this method works, I would like to see one more step tried: Put the completely filtered alcohol in the sun and see if it kicks and any of it turns to sludge. If it does not, I may trust this method. How about it, can you try this next step and see if there truly is any resin left in suspension in your final clear alcohol? Very Kurious in Kentucky.
You will never stop the resin with a filter... at least not this kind. It's like trying to filter out sugar or salt of water with a screen, just ain't gonna work. You need to remove it by curing it, or distilling it into its fractional components.
@@hansrojas9487 Maybe, but I'm not sure it would be worth it... And I say that because while yes it's a polar solvent, the material resin that gets left behind would clog the filter and never be rechargable... so it would be a one and done use... and a lot more expensive than just buying more isopropanol. I also believe it would take a unique filter, not just the ones used for drinking water, so again the cost goes up.
Love your vids. I can say however that using a purpose built alcohol distiller like you showed in the beginning of the video works REALLY well. I run mine outside and it goes through about 4L in about 40 mins with very little loss. The trick is to make sure the silicone seal makes good contact. I will say that it is pretty darn safe but you still want to do it outside.
It’s probably pretty safe to do, especially outside. I think there is a decent seal with the lid keeping the vapors inside. I just am not comfortable doing it.
I’ve been doing it for over a year with the distiller you had pictured and 70% ipa and it works fine. No problems or explosions so far. Do it outside and wear ppe. Saved a lot of money when there was a run a ipa for people making hand sanitizer.
I tend to use 99.9 isopropynol and purify it be putting it out in the sun in a closed container for a while to cure. I have to shake them or take a silicone spatula to scrape the sides every so often depending on the size container I'm using. After a lot of it is cured out, I bring it inside and let it settle to the bottom for a while. I can then pour most of it off the top and then through a coffee filter. I deal with a lot of the "mucus" you described, but I managed to reclaim ~80% of my alcohol. I do a lot of printing across multiple machines and will clean my alcohol every couple days (so every 7-10 build plates full on a Photon Mono X) with pretty good results. I keep enough alcohol to have 2-3 batches rotating through being in use, settling, or curing in the sun at any given time. After seeing your results, I may have to look into how much I would gain from using a more extensive filtering process.
I think you are on to something with the two-stage filter, but I'd also recommend adding a "pre-filter" stage using a coffee filter or similar to take out the big chunks before it hits your 0.5 micron filter stack. For the clogging that occurs, you might be able to rig up a stirring mechanism or similar to keep the liquid moving. Not sure if it would help the clogging or not but might be worth a try with a cheap hobby motor and some 3D printed paddles. Just use a long shaft so the motor is well away from the alcohol.
Putting the Filters on a turn table or Potters wheel may help get the particles to settle toward the outside edges while the lighter alcohol goes into the filter. Obviously this pseudo centrifuge might take some tweeking to get the proper speed . Too fast and no alcohol even hits the filter too slow and the particulate isn't drawn outward.
Heres what I think. Prefilter with a paint filter/coffee filter into bucket 1. Bucket 1 has a 0.5 filter on it. Bucket 1 also has one of those magnetic stirrers so there is never a danger of a spark and the dirty IPA is agitated and less likely to clog the filter. Bucket 2 is 0.3 and the mag stir is optional. Bucket 3 has a tap installed so you can easily extract without taking the whole thing appart.
hmm.. since the issue is particulates, I'm wondering if a flocculant would be cheaper. A 5-pound container of pool flocculant is about the same price as your filters and can clarify 20,000 gallons of water. 10 grams of bentonite can clarify 5 gallons, and about 4 kg of bentonite can be had on Amazon for about $30. That's enough to do 2000 gallons and I know for certain it won't hurt the alcohol since it's used in wine making. I think the bigger benefit of flocculants is that you could clarify every container you have all at once. The down side is you'd almost certainly introduce a little water, at least with the bentonite.
ruclips.net/video/HxT8rEr-tFI/видео.html - They use Aluminum Sulfate to do what I think you're talking about. They say it works pretty well, though the commenters are skeptical (I haven't been able to try it yet). I feel like there's a process to clean the really nasty stuff with a combination of clarifying, curing, and filtering. I'll definitely be building a ceramic filter rig, though...
Maybe i am dense, but what i do with my alcohol is expose it to UV light and than filter it with paint filters. The resin is cured( clumped) and than the filter removes it. Simple, cheap, and seems to work. What am i missing here?
I'm guessing that like me, you filter it before it gets as contaminated as the alcohol @Nerdtronic is trying to recover. I think that's the key. Filter it regularly and don't wait until it's a thick cloudy mess. Or maybe the Methanol/denatured alcohol acts differently on resins than IPA? I've only ever used IPA.
@@ausfoodgarden I use IPA and expose it to UV after most uses. I filter it every so often, which causes the resin to coagulate. I than filter that out. I get a nice clear IPA from this. Simple.
How do you get that much curing from UV exposing on the sun?? Do you live in Australia? I expose my bottles directly on the sun and it takes days if not a week to get to where you are in just a couple of hours.
I used a filter method with cotton wicking and activated carbon After a couple passes (replacing at least the cotton each pass) it went from gray cloudy to almost fully clear
What I typically do is I typically pour my used alcohol into disposable plastic bottles every couple prints, never letting it get that dirty. I set them on the window sill to settle and cure and then pour the alcohol through a coffee filter. Typically one 500ml bottle full of used alcohol will use one coffee filter before it's too clogged to be used quickly. It doesn't get the alcohol perfectly clean, but it does help a significant amount and doesn't take that long to filter.
I too was thinking of a simple coffee filter system. sure it doesnt get it perfectly clean but... A couple times through a pass with one filter then the second pass with a double filter. clean enough for me.
I made myself a graduated filtration system or screens and cloths. This was the best I could come up with and worked ok, eventually the alcohol gets slimy though and is trash. Replacing and cleaning filters is a pain and it is massively time consuming for a product that will never be as good as the original. Similar to VOG you can use a 5 or 6 step cleaning process and use the less clean stuff in the earlier steps. This all helps extend the life, but it was tedious and a mess. In the end I bought an air distiller. It works super quick and the final product is good as new. Though there are some cautionary points for this as well. Need to use the still in a well ventilated area. Need to make sure your seal is good and for an abundance of caution make sure there are no flames around. Taking it outside is a good solution. Also still laws are complicated at best and the presence of it on a property basically gives the ATF and their deputies carte blanche authority to come in search the place should they choose to do so. Nothing about the process is normally illegal as you are not making a drinkable product, but that does not mean you won't have to have that fight in court if for some reason the ATF ends up at your door. Distilling either 99% IPA or denatured works the same and does not reduce the proof of the product. I find that I lose about 10% per run, though don't know how much of that is actually resin volume as I tend to let it go until it annoys me and I think things aren't getting as clean as they should. Return on investment takes a lot longer on a $200 still than $60 worth of various filter every 6 months, but I have easily recaptured my investment in a year. I am not recommending either just due to legal and safety concerns, but I choose the air still and am happy with my purchase.
I use a similar cleaning system to VOG, only 3 stages instead of more... Works well enough, then I leave the super dirty alcohol/resin mix out in the sun to cure/evaporate. The cured solid mass then goes in the trash.
Would there be any value in running it through a simple sand filter first? Also maybe you could speed thing up a bit by creating a vacuum in the collection bucket.
Filtering just creates new resin-contaminated waste items you can't dispose of. When the IPA in my washing station gets oversaturated, I decant it back into bottles and put them on a windowsill. (I don't have a spare UV source for this sort of thing.) Any time I see that the resin has settled, I turn the bottles over a couple times. Depending on the sun, the resin will have completely polymerized out of solution in 1-2 days and settled to the bottom as a solid, not a slimy mess. Then, and only then, is the resin waste safe to dispose of.
The "Baby Puke" stuff (at about 9:00 minutes in) might filter well if you first liquify the gel in a blender. This might break up the polymer matrix and make it so you can dilute the liquified slurry with a little more alcohol, then use Alum or some other flocculent to help precipitate out the cured resin.
Have a quick question, I already have one of my containers filled with isopropyl alcohol, also known as rubbing alcohol, high-level medical grade, so it's at 91%. Since what you're using is denatured alcohol, and since both differ subtly, could I still use both in the same container, or we'll both containers have to be separated out to be labeled properly so that both don't mix? I've been trying to find like almost everywhere if it's okay to mix of denatured and isopropyl alcohol together in the same container and not get any kind of odd reactions or violent reaction, and everything that I come across is not answering my question
The 'mucous' is a spongy suspension, if it is squeezed in a filter bag , the alcohol is released. I found this still had a lot of dissolved resin in it and required another exposure and filter pass. I tried a vacuum still instead of higher temperature boiling , but the phase change method is far too costly , unless it could be done this a solar still of some type. I'm also fine the smell of ipa offensive, worse than resin by far.
@AndrewSM I just used a cotton cloth and gathered the edges together and squeezed. If one had a lot to do ,then a similar cloth in a cider press might do the trick.
Thanks for the info. I'm trying my first filtering job. I allowed it to settle and then tried to leave most of the contaminates behind. Then, I put the alcohol in jugs and left them in the sun for ~16 hours. The plan is to pour what remains, through cheesecloth and see what I have. I hadn't thought of the method you mention and I'll be placing an order to Amazon shortly. :) BTW I'm visiting my local fire department because I'm considering using a distiller. So far, it will be at least 25 feet from any dwelling. It will be contained in either a steel worksite box or an order oven. Personally, I'm leaving towards the oven. That way, if there is combustion, it will be contained. Thanks again for the great info.
@@Nerdtronic How's that follow-up video coming? I set up the same system and the filters I got from your link, didn't even let the new alcohol through, so I'm looking for another method.
Your channel is getting traction and the success by now that you deserve. Your are still one of the coolest guys in this maker department… Thanks a lot ;-)
I recently came across a video by Makers Mashup about using Aluminum Sulfate to remove resin particulate from solution. Maybe try using that as the first step then filtering after. Would be really interesting to see your thoughts on it.
Bravo sir! Thank you for sharing your ideas & projects! I'm new to resin printing & I've already went thru 3 gallons of the stinky stuff in less than 2 months! So I'm definitely going to try this! Keep doing what you're doing & thanks again!
The filters are probably going to cost more than buying new batches of alcohol. Letting the alcohol sit and settle or accelerating using a coagulant would work. Maybe even try using centrifugal force.
If you put the dirty alcohol into a separation funnel, let the resin settel to the bottom, you can remove the settled resin. A separation funnel lets you open a valve to drain out the bottom of the funnel first.
I like the idea of adding stages. I guess the nice thing about stacking a 3rd or more stage of filtration is that it really shouldn’t take much longer to do the whole batch. And if cheaper, more corse filters were used at the top it might make those at the bottom last longer.
I think the order of things might put a kink in that idea. I think my really dirty jar I maybe could have salvaged if I had filtered, then cured in the sun, then filtered again.
Pressure will also increase the rate through the filter. Either deeper, or find a way to add pressure. Also, the catch bucket needs a vent so air can get out of the way to let more alcohol through the filter. Vent it into the upper bucket, ideally.
For something like this, you might want to try using a centrifuge to settle the resin at the bottom of a container, then draining the sediment from the bottom. Once the large particulates are removed, you could then optionally run the remainder through a filter
I'm an "armchair expert" at best so take what I say as food for thought rather than solutions that will work. It should be possible to use a centrifuge of some sort to dramatically speed up the precipitation of impurities. Also, to speed up filtering you could create lower pressure in the recipient bucket or create higher pressure in the source bucket to help push the liquid through. The problem with creating partial vacuum is that alcohol is already volatile, and with lower pressure it will evaporate even faster. I guess you could cool it down beforehand to mitigate it. If the dirty alcohol becomes a gelatinous mess when exposed to UV for a long time you might want to give it a small dose of UV, filter out whatever has cured and repeat the process as much as needed. Alternatively, the gelatinous goop could be wrapped in cloth and squeezed to separate the liquid from the resin. You might even try putting it into a blender or a centrifuge. The problem was that the resin cured while being intermixed with alcohol, so it formed something like a sponge with alcohol being trapped inside. By mechanically disturbing the structure it should be possible to release the liquid. Exposing dirty alcohol to UV after each use would probably prevent too much resin from building up in the solution. Granted, when there's not much resin dissolved in alcohol it's harder for it to cure, but it should work with enough UV exposure. Here's something I came up that I have no idea if it will work or not. Solubility of chemicals depends on the temperature. So, theoretically, if you put dirty alcohol in the freezer it might be cold enough to cause resin to separate. After all, alcohol freezes at very low temperatures, so a normal freezer should not be able to freeze it solid, but will (hopefully) chill it enough to cause precipitation. I'm actually really curious if this is a viable method. I think it should work better on very dirty alcohol as opposed to alcohol that was used to wash a part once or twice.
As a former moonshiner I would not recommend distilling denatured alcohol. When you are distilling alcohol for drinking the strongest liquor going in the still is around 50% depending on how good your first distilling goes. At that point you still (pun intended) have a lot of water left and the alcohol content in the still decreases. Even if the denatured alhocol is dirty the alcohol content is still high and with no water to counteract combustion.
Honestly... i let my ipa sit down in my basement, outside of my cleaning station and pull the (mostly) clear ipa out with a 60ml syringe with a silicone tube every couple of times i wash something in there. What settled down to the base of the container gets pulled over to a very small plastic bucket with cover lid, where it can settle down another few weeks. What seems good in that tiny bucket gets pulled out with that same syringe. With that dirty 0.5cm-1cm of really thick resin stuff at the bottom i put it into a couple of paper towels, go out to the sun, a few minutes after that it is pretty hard and i throw it away into the trash. Every time i make this i loose about 10-50ml (depends on how dirty it is) Sure, my ipa is not even close to that clear you have it, but it is clear enough for me to wash the next print in it. The only downside, syringes do not like ipa. The rubber in it gets hard very quickly and the ipa drips through this black silicone/rubber - so you will have to hold it upside down all the time - thats why i use the silicone tube.
This is how I do it: Pre filter - Filter A with agitator - Filter B - Collector Pre filter gets rid of the bigger chunks. Filter A has an agitator to keep the fluid moving, preventing clogging. Filter B is standard filtration. Then it all collects to the very bottom with a faucet.
theres another way of doing this that combining the low cost of the filters but also the effectiveness of the distillation while also being completely safe. And you also wont have to mess around cleaning off filters, just occasionally cleaning a jar. Solar distillation. You'll need a clear container that can be made air tight and you'll want one that is at least twice the volume of the amounts of alcohol you wish to process. and then a black container for the alcohol, the shape of which should be able to fit inside of the clear one (my 3d printer came with a black jar for putting the cleaning alcohol in, but any should do, most black plastic containers will block significant amounts of uv so no need to get a specific uv blocking jar) Personally i made a whole setup with a 3d printed stand that hold the black jar up off the bottom of the clear container, and a device that fits around the black jar and gives me two handles to hold onto it by as i lower it into the clear container. Pour your dirty alcohol into the black container, don't put a lid on it. Put it into the clear container and then put the air tight lid on the clear container and place the whole thing on a window sill or somewhere warm. The heat from sunlight or ir radiation will be absorbed more by the black container than the clear, so the alcohol will evaporate out of the black container and condense on the walls of the clear one and collect on the bottom of it. This is why you want a platform of some kind holding the black jar up, if the black jar becomes mostly empty and its sat in the pool of alcohol that has formed then it could tip over, but mainly its less effective if the black jar ends up in the alcohol that you don't want to evaporate any more, as then the jar will be heating up all the alcohol, and we dont want that. So thats it, just keep emptying the alcohol out of the clear container (one with a spigot could be helpful), and then pout more dirty alcohol into the black jar. Clean the resin out of the black jar when necessary. The alcohol in the bottom will be pretty much 100% pure, depending on how hot your black jar gets, if you have say 70% alcohol that youre trying to clean then depending on how hot your window sill gets the temp might not reach high enough to evaporate any water from the black container. And the temperatures shouldnt get high enough to be a safety issue, though obviously dont do this anywhere near open flames.
I was inspired. I made this with 2 of these filters in 2 different 5 gallon buckets for a total of 4 filters going into a 3rd 5 gallon bucket. The alcohol comes out very clear. Haven't degunked the filters yet, so I'm really looking forward to that. It filters pretty slow, but it does work. However I don't consume huge amounts of alcohol with only one printer, so I'd say if you have lots of printers, you might want more than one setup to be filtering at any given time. It'll still make the money back easily.
I get the Mucus/Baby Poop all the time and haven't figured out how to get around it. Most RUclipsrs make the process of cleaning alcohol all fun and games. Thanks for showing the dark seedy side of cleaning alcohol.
i use 3 glass containers with sealing lids. one has clean alcohol for final wash. the second is mostly clean for initial wash. the 3rd is the dirty stuff and is stuck in front of a uv light that cures the resin in the alcohol. once the resin is cured in the alcohol i use cheese clothe to filter the mucus out. cheese cloth is coarse but it can be used to squeeze out the majority of the alcohol from the goop. then i run through a coffee filter in a funnel. The alcohol that comes out of the coffee filter is usually clean enough to use for initial wash again. I just keep rotating the containers around and add new alcohol as needed.
Not the same thing, but back when I was at the University I used to work on a project where we filtered river sediment. Because the sediment is a mix of sand, mud and silt, using a fine mesh straight away would clog the filter and take forever, so we used different mesh sizes, starting on a 2mm mesh and going until a 0.5mm. I know resin particles are very small, a possible solution to the clogging would be using a larger mesh (or exposing the alcohol to UV for a few minutes, or both) so you remove the bigger particles first.
distilling is probably one of the best methods to clean any relatively low boiling point liquid (acetone, IPA, Denatured spirits, etc.), however if you're going to be distilling flammable liquids its probably best to get a proper chemistry distilling kit and to do it outside, as this avoids explosive fumes indoors and with a chemistry set you wont have to worry about an electronic distiller causing an accidental explosion, although you will need to drop around $200-$300 (or more) on appropriate glassware and a heating mantle (a heating mantle avoids open flames from a Bunsen burner, and they often have very good temperature control, and are often made to not cause fires) its worth it if you're going to be recycling lots of material all at once every so often.
I used to have mine (sold my resin printer, too much mess) on a rotating treatment. One jar for initial rinse (mucky pot), one jar for final clean, one jar sat out in UV and one jar running through a filter. After each print they would all be rotated. The mucky pot would go in for UV treatment, the UV treated pot would get filtered, the previously clean jar would become the mucky pot and the now UV treated and filtered alcohol would become the final clean pot. It seems like ballache but it worked well and, TBH, would take about 30 seconds to cycle once everything was set up in its own jar. The thing that bugged me was my use of an ultrasonic bath that was a pain to pour out from with any accuracy. Minor spillages occasionally but it would flash off pretty quickly and I could have just printed and coated a clip on spout for the bath. Don't let it get super mucky and it comes clean really easily, no need to worry about the wait on filtration as there would be so little in it anyway that it would run through quickly and be easily done before the next print.
I would be confortable in distillation, I did with an heating mantle and worked fine. In italy denaturated alchol has no methanol but it is still harsh smelling. Also distilled smells bad.
What about a centrifuge? Like a filter it's mechanical separation of the clean alcohol from the resin bonded alcohol but you won't get clogging, it'll cost more upfront but you won't have the ongoing cost of replacing filters. Alternatively you could repurpose two pneumatic cylinders to vacuum boil the alcohol, you pour the dirty alcohol into a fully extended cylinder (only fill about a quarter of it) and attach it to a fully retracted cylinder, then seal it and pull down on the empty retracted cylinder. The pressure inside both cylinders drops, the alcohol cold boils, then you slowly retract the cylinder with the dirty alcohol (not too far or you'll inject it into the other cylinder) and as the pressure returns the alcohol vapor condenses and mostly ends up in the second (now fully extended) cylinder.
Yes the mucus I've learned that as well to not let my alcohol get that dirty. I personally filter IPA often through a metal tea strainer 1. alcohol is not adsorbed by the paper filters 2. is a fixed cost vs buying and disposing of paper filters. But then again I use paper towels to remove the gunk out of the metal strainer and to wipe clean my alcohol vessels (i.e. Tupperware and pickle strainer bucket) And yes I need a better way to pour alcohol as I often find I spill as much as I am able to save sometimes pouring out of Tupperwear.
Another thing to consider is that most alcohols used for cleaning (acetone, isopropyl, methanol) love to absorb water from the surrounding air. Your alcohols will quickly dilute and become much less effective. Distilling won't solve this without proper lab equipment, so desiccants are an easy method. As for filtering, I use a buchner funnel with a vacuum pump and it works incredibly well. Even the cheap brake bleed hand pumps will pull enough vacuum. No need for a powered unit.
It would be cool to put a rack near the top of the top bucket and pump alcohol from the bottom bucket to a sprayer in the top bucket. Just set your part on the rack, close the lid and let the sprayer hose down the part, then the alcohol filters back into the bottom bucket. This would prevent you from having to dirty another container. The sprayer may also help to prevent a bit of the buildup on the filter if it's positioned in such a way that it can hose it down a bit.
There is a product (not sure of the name but something like resin clean) that cleans 3D printed parts better (stops them from yellowing due to alcohol) and once it's dirty you place it in UV light, pull out the blob of cured resin and it's ready to use again. Basically it's usable nearly indefinitely though you do loose a small amount to evaporation and what is left on parts as you remove them and such. I remember people saying it was the only way to get optically clear prints (like for lenses). Been a long time since I did resin printing but I did buy some (only had to buy it once).
Try 3 stage particulate filtering which is used in water treatment; first put aluminum sulfate dissolved in water into the IPA, agitate it for a while. This causes the resin to coalesce. Second step, decant it through a cheap paint filter, this removes all of the 200+ micron particles, with most of the heavy resin staying in the decanting container. Then you can use the gravity filtration. This will save on clogging the gravity filters. Finally, you can distill it as in my prior comment, with the filtering letting you distillation equipment last.
when I'm cleaning parts, I always start by setting it at an angle over the trash to drip off as much as possible. maybe 10 min later ill come by and spray a little bit of alcohol on the part to wash off any large pools of resin. this uses a bit of alcohol directly into the trash, but then when i dunk the part in the alcohol tank, it doesn't cloud it up as badly. cloudy alcohol will def leave a film on the parts that diminishes detail. Depending on the part, i may also rinse it with more alcohol or just water/dish soap before drying and curing.
Best and safest way whoud be a distilation under partial vacum. That lowers boiling point, if high enough vacum it can be at just above room temp. It might be even posible to salvage the left over resin
I use coffee filters to clean my Denatured alcohol. I have two rinse baths, 'Dirty' and 'clean', and first rinse in the dirty bath, then in the clean one to soak for a little longer. The alcohol in the 'dirty' tub is filtered into a bottle after every few prints, until it's too bad to make a difference. The 'clean' alcohol is also filtered after every few rinses, and when it starts degrading, it is dumped into the 'dirty' bath, and the sludge in that is left in a bottle outside to evaporate away. I may try filtering with those ceramic/charcoal filters on the 'clean' stuff later on.
I distill denatured alcohol without any issues. I would say I recover about 65-70% of it. What doesn't distill I put in a clear plastic container and leave it outside. What is left solidifies in a day. What comes out of the distiller is crystal clear and the odor is not as strong. I also do a "pre wash" in a separate container and then use my wash and cure. It make the alcohol in the wash and cure last longer. I was hoping your method was a little more efficient and could be done indoors but I think I'll stick with my distilling outside. Great video though. :)
To be fair the distiller does work well. I manage a dental lab and we go through a ton of printer resin and alcohol. The distiller is the most simple way in my opinion and we are able to recycle it quickly. Obviously it needs to be in a well ventilated area. We actually just let ours run outside. One of my coworkers was telling me about this filter method today so I thought I’d do some research.
Great video, love seeing makers trying to reduce their impact on the environment and save a bit of money in the process! Just a couple of little info nuggets for ya, first IPA or Isopropanol is not the same chemical as Ethanol, no amount of filtering or distillation will turn it into ethanol or remove it's odor, as such IPA is not denatured since it's not "consumable" in the first place. The other component of (non pure) IPA is water. Also from looking for a cheap source of decently pure ethanol, I discovered that hardware store denatured alcohol (particularly the Klean Strip brand) contains up to 60 percent methanol as a denaturant (look at your local products' MSDS safety data sheet to see what is in them). While harmless for cleaning prints, would not recommend trying to make it drinkable, you'll just end up blind in the hospital if not worse. Also also, distillation using a countertop electric still is pretty safe all thing considered, stills are designed to condense as much vapor back into liquid as possible, so (ideally) no more vapor should come from the still than would come from an open container of alcohol, while good ventilation is still recommended, I have yet to hear of one catching fire, despite not being designed for distilling ethanol. It's not impossible but very unlikely.
The method I was thinking is to take the alcahol with the resin settled out of it and use a peristaltic pump to circulate it through a uv chamber which drips into another dark chamber with a sand filter or something similar, that way over time the resin slowly gets cured from the alcahol and gets caught in the filter
the tubes would start to have resin stuck on the walls. Maybe have the curing part on the pump inside? so each time resin gets cured it gets crushed by the pump rollers and it then continues to the rest of the system. Im thinking having paint sprayer filters on the inlet and outlet of the pump.
Great video! Very helpful! Any chance you can produce a followup video with your triple bucket system? How much of a pain was it to clean the filter? At what point is the filter so gunked up you have to replace it? When you replace, what has to be done to the filter to prep it for safe disposal?
My method is to use 3 vats of different level of how clean the IPA is. One vat is the dirty, where all your IPA will end up eventually. Then the medium, and finally the clean. When cleaning a part I dip it in the dirty to get off any resin still on it. Then I let it drip off a bit and put it in the second one which has fairly clean IPA. Finally I swish it around in pretty much completely clean IPA. To clean the IPA I just let it sit for a while so sediments fall to the bottom. Then I siphon off the top with a hose (but you can also just pour the top stuff). Then I take the medium vat and pour it into the dirty one, and finally pour the "cleanest" which is now slighly pale, into the medium one. Then I fill up the clean vat with new IPA. This is needed since some IPA is lost when leaving the dirty IPA sludge in the dirty vat, and some IPA evaporates regularly. The sludge from the dirty vat I take to be cured in the sun or under an UV lamp and throw out. My procedure is not very advanced or cause much extra work, and it gives me completely clean parts. Before I started this method I used to get a bit sticky parts after cleaning and curing, but now my prints are nice and dry.
Another way to get the particulates to settle is something we use in brewing. Cold crashing, put the jars in a freezer and the particles will settle in a week.
To clean the filters, you could try running water through it backwards to flush the gunk off the surface. Capture the water and let it evaporate and you will be left with the slime/powdered resin.
The way I clean my alcohol is by first putting it in a bottle and curing it in a UV chamber (sun works fine) and then just letting it sit in the sun for a few weeks. Eventually everything will just fall to the bottom of the bottle and you get mostly clean IPA to pour off. I've gone through about 3 cycles of this now and the IPA is a bit yellow, but still very usable. Eventually I can just distil it when it gets too dirty for this method.
1:00 Put that system under vacuum or more precisely lower air pressure as vacuum means sucking out alcohol vapours too. So, under lower pressure boiling point lowers down to the point that alcohol can boil in much safer conditions like room temperature or a little bit above to make sure you have that extra margin to cool it back down to condense back into a liquid.
If you do a lot of printing you could have 2 cleaning baths, when the second gets dirty you can rotate and use fresh cleaner in the primary wash tank, use it as secondary and the previous secondary as primary.
I'm trained as a chemist. Fuel+oxidizer+ "open flame" = bad outcome!. But using an electrically heated distillation unit is about as safe as it gets. The end product is no more / no less dangerous than it was before distillation). I don't smoke. I wouldn't do this around open flames. Distillation is the only practical way to accomplish what you're trying to do. Any yes, that's what we would do in a lab to purify alcohol. If you really wanted to reduce the risk, lower the distillation temperature by distilling under vacuum. (NB: the water content will NOT stay the same (it will reduce with each run) until you reach ~95% alcohol. At this point, alcohol and water form an azeotrope. You can get it to 100%, but it's beyond the scope of this discussion)
I just spent the last couple months trying to figure out how to purify isopropyl alcohol. I tried all the different ways I found on RUclips none of which actually purify the alcohol here’s what I found. If you take your dirty alcohol, put it into a clear container then set it in the sun for several days the sediment will settle to the bottom. However, there is still resin in the IPA. The way you can test if there’s resin in your IPA just take a small sample of your IPA and put a couple drops of water in it if the water turns cloudy white there’s resin in your IPA at least with the Elegoo resins that I am working with that’s what I found. The only way I was able to get all of the resin out was to then distill using relatively inexpensive lab equipment. After I distilled the IPA which boils at about 87° Celsius, there was a yellowish liquid residue left in the bottom of the flask which was the leftover resin. I tested the distilled IPA and it was 92%. This was pretty good because I started with 95% IPA. I would highly recommend that you don’t use water in your cleaning process (unless using water soluble resin) because the water does not mix with the resins that I have used and I found that that was causing the white haze on my prints. if you put a couple drops of water into your dirty IPA you’ll see a white cloud form. This is resin contamination. It will not be there after proper distillation. I used fractional distillation to get the cleanest IPA that I could. I Distilled about 1 gallon of dirty IPA and ended up with 85% of a gallon of very clean IPA. Absolutely no resin. You can have clean looking IPA that is sticky because there is still resin in it. Hope this helps. I have not tried one of the canister distillers. They MIGHT work.
Never saw my own handy trick somewhere so I am just posting this here: After cleaning my IPA there is always some greyish coloring left. I put one of those "color & dirt catcher" sheets into the IPA and let it wash in the wash & cure for some time. Removes a visible amount of finest sediment and coloring.
If you want to remove the denaturing, you will need a graduated cylinder and need precise temperature control with it as well. You will also likely need to distill it several times. I haven't done it myself, just found out this stuff when I was researching it when I was younger and wanted to make my own alcohol for ultralight camping purposes.
I put my alcohol container on my magnetic mixer into my curing box and had it mixing during the curing time. It did not turn to mucus, but stayed granular. I ran it through a paint filter and it caught most of the cured material. Only did the one shot, will try it again, maybe even without the stirring to see if that helps.
Distilling works well - but requires precision temperature control like an induction burner to avoid fire risks. Also, I would use a secondary container inside your distiller boiler so that the contaminant (in this case resin) stay in the secondary container. Unless you want to spend big money for a dedicated distiller just for your iso. I just have an aluminum pot I cut the handle off. I bought it at a thrift store for $2 and the bottom is lousy with residue, but my distiller is clean as a whistle.
Not too bad. I may try this or maybe add it as a step in my current process. I run 2 Form3's daily and use their cleaning tank which holds 2gal of IPA. I get about 35 wash cycles before I have to change it out. To filter things: I use a Radiator filler funnel kit with a 1.5 to 3 gal coffee filter and made a custom adapter so I can thread it onto an empty IPA bottle and siphon out the IPA from my wash tank. Takes one filter per gallon. Then those hang out in the window till I've used up another wash tank (~2 weeks). I will then use about 2/3 of the IPA of each bottle that's been sitting in the window, being very careful to not jostle the bottle too much. The last 1/3 of IPA/sludge gets dumped into a very large (28qt) Storage Bin with a nearby fan. Airflow with a large surface area and the excess IPA evaporates off fairly quickly. Then I put the last of the sludge in direct sunlight to cure the resin so I can finally toss it in the trash. After writing this, I realized how dauting this all sounds. But it really only takes about 30 min or less with very minor effort to siphon out the IPA and start it's slow journey to the trash.
Thanks for the comments. Yeah for some people the entire process of resin printing sounds too daunting. But it's all just routine that you get into. No big deal once you're set up to do it.
Last time i used some clean plastic box and i let it sit closed for about week on sun and the resin nicely catched to walls and alcohol stayed almost clean in middle. I was super happy because i was able to salvage about 4-5l of alcohol which looks mostly clean but i'll get to know that once i print something
I've done both distilling and filtering. They are both a pain. Distilling is faster but is a fire hazard. Odor is worse for distilling as well. I broke the thermal sensor on two different distillers before the first gallon. Both methods are messy as well.
Thanks fo commenting. Yeah that is sort of what I got from it. But I’m going to keep trying the filtering to see if I can get a system that isn’t too bad.
I've been using a distiller for months now. It has already saved me the money I paid for it by three times the price I pay for denatured alcohol. I distill my alcohol out in my back yard away from everything. I've had 0 issues. And cleanup hasn't been a hassle either. Due to the stainless steel basin of my distiller.
@@VictorLaster i also just use a distiller i just use it outside. it has worked fine for me so far
@@Nerdtronic can I suggest you try switching to bioethanol, I've been using it for years as camping stove fuel and as a cleaner. In the UK our denatured alcohol (methylated spirits) must contain no more than 9.5% of the highly toxic methanol,, 5% if industrial, in the US it's not so. Have a look at the safety data sheet for that stuff you are using, it can be as much as 50% poison, bioethanol fuel is much cleaner and smells sweet, also it's not a petrol product unlike denatured alcohol and IPA. Ethanol is also slightly safer on the skin than IPA, methanol is not safe at all on the skin.
As a person with a background in lab tech, i'd not hesitate to distill the alcohol off. With the right setup it's safe enough.
Tall thin containers are good for letting the particulates and heavier liquid resin settle to the bottom quickly. Once the resin has settled to the bottom of the container (leave it for 24 hours or longer) expose it to UV light and then *carefully* decant the clean alcohol off the top. It'll look like you're leaving a lot behind (and you are) but the amount you salvage is worth it once you consider the time spent.
Cold temperatures are also great for different substances to settle in a stable way based on density. I use this for brewing, however not sure how it works for plastic polymers.
You really need to let the resin set first, then pour out that relatively clean part, let it set again, pour out, expose it to the sun to let the rest of the resin to polymerize, then you can filter it relatively easily. Tried it, it works, amount of waiting time is painful though.
Yes I was thinking I probably could have saved the bad batch by pouring it off and filtering it first. Then curing in the sun. Then filtering it again through my 2nd pass filter.
Would a centrifuge type thingy help?
@@VagabondTE it could, but waiting is good enough. I use a lot of IPA anyway, and buying 5l cans of 99% stuff works best.
@@cthulpiss lol yea.. As I always say, no need for a wifi hammer.
hot water mix with dishwash soap and windex for an hour.. your welcome!
I almost always use a spray of solvent to clean parts rather than a dunk. A spray bottle works fine but my Iwata paint gun is even better. It is bigger than an airbrush but smaller than a regular paint sprayer. Does an excellent job of spraying solvents. Paper towels sop up the alcohol. The waste is minimal and clean up is easy and simple.
👍🏻 I like the dunk method. I feel like an extra dunk in clean alcohol really gets the part clean.
Which Iwata are you using? All the models I found, and there are a ton, are full-sizze. Thanks in advance!
@@MakerMeraki It’s an old model, an RG-2. from pictures on the Internet it looks similar to the current model RG-3. It’s not as small as an airbrush but it’s quite a bit smaller than my full-sized guns.
@@RobertTolone thank you! 👍
I do this as well after first sopping up surface resin with a small paper towel. You save yourself so much hassle by removing as much resin as possible before the bath. I finish with an alcohol bath with a smaller insert in the ultrasonic cleaner. @Nerdtronic After curing the contaminated alcohol, you can just shake the sealed container to break up the scoby. It will settle to the bottom relatively quickly, and makes the first phase of filtration easier.
I enjoy your videos. A bit of background info on myself: I currently work for BASF. Prior to that I was a Combat Engineer. So, chemicals and explosives is kind of my calling (so to speak). A 3 stage filtration system would be a little more efficient for removing IPA/DenAl from your resin slurry. An additive for encapsulation or covalent bond would help pull the larger resin particles out. Something like charcoal would be the most cost effective route. Also, AGITATION in the 1st stage would be a MUST. I would steer clear of a bubbler/fluidizer, unless you plan on using an inert gas like nitrogen or argon, etc. Adding atmospheric air adds oxygen. And if you know anything about the "Fire Triangle", you DO NOT want to add O-2 to something that is already flammable. Slow, mechanical agitation would be the best bet. However, that costs more $ for that equipment. Unless you have kids at home who need a new chore.
Now, as far as distilling goes: I've been using a distiller for 2+ years now. The very same that you spoke of in the beginning of this video. The particular model that I have is programmable. It is a feature that is absolutely necessary for nothing other than safety's sake for those who are looking into distilling their cleaning solvent with one of these machines. Both basic models and ones that are programmable state that they have an "Auto Shut-off Feature" that will turn the heating element off once the distiller is empty. DO NOT RELY on this feature. It's basically the same type of sensor that detects thermal runaway on an FDM printer. While autoignition of alcohol is 750F, I'm not willing to tempt it. At the least, a timer is ESSENTIAL. 45m to an hour for 4L is enough to distill the majority and still leave a liquid slurry in the bottom the the vessel. Put it into a bucket, leave the lid off and let the sun vaporize the rest. Another reason to not use the auto shut-off feature is because the machine will basically cook the remaining resin and you'll end up having to scrape a terrible smelling, rock hard resin pizza crust out of the bottom of the machine. I always use the distiller outside or just inside my garage with the door open and a fan blowing the fumes out. Not necessarily due to fire hazards, but because the fumes are TERRIBLE. I can absolutely understand your concern with using a distiller. I did a lot of reading on different ones and their feature before I decided to go this route. The 2 main factors that helped my decision was that 1. the model that I bought is a closed system (during the heating process all the way until the condensate drain) and 2. it is programmable and has a timer. A bit of knowledge and common sense go a looong way. Having a background in chemicals also helps. But then again, there are people out there who still believe that the world is flat.
This comment is just as interesting as the video itself, thanks for sharing :)
You should post a link to that bad boy
uh oh we got a globetard over here ;)
Good info! Thank you. I agree, a link would be great.
@@johngwinner9941 link posted.
Extra note, I used a mix of sand and charcoal powder (raw) in a 2ltr bottle and had some horrifically bad alcohol go through it and come out okay. SO it might be a better idea to do 1 filter with a light packing of that around the filter to act as a kind of... pre-filter... filter :)
Interesting
You could layer pool filter sand and diatomaceous Earth over the top of the 1st filter with the carbon.
Thanks for testing this. Side note denatured alcohol and isopropyl alcohol are two different molecules. The term rubbing alcohol can refer to either. Denatured alcohol is ethyl alcohol that is poisoned, usually with methanol. Thought I would point that out since you use all the above terms interchangeably and I got confused.
Your comment is way too far down the list. One other thing that bothered me about his descriptions is that isopropyl alcohol isn't poisoned, it is itself poison. Ethanol is the only alcohol that is 'safe' for humans to drink.
Seconded this. There are three alcohols: methanol (extremely poisonous), ethanol (drinking kind, mildly poisonous), and propanol (two kinds, one is "iso" which is IPA/rubbing alchohol, and fairly poisonous). "Denatured alcohol" is ethanol (drinking kind) with stuff added which is very difficult to remove and makes it more poisonous.
When I say it can't be removed, it's probably an azeotrope, so it can't be removed by distilling at all. The same way ethanol can't be distilled below 4% water, and IPA can't be distilled less than 13% water because of azeotropes.
As a retired kitchen worker, let me sing the praises of the humble 5-gallon pickle bucket. The weight of the plastic is such that it is frequently used to construct armor for reenactment sorts. The lids have a gasket and clamping system that will last for many, many re-uses.
As somebody who reprocesses alcohol by putting it under the same UV cure light I use for my resin parts and then filtering it through what you described as a paint filter, it's impressive seeing how this high level of filtration is able to get you perfectly clear looking alcohol. Curing out disolved or suspended resin and using the 'paint filter' to catch that solid material still leaves my alcohol with an increasingly strong color to it as it continues to be reprocessed, and that's been a bit of a disappointment. I think what's happening for me is that resin has pigmentation particles suspended in the mixture of polymers and photoreactive molecules. As the polymers interlock within the standard resin mixture, they 'capture' the pigmentation particles within a cage of interlocked polymer bonds. However, once resin and alcohol is mixed, the carefully engineered molecular mixture gets totally dispersed in the alcohol. It does seem photoreactive components are still able to promote some bonding between polymers even when they're all interspersed in a sea of alcohol, but this bonding definitely isn't 'caging' the pigments anymore. The pigmentation particles themselves don't react to the UV light at all (which they shouldn't) and are too small to be captured by the 'paint filter', so my own reprocessing workflow just doesn't have any effect on them. What you're really up against trying to get that perfectly clear looking alcohol is getting a fine enough particulate filtration that you are able to filter out the pigmentation particles especially, although there may be some color cast to other magical ingredients in the resin mixture that might promote bonding/stability/etc but, like the pigments, fail to get compeletly captured in the polymer bonds when everything is super interspersed in alcohol. Honestly wouldn't have thought of it if I didn't see this video, though. Thanks!
For the 3 bucket system, you could fill the top bucket with loose activated charcoal as the first pass filter, then double up the ceramic filters for the second stage
Good ideas
Just about to jump down this rabbit hole. Thank you for the great info
at about the 8:00 mark you say that you ran it through your "other filter". What filter was this? I've got a wash & cure station that I let get way too dirty. I've had 3 bottles sitting in my backyard for over a month and they are still yellowish & there is a bit of gunk still in the Wash station's plastic tub. I'm trying to find the best way to clean it and continue to use it. Whenever I run the dirty alcohol through a paint filter, it clogs up after less than a minute, and I would have to go through a dozen filters just to finish the tub.
I made 2 of these. One with the red bucket and one with the white buckets. So I just meant the other one that had only been used for clean ipa at that point.
A couple of tips, the grey residue that sinks to the bottom of the uncured dirty resin is just the pigment, not the photo monomer. Since the photo monomer is still liquid, it is also passing through the filter with the alcohol (unless the charcoal is doing something I'm not aware of, although your results suggest otherwise). The jelly like substance after you cured the alcohol is actually a resin/alcohol matrix; it's actually possible to mix it enough that the matrix gives up a bunch of the alcohol and becomes a pulp like substance, you can also squeeze out the pulp to release a bunch more alcohol. It should also be noted that simply filtering/straining the uncured alcohol doesn't solve any of the issues of dirty resin, since it doesn't remove the photo monomer which will still give your models that tacky feel. Any IPA recycling set up must include a way to remove the uncured monomers or the cured polymers and is why the best setups I've seen involve pumping the alcohol through clear tubing wrapped in UV LED tape and then filtering it through 10" whole house water filters.
I found the best thing was to use a UV torch to shine an intense spot on top of the liquid to polymerise the resin (if the UV goes through glass the resin sets on the glass and quite quickly blocks UV transmission). It also helps make the resin formed into tiny particles rather than mucousy sheets. It looks quite cool, almost a sort of roiling look where the UV spot hits it. Once done until there is no more movement, allow to settle, and then filter through filter paper. It's good enough for a first wash tank at this point. The settled gunk can be thrown away.
Hi ! I would like to try, could you tell me what is the reference of your torch ?
@@Disc0rd83 blue laser pointer.
Isopropyl is chemically different than ethanol. The isopropyl is very "branchy" like a tree branch which is a bit different than ethanol. This difference prevents the enzyme in our body from being able to metabolize. Methanol gets turned into formaldehyde in the body and that's what causes the most damage.
But great video, You can also do something called "salting" out things that are dissolved in a liquid. I have had some decent luck with salting the alcohol first but I was running into issues of removing the salt without a distillation (I am also concerned with heating a very flammable solution.) These filters may be the answer so thank you for the advice.
Good info. Thanks for watching.
I played around a bit with UV polymerisation during my PhD and early research career so have a bit of background in this (as well being a chemical engineer for over 20 years with lots of varying experience across a number of industries!). I think if you stir the alcohol/resin mixture whilst exposing it to UV it will more likely form smaller discrete particles rather than snotty gloop. Continuous stirring should allow the alcohol and polymerised resin to separate regardless and more resin to polymerise by continually turning over the jar's contents to expose all of it to UV. You could use a paint stirrer on a pillar drill to agitate or a lab magnetic stirrer or as someone suggested, aquarium air stones. Note air stones might also lift the polymer out of solution by the processes of flocculation/flotation if done right (Possibly as a separate step - you can push air through your ceramic filter in reverse to achieve this - also a great way to backflush your filter). Stirring up your filter bucket will also reduce the gelling on the filter and speed up the filtration. Reducing the amount of UV light the mixture is exposed to at any one time will likely reduce the reaction rate of the polymerisation which may or may not help avoid the snotting depending on the type of polymer. Good luck!
Would a floculating helper work? Like kitty litter?
Or maybe strobing a UV light? Make small solids, floculate them, settle, repeat?
@@KaletheQuick worth a try on all those points. Cat litter could take out odours too. Could just use a funnel of litter to trickle the reacted wash through, would work like a sand filter.
I feel like not letting the alcohol you're working with get so loaded up it turns into snot is probably the best first step. Have enough volume around that you're not working with a completely opaque solution, so that you can expose it so it DOES settle out is IMO the best first step to keeping clean alcohol, or at least alcohol you can filter.
I agree, but also what about centripetal separation? If the mixture is let set in the sun with a medium speed stirrer, could the solids be separated if spun out?
@@saddle1940 it would depend on the relative density of the alcohol and the resin particles/snot as to whether a centrifuge works. If they separate under normal gravity settling, even over a long period of time then yes, a centrifuge would work.
You need to do fractional distillation, the same process used in the petroleum industry to separate kerosine from gasoline. It uses differential cooling rates via a fraction column to pull off different precipitates based on their boiling points.
I think you have a great idea about the double filtration. The only thing I think will help would be to have a filter that only gets the big stuff at the top, something like a fuel filter would probably work better. Then the ceramic filter would get the little stuff,
Such a fantastic video. I have buckets of IPA sitting in my closet for a few months now. For sure should try this. Also refuse to use a distiller. Seems like a massive fire Hazzard.
Thanks! Yeah after your near miss with the ultrasonic cleaner I’m sure you’re as paranoid about fire as I am.
Just take a UV light to it and cure whats floating in it. Depending on how thick the resin is it may take a bit and a few times stiring it up. After just let it sit for a day and all the cured resin will sink and become a shick goop. Then just filter it out. I do this with all my alc though I clean mine this way after I'm done for the day. Cure the alc for like 10 minutes then let it sit over night, filter next day. I never let it get that bad. Then it just becomes a waste :/
If you've got the space, you can simply use a distiller outside. Others have pointed out that they do this, and it works well.
Aside from keeping an eye on it, I think I'd unplug the extension cord and wait for it to cool down before approaching it, just in case.
Distillery may be a fire hazard but it is also how alcohol is made... So it is hard to say how safe re-distilling denatured alcohol... So I'm glad to see a less dangerous method to filter out the resin.
You should NEVER use a distiller for IPA. IPA can form peroxides after a while by reacting with air, or by exposure to light, which can explode when you heat the IPA.
Rubbing alcohol was never drinkable, its isopropyl alcohol not ethyl so its not "denatured" at all. Its just inherently poisonous like methyl alcohol and its smell is also inherent in its nature, not an additive to make it non-drinkable. So your attempt to filter out the smell is bound to fail and the fact you thought it smelled "only slightly better" after filtration either was placebo effect or it absorbed moisture from the air and became less volatile because of that. It does not take Walter White to understand there are different alcohols that are inherently non-drinkable and smell different from one another.
Also with proper distillation techniques you CAN separate out the ethanol (drinkable alcohol) from the adulterants that make it poisonous. Considering that nearly all fermentation leads to some methyl alcohol in the mix the distillation of fermented mash results in various "cuts" which based on the temperature of vaporization contain mostly methyl alcohol, mostly ethanol, and mostly water. The "heads" or "leads" being mostly methanol are discarded the tails at the end of the run mostly water are either discarded or added back into the main cut to lower its proof. Again Walter White need not be present, perhaps Popcorn Sutton (rest his soul) would be a better reference for the topic at hand.
Great info. Wasn’t aware.
Another possibility: Make a simple solar still. Take your two bucket lids and run a wide tube/hose between them (sealed to the lids). Take one bucket with the dirty alcohol and wrap it in black plastic (or similar) and leave it in the sun. Take the other bucket and put it in the shade or - better yet - have it sitting in the ground (the bigger the temperature differential the better). It won't be fast, but over time you will accumulate distilled alcohol in the cooler bucket and the system will never heat up anywhere near combustion temperature so there's no fire risk. If the bucket lids seal well, there'll be no smell either. All you need to do is keep putting the dirty alcohol into the black bucket and emptying the clean alcohol from the cooler bucket.
Wouldn't it be better to use a clear bucket so the UV-Radiation can cure the dissolved resin, so it can be easyly disposed?
@@Talashaoriginal bucket needs to be black to heat in the sun
@@davidrobinson1729 No water is already good in absorbing heat.
@@Talashaoriginal you dont need to solidify the resin, and worse it could be stuck to the distilling container. Pour it into something after distilling to cure and throw out.
It seems to me that you couldn't simply run alcohol through filters and actually remove all, or most, the resin. Sure the particulates settle after a time, but their is still resin in suspension in the alcohol. The proof of that is that setting it in the sun will kick the alcohol and start the "sludging" process. Filtering after that, if there is still clear alcohol in the container, is then OK. This is what I have done many times. For proof this method works, I would like to see one more step tried: Put the completely filtered alcohol in the sun and see if it kicks and any of it turns to sludge. If it does not, I may trust this method. How about it, can you try this next step and see if there truly is any resin left in suspension in your final clear alcohol? Very Kurious in Kentucky.
Yeah I might need to make a follow up video and try again with a modified system.
You will never stop the resin with a filter... at least not this kind. It's like trying to filter out sugar or salt of water with a screen, just ain't gonna work. You need to remove it by curing it, or distilling it into its fractional components.
@@kleetus92 or you can try with reverse osmosis
@@hansrojas9487 Maybe, but I'm not sure it would be worth it... And I say that because while yes it's a polar solvent, the material resin that gets left behind would clog the filter and never be rechargable... so it would be a one and done use... and a lot more expensive than just buying more isopropanol. I also believe it would take a unique filter, not just the ones used for drinking water, so again the cost goes up.
Just found your channel, looks like your projects are right up my alley! Subscribed
Love your vids. I can say however that using a purpose built alcohol distiller like you showed in the beginning of the video works REALLY well. I run mine outside and it goes through about 4L in about 40 mins with very little loss. The trick is to make sure the silicone seal makes good contact. I will say that it is pretty darn safe but you still want to do it outside.
It’s probably pretty safe to do, especially outside. I think there is a decent seal with the lid keeping the vapors inside. I just am not comfortable doing it.
@@Nerdtronic I completely understand, it's certainly not without risk.
I’ve been doing it for over a year with the distiller you had pictured and 70% ipa and it works fine. No problems or explosions so far. Do it outside and wear ppe. Saved a lot of money when there was a run a ipa for people making hand sanitizer.
I tend to use 99.9 isopropynol and purify it be putting it out in the sun in a closed container for a while to cure. I have to shake them or take a silicone spatula to scrape the sides every so often depending on the size container I'm using. After a lot of it is cured out, I bring it inside and let it settle to the bottom for a while. I can then pour most of it off the top and then through a coffee filter. I deal with a lot of the "mucus" you described, but I managed to reclaim ~80% of my alcohol. I do a lot of printing across multiple machines and will clean my alcohol every couple days (so every 7-10 build plates full on a Photon Mono X) with pretty good results. I keep enough alcohol to have 2-3 batches rotating through being in use, settling, or curing in the sun at any given time.
After seeing your results, I may have to look into how much I would gain from using a more extensive filtering process.
Thanks for the comments Dana. I think there's a process in here still that could work. I need to do more experimenting.
I think you are on to something with the two-stage filter, but I'd also recommend adding a "pre-filter" stage using a coffee filter or similar to take out the big chunks before it hits your 0.5 micron filter stack.
For the clogging that occurs, you might be able to rig up a stirring mechanism or similar to keep the liquid moving. Not sure if it would help the clogging or not but might be worth a try with a cheap hobby motor and some 3D printed paddles. Just use a long shaft so the motor is well away from the alcohol.
Putting the Filters on a turn table or Potters wheel may help get the particles to settle toward the outside edges while the lighter alcohol goes into the filter. Obviously this pseudo centrifuge might take some tweeking to get the proper speed . Too fast and no alcohol even hits the filter too slow and the particulate isn't drawn outward.
Heres what I think. Prefilter with a paint filter/coffee filter into bucket 1. Bucket 1 has a 0.5 filter on it. Bucket 1 also has one of those magnetic stirrers so there is never a danger of a spark and the dirty IPA is agitated and less likely to clog the filter. Bucket 2 is 0.3 and the mag stir is optional. Bucket 3 has a tap installed so you can easily extract without taking the whole thing appart.
hmm.. since the issue is particulates, I'm wondering if a flocculant would be cheaper. A 5-pound container of pool flocculant is about the same price as your filters and can clarify 20,000 gallons of water. 10 grams of bentonite can clarify 5 gallons, and about 4 kg of bentonite can be had on Amazon for about $30. That's enough to do 2000 gallons and I know for certain it won't hurt the alcohol since it's used in wine making.
I think the bigger benefit of flocculants is that you could clarify every container you have all at once. The down side is you'd almost certainly introduce a little water, at least with the bentonite.
Interesting idea.
ruclips.net/video/HxT8rEr-tFI/видео.html - They use Aluminum Sulfate to do what I think you're talking about. They say it works pretty well, though the commenters are skeptical (I haven't been able to try it yet).
I feel like there's a process to clean the really nasty stuff with a combination of clarifying, curing, and filtering. I'll definitely be building a ceramic filter rig, though...
The graphics and animations that you use to explain the process are absolutely beautiful
Maybe i am dense, but what i do with my alcohol is expose it to UV light and than filter it with paint filters. The resin is cured( clumped) and than the filter removes it. Simple, cheap, and seems to work. What am i missing here?
I'm guessing that like me, you filter it before it gets as contaminated as the alcohol @Nerdtronic is trying to recover.
I think that's the key. Filter it regularly and don't wait until it's a thick cloudy mess.
Or maybe the Methanol/denatured alcohol acts differently on resins than IPA? I've only ever used IPA.
@@ausfoodgarden I use IPA and expose it to UV after most uses. I filter it every so often, which causes the resin to coagulate. I than filter that out. I get a nice clear IPA from this. Simple.
I use coffee filters after giving it a UV cure. Paint filters just seem to coarse to me and not as cheap as coffee filters.
I also expose my used IPA to Sun and let it alone for some days so the resin go on the bottom and filtration is easier.
The key as someone mentioned is not to wait until your alcohol is so dirty that looks like thinned resin
How do you get that much curing from UV exposing on the sun?? Do you live in Australia?
I expose my bottles directly on the sun and it takes days if not a week to get to where you are in just a couple of hours.
I used a filter method with cotton wicking and activated carbon
After a couple passes (replacing at least the cotton each pass) it went from gray cloudy to almost fully clear
I love that you really dedicated a year between this video and your most recent!!! Seriously keep it up and so looking forward to the next one!
What I typically do is I typically pour my used alcohol into disposable plastic bottles every couple prints, never letting it get that dirty. I set them on the window sill to settle and cure and then pour the alcohol through a coffee filter. Typically one 500ml bottle full of used alcohol will use one coffee filter before it's too clogged to be used quickly.
It doesn't get the alcohol perfectly clean, but it does help a significant amount and doesn't take that long to filter.
I too was thinking of a simple coffee filter system. sure it doesnt get it perfectly clean but... A couple times through a pass with one filter then the second pass with a double filter. clean enough for me.
Also cleaning in two or even three stages helps. My first container is quite dirty but the second one is still in pretty good shape.
I made myself a graduated filtration system or screens and cloths. This was the best I could come up with and worked ok, eventually the alcohol gets slimy though and is trash. Replacing and cleaning filters is a pain and it is massively time consuming for a product that will never be as good as the original. Similar to VOG you can use a 5 or 6 step cleaning process and use the less clean stuff in the earlier steps. This all helps extend the life, but it was tedious and a mess.
In the end I bought an air distiller. It works super quick and the final product is good as new. Though there are some cautionary points for this as well. Need to use the still in a well ventilated area. Need to make sure your seal is good and for an abundance of caution make sure there are no flames around. Taking it outside is a good solution. Also still laws are complicated at best and the presence of it on a property basically gives the ATF and their deputies carte blanche authority to come in search the place should they choose to do so. Nothing about the process is normally illegal as you are not making a drinkable product, but that does not mean you won't have to have that fight in court if for some reason the ATF ends up at your door. Distilling either 99% IPA or denatured works the same and does not reduce the proof of the product. I find that I lose about 10% per run, though don't know how much of that is actually resin volume as I tend to let it go until it annoys me and I think things aren't getting as clean as they should.
Return on investment takes a lot longer on a $200 still than $60 worth of various filter every 6 months, but I have easily recaptured my investment in a year. I am not recommending either just due to legal and safety concerns, but I choose the air still and am happy with my purchase.
I use a similar cleaning system to VOG, only 3 stages instead of more... Works well enough, then I leave the super dirty alcohol/resin mix out in the sun to cure/evaporate. The cured solid mass then goes in the trash.
Would there be any value in running it through a simple sand filter first?
Also maybe you could speed thing up a bit by creating a vacuum in the collection bucket.
Filtering just creates new resin-contaminated waste items you can't dispose of. When the IPA in my washing station gets oversaturated, I decant it back into bottles and put them on a windowsill. (I don't have a spare UV source for this sort of thing.) Any time I see that the resin has settled, I turn the bottles over a couple times. Depending on the sun, the resin will have completely polymerized out of solution in 1-2 days and settled to the bottom as a solid, not a slimy mess. Then, and only then, is the resin waste safe to dispose of.
The "Baby Puke" stuff (at about 9:00 minutes in) might filter well if you first liquify the gel in a blender. This might break up the polymer matrix and make it so you can dilute the liquified slurry with a little more alcohol, then use Alum or some other flocculent to help precipitate out the cured resin.
Salad spinner!
Have a quick question, I already have one of my containers filled with isopropyl alcohol, also known as rubbing alcohol, high-level medical grade, so it's at 91%.
Since what you're using is denatured alcohol, and since both differ subtly, could I still use both in the same container, or we'll both containers have to be separated out to be labeled properly so that both don't mix?
I've been trying to find like almost everywhere if it's okay to mix of denatured and isopropyl alcohol together in the same container and not get any kind of odd reactions or violent reaction, and everything that I come across is not answering my question
The 'mucous' is a spongy suspension, if it is squeezed in a filter bag , the alcohol is released. I found this still had a lot of dissolved resin in it and required another exposure and filter pass.
I tried a vacuum still instead of higher temperature boiling , but the phase change method is far too costly , unless it could be done this a solar still of some type.
I'm also fine the smell of ipa offensive, worse than resin by far.
@AndrewSM I just used a cotton cloth and gathered the edges together and squeezed. If one had a lot to do ,then a similar cloth in a cider press might do the trick.
@AndrewSM yes that would probably work
Thanks for the info. I'm trying my first filtering job. I allowed it to settle and then tried to leave most of the contaminates behind. Then, I put the alcohol in jugs and left them in the sun for ~16 hours.
The plan is to pour what remains, through cheesecloth and see what I have. I hadn't thought of the method you mention and I'll be placing an order to Amazon shortly. :)
BTW
I'm visiting my local fire department because I'm considering using a distiller. So far, it will be at least 25 feet from any dwelling. It will be contained in either a steel worksite box or an order oven. Personally, I'm leaving towards the oven. That way, if there is combustion, it will be contained.
Thanks again for the great info.
Would love a follow up video on this after using it for a while!
I'm sure dirty alcohol is far tougher on the filters than their intended use.
I think I’ll be doing a follow up - someday.
@@Nerdtronic How's that follow-up video coming? I set up the same system and the filters I got from your link, didn't even let the new alcohol through, so I'm looking for another method.
@@joshallred9330 you got scammed
Your channel is getting traction and the success by now that you deserve.
Your are still one of the coolest guys in this maker department… Thanks a lot ;-)
I recently came across a video by Makers Mashup about using Aluminum Sulfate to remove resin particulate from solution. Maybe try using that as the first step then filtering after. Would be really interesting to see your thoughts on it.
ruclips.net/video/HxT8rEr-tFI/видео.html
Bravo sir! Thank you for sharing your ideas & projects! I'm new to resin printing & I've already went thru 3 gallons of the stinky stuff in less than 2 months! So I'm definitely going to try this! Keep doing what you're doing & thanks again!
The filters are probably going to cost more than buying new batches of alcohol. Letting the alcohol sit and settle or accelerating using a coagulant would work. Maybe even try using centrifugal force.
He said it’s cheaper in the video
If you put the dirty alcohol into a separation funnel, let the resin settel to the bottom, you can remove the settled resin. A separation funnel lets you open a valve to drain out the bottom of the funnel first.
I like the idea of adding stages. I guess the nice thing about stacking a 3rd or more stage of filtration is that it really shouldn’t take much longer to do the whole batch.
And if cheaper, more corse filters were used at the top it might make those at the bottom last longer.
I think the order of things might put a kink in that idea. I think my really dirty jar I maybe could have salvaged if I had filtered, then cured in the sun, then filtered again.
Pressure will also increase the rate through the filter. Either deeper, or find a way to add pressure. Also, the catch bucket needs a vent so air can get out of the way to let more alcohol through the filter. Vent it into the upper bucket, ideally.
For something like this, you might want to try using a centrifuge to settle the resin at the bottom of a container, then draining the sediment from the bottom. Once the large particulates are removed, you could then optionally run the remainder through a filter
Maybe a vacuum filter might do the trick
LOL I came up with the same thought before reading the comments.
I'm an "armchair expert" at best so take what I say as food for thought rather than solutions that will work.
It should be possible to use a centrifuge of some sort to dramatically speed up the precipitation of impurities. Also, to speed up filtering you could create lower pressure in the recipient bucket or create higher pressure in the source bucket to help push the liquid through. The problem with creating partial vacuum is that alcohol is already volatile, and with lower pressure it will evaporate even faster. I guess you could cool it down beforehand to mitigate it.
If the dirty alcohol becomes a gelatinous mess when exposed to UV for a long time you might want to give it a small dose of UV, filter out whatever has cured and repeat the process as much as needed. Alternatively, the gelatinous goop could be wrapped in cloth and squeezed to separate the liquid from the resin. You might even try putting it into a blender or a centrifuge. The problem was that the resin cured while being intermixed with alcohol, so it formed something like a sponge with alcohol being trapped inside. By mechanically disturbing the structure it should be possible to release the liquid.
Exposing dirty alcohol to UV after each use would probably prevent too much resin from building up in the solution. Granted, when there's not much resin dissolved in alcohol it's harder for it to cure, but it should work with enough UV exposure.
Here's something I came up that I have no idea if it will work or not. Solubility of chemicals depends on the temperature. So, theoretically, if you put dirty alcohol in the freezer it might be cold enough to cause resin to separate. After all, alcohol freezes at very low temperatures, so a normal freezer should not be able to freeze it solid, but will (hopefully) chill it enough to cause precipitation. I'm actually really curious if this is a viable method. I think it should work better on very dirty alcohol as opposed to alcohol that was used to wash a part once or twice.
I’m also only an armchair expert. 🤣
As a former moonshiner I would not recommend distilling denatured alcohol. When you are distilling alcohol for drinking the strongest liquor going in the still is around 50% depending on how good your first distilling goes. At that point you still (pun intended) have a lot of water left and the alcohol content in the still decreases.
Even if the denatured alhocol is dirty the alcohol content is still high and with no water to counteract combustion.
Honestly... i let my ipa sit down in my basement, outside of my cleaning station and pull the (mostly) clear ipa out with a 60ml syringe with a silicone tube every couple of times i wash something in there. What settled down to the base of the container gets pulled over to a very small plastic bucket with cover lid, where it can settle down another few weeks. What seems good in that tiny bucket gets pulled out with that same syringe. With that dirty 0.5cm-1cm of really thick resin stuff at the bottom i put it into a couple of paper towels, go out to the sun, a few minutes after that it is pretty hard and i throw it away into the trash. Every time i make this i loose about 10-50ml (depends on how dirty it is)
Sure, my ipa is not even close to that clear you have it, but it is clear enough for me to wash the next print in it.
The only downside, syringes do not like ipa. The rubber in it gets hard very quickly and the ipa drips through this black silicone/rubber - so you will have to hold it upside down all the time - thats why i use the silicone tube.
Thanks for the input and ideas. Hive mind can figure this out!!
This is how I do it:
Pre filter - Filter A with agitator - Filter B - Collector
Pre filter gets rid of the bigger chunks. Filter A has an agitator to keep the fluid moving, preventing clogging. Filter B is standard filtration. Then it all collects to the very bottom with a faucet.
Great video! I'm just getting started and this is great info to have - before I waste a bunch of IPA. Thank you.
theres another way of doing this that combining the low cost of the filters but also the effectiveness of the distillation while also being completely safe. And you also wont have to mess around cleaning off filters, just occasionally cleaning a jar.
Solar distillation.
You'll need a clear container that can be made air tight and you'll want one that is at least twice the volume of the amounts of alcohol you wish to process. and then a black container for the alcohol, the shape of which should be able to fit inside of the clear one (my 3d printer came with a black jar for putting the cleaning alcohol in, but any should do, most black plastic containers will block significant amounts of uv so no need to get a specific uv blocking jar)
Personally i made a whole setup with a 3d printed stand that hold the black jar up off the bottom of the clear container, and a device that fits around the black jar and gives me two handles to hold onto it by as i lower it into the clear container.
Pour your dirty alcohol into the black container, don't put a lid on it. Put it into the clear container and then put the air tight lid on the clear container and place the whole thing on a window sill or somewhere warm. The heat from sunlight or ir radiation will be absorbed more by the black container than the clear, so the alcohol will evaporate out of the black container and condense on the walls of the clear one and collect on the bottom of it. This is why you want a platform of some kind holding the black jar up, if the black jar becomes mostly empty and its sat in the pool of alcohol that has formed then it could tip over, but mainly its less effective if the black jar ends up in the alcohol that you don't want to evaporate any more, as then the jar will be heating up all the alcohol, and we dont want that.
So thats it, just keep emptying the alcohol out of the clear container (one with a spigot could be helpful), and then pout more dirty alcohol into the black jar. Clean the resin out of the black jar when necessary.
The alcohol in the bottom will be pretty much 100% pure, depending on how hot your black jar gets, if you have say 70% alcohol that youre trying to clean then depending on how hot your window sill gets the temp might not reach high enough to evaporate any water from the black container. And the temperatures shouldnt get high enough to be a safety issue, though obviously dont do this anywhere near open flames.
Cool idea.
I love watching your channel. The video on supports is required viewing in my 3d intro course for dentists. What an honor to get a prominent mention.
Thanks and you’re welcome. Your video popped up in my feed about a month ago and I knew I had to try it.
I was inspired. I made this with 2 of these filters in 2 different 5 gallon buckets for a total of 4 filters going into a 3rd 5 gallon bucket. The alcohol comes out very clear. Haven't degunked the filters yet, so I'm really looking forward to that. It filters pretty slow, but it does work. However I don't consume huge amounts of alcohol with only one printer, so I'd say if you have lots of printers, you might want more than one setup to be filtering at any given time. It'll still make the money back easily.
I get the Mucus/Baby Poop all the time and haven't figured out how to get around it. Most RUclipsrs make the process of cleaning alcohol all fun and games. Thanks for showing the dark seedy side of cleaning alcohol.
i use 3 glass containers with sealing lids. one has clean alcohol for final wash. the second is mostly clean for initial wash. the 3rd is the dirty stuff and is stuck in front of a uv light that cures the resin in the alcohol. once the resin is cured in the alcohol i use cheese clothe to filter the mucus out. cheese cloth is coarse but it can be used to squeeze out the majority of the alcohol from the goop. then i run through a coffee filter in a funnel. The alcohol that comes out of the coffee filter is usually clean enough to use for initial wash again. I just keep rotating the containers around and add new alcohol as needed.
Not the same thing, but back when I was at the University I used to work on a project where we filtered river sediment. Because the sediment is a mix of sand, mud and silt, using a fine mesh straight away would clog the filter and take forever, so we used different mesh sizes, starting on a 2mm mesh and going until a 0.5mm. I know resin particles are very small, a possible solution to the clogging would be using a larger mesh (or exposing the alcohol to UV for a few minutes, or both) so you remove the bigger particles first.
distilling is probably one of the best methods to clean any relatively low boiling point liquid (acetone, IPA, Denatured spirits, etc.), however if you're going to be distilling flammable liquids its probably best to get a proper chemistry distilling kit and to do it outside, as this avoids explosive fumes indoors and with a chemistry set you wont have to worry about an electronic distiller causing an accidental explosion, although you will need to drop around $200-$300 (or more) on appropriate glassware and a heating mantle (a heating mantle avoids open flames from a Bunsen burner, and they often have very good temperature control, and are often made to not cause fires) its worth it if you're going to be recycling lots of material all at once every so often.
Thanks for this! Will be trying this out in the future for sure.
I used to have mine (sold my resin printer, too much mess) on a rotating treatment. One jar for initial rinse (mucky pot), one jar for final clean, one jar sat out in UV and one jar running through a filter. After each print they would all be rotated. The mucky pot would go in for UV treatment, the UV treated pot would get filtered, the previously clean jar would become the mucky pot and the now UV treated and filtered alcohol would become the final clean pot. It seems like ballache but it worked well and, TBH, would take about 30 seconds to cycle once everything was set up in its own jar. The thing that bugged me was my use of an ultrasonic bath that was a pain to pour out from with any accuracy. Minor spillages occasionally but it would flash off pretty quickly and I could have just printed and coated a clip on spout for the bath.
Don't let it get super mucky and it comes clean really easily, no need to worry about the wait on filtration as there would be so little in it anyway that it would run through quickly and be easily done before the next print.
I would be confortable in distillation, I did with an heating mantle and worked fine. In italy denaturated alchol has no methanol but it is still harsh smelling. Also distilled smells bad.
What about a centrifuge? Like a filter it's mechanical separation of the clean alcohol from the resin bonded alcohol but you won't get clogging, it'll cost more upfront but you won't have the ongoing cost of replacing filters. Alternatively you could repurpose two pneumatic cylinders to vacuum boil the alcohol, you pour the dirty alcohol into a fully extended cylinder (only fill about a quarter of it) and attach it to a fully retracted cylinder, then seal it and pull down on the empty retracted cylinder. The pressure inside both cylinders drops, the alcohol cold boils, then you slowly retract the cylinder with the dirty alcohol (not too far or you'll inject it into the other cylinder) and as the pressure returns the alcohol vapor condenses and mostly ends up in the second (now fully extended) cylinder.
Yes the mucus I've learned that as well to not let my alcohol get that dirty. I personally filter IPA often through a metal tea strainer 1. alcohol is not adsorbed by the paper filters 2. is a fixed cost vs buying and disposing of paper filters. But then again I use paper towels to remove the gunk out of the metal strainer and to wipe clean my alcohol vessels (i.e. Tupperware and pickle strainer bucket) And yes I need a better way to pour alcohol as I often find I spill as much as I am able to save sometimes pouring out of Tupperwear.
I’ve started using large syringes - 250ml and larger - for that same problem.
I loved the history lesson, thank you! I love learning why things are the way they are when they don't make sense.
Thanks. I’ve been told that I was wrong about isopropyl having poisons added. It’s denatured / poisonous without adding anything.
Another thing to consider is that most alcohols used for cleaning (acetone, isopropyl, methanol) love to absorb water from the surrounding air. Your alcohols will quickly dilute and become much less effective. Distilling won't solve this without proper lab equipment, so desiccants are an easy method.
As for filtering, I use a buchner funnel with a vacuum pump and it works incredibly well. Even the cheap brake bleed hand pumps will pull enough vacuum. No need for a powered unit.
It would be cool to put a rack near the top of the top bucket and pump alcohol from the bottom bucket to a sprayer in the top bucket. Just set your part on the rack, close the lid and let the sprayer hose down the part, then the alcohol filters back into the bottom bucket. This would prevent you from having to dirty another container. The sprayer may also help to prevent a bit of the buildup on the filter if it's positioned in such a way that it can hose it down a bit.
This is an awesome path forward for both saving some money and reusing material. Thanks!
There is a product (not sure of the name but something like resin clean) that cleans 3D printed parts better (stops them from yellowing due to alcohol) and once it's dirty you place it in UV light, pull out the blob of cured resin and it's ready to use again. Basically it's usable nearly indefinitely though you do loose a small amount to evaporation and what is left on parts as you remove them and such. I remember people saying it was the only way to get optically clear prints (like for lenses). Been a long time since I did resin printing but I did buy some (only had to buy it once).
Try 3 stage particulate filtering which is used in water treatment; first put aluminum sulfate dissolved in water into the IPA, agitate it for a while. This causes the resin to coalesce. Second step, decant it through a cheap paint filter, this removes all of the 200+ micron particles, with most of the heavy resin staying in the decanting container. Then you can use the gravity filtration. This will save on clogging the gravity filters. Finally, you can distill it as in my prior comment, with the filtering letting you distillation equipment last.
See Recycle Isopropyl Alcohol Fast! video on RUclips from Makers Mashup: ruclips.net/video/HxT8rEr-tFI/видео.html
really like this video, keep up the great work man! it's cool to see someone share their passions with the internet
when I'm cleaning parts, I always start by setting it at an angle over the trash to drip off as much as possible. maybe 10 min later ill come by and spray a little bit of alcohol on the part to wash off any large pools of resin. this uses a bit of alcohol directly into the trash, but then when i dunk the part in the alcohol tank, it doesn't cloud it up as badly. cloudy alcohol will def leave a film on the parts that diminishes detail. Depending on the part, i may also rinse it with more alcohol or just water/dish soap before drying and curing.
Best and safest way whoud be a distilation under partial vacum.
That lowers boiling point, if high enough vacum it can be at just above room temp.
It might be even posible to salvage the left over resin
I use coffee filters to clean my Denatured alcohol. I have two rinse baths, 'Dirty' and 'clean', and first rinse in the dirty bath, then in the clean one to soak for a little longer. The alcohol in the 'dirty' tub is filtered into a bottle after every few prints, until it's too bad to make a difference. The 'clean' alcohol is also filtered after every few rinses, and when it starts degrading, it is dumped into the 'dirty' bath, and the sludge in that is left in a bottle outside to evaporate away. I may try filtering with those ceramic/charcoal filters on the 'clean' stuff later on.
I distill denatured alcohol without any issues. I would say I recover about 65-70% of it. What doesn't distill I put in a clear plastic container and leave it outside. What is left solidifies in a day. What comes out of the distiller is crystal clear and the odor is not as strong. I also do a "pre wash" in a separate container and then use my wash and cure. It make the alcohol in the wash and cure last longer. I was hoping your method was a little more efficient and could be done indoors but I think I'll stick with my distilling outside. Great video though. :)
To be fair the distiller does work well. I manage a dental lab and we go through a ton of printer resin and alcohol. The distiller is the most simple way in my opinion and we are able to recycle it quickly. Obviously it needs to be in a well ventilated area. We actually just let ours run outside. One of my coworkers was telling me about this filter method today so I thought I’d do some research.
Great video, love seeing makers trying to reduce their impact on the environment and save a bit of money in the process! Just a couple of little info nuggets for ya, first IPA or Isopropanol is not the same chemical as Ethanol, no amount of filtering or distillation will turn it into ethanol or remove it's odor, as such IPA is not denatured since it's not "consumable" in the first place. The other component of (non pure) IPA is water. Also from looking for a cheap source of decently pure ethanol, I discovered that hardware store denatured alcohol (particularly the Klean Strip brand) contains up to 60 percent methanol as a denaturant (look at your local products' MSDS safety data sheet to see what is in them). While harmless for cleaning prints, would not recommend trying to make it drinkable, you'll just end up blind in the hospital if not worse. Also also, distillation using a countertop electric still is pretty safe all thing considered, stills are designed to condense as much vapor back into liquid as possible, so (ideally) no more vapor should come from the still than would come from an open container of alcohol, while good ventilation is still recommended, I have yet to hear of one catching fire, despite not being designed for distilling ethanol. It's not impossible but very unlikely.
The method I was thinking is to take the alcahol with the resin settled out of it and use a peristaltic pump to circulate it through a uv chamber which drips into another dark chamber with a sand filter or something similar, that way over time the resin slowly gets cured from the alcahol and gets caught in the filter
the tubes would start to have resin stuck on the walls. Maybe have the curing part on the pump inside? so each time resin gets cured it gets crushed by the pump rollers and it then continues to the rest of the system. Im thinking having paint sprayer filters on the inlet and outlet of the pump.
Great video! Very helpful!
Any chance you can produce a followup video with your triple bucket system?
How much of a pain was it to clean the filter? At what point is the filter so gunked up you have to replace it? When you replace, what has to be done to the filter to prep it for safe disposal?
My method is to use 3 vats of different level of how clean the IPA is. One vat is the dirty, where all your IPA will end up eventually. Then the medium, and finally the clean. When cleaning a part I dip it in the dirty to get off any resin still on it. Then I let it drip off a bit and put it in the second one which has fairly clean IPA. Finally I swish it around in pretty much completely clean IPA.
To clean the IPA I just let it sit for a while so sediments fall to the bottom. Then I siphon off the top with a hose (but you can also just pour the top stuff). Then I take the medium vat and pour it into the dirty one, and finally pour the "cleanest" which is now slighly pale, into the medium one. Then I fill up the clean vat with new IPA. This is needed since some IPA is lost when leaving the dirty IPA sludge in the dirty vat, and some IPA evaporates regularly. The sludge from the dirty vat I take to be cured in the sun or under an UV lamp and throw out. My procedure is not very advanced or cause much extra work, and it gives me completely clean parts. Before I started this method I used to get a bit sticky parts after cleaning and curing, but now my prints are nice and dry.
Another way to get the particulates to settle is something we use in brewing. Cold crashing, put the jars in a freezer and the particles will settle in a week.
You can clean the IPA with aluminium sulfate - it forms residue, which is easily filtered out. This is the clearer agent for most water pools.
To clean the filters, you could try running water through it backwards to flush the gunk off the surface.
Capture the water and let it evaporate and you will be left with the slime/powdered resin.
Could cellophane liners be used to help with container cleanup, or would that cause more problems?
what is the orange/red bucket you used ? would love to get a link/name and affiliate link
No affiliate. I got it at Ace.
The way I clean my alcohol is by first putting it in a bottle and curing it in a UV chamber (sun works fine) and then just letting it sit in the sun for a few weeks. Eventually everything will just fall to the bottom of the bottle and you get mostly clean IPA to pour off. I've gone through about 3 cycles of this now and the IPA is a bit yellow, but still very usable. Eventually I can just distil it when it gets too dirty for this method.
1:00 Put that system under vacuum or more precisely lower air pressure as vacuum means sucking out alcohol vapours too. So, under lower pressure boiling point lowers down to the point that alcohol can boil in much safer conditions like room temperature or a little bit above to make sure you have that extra margin to cool it back down to condense back into a liquid.
If you do a lot of printing you could have 2 cleaning baths, when the second gets dirty you can rotate and use fresh cleaner in the primary wash tank, use it as secondary and the previous secondary as primary.
I'm trained as a chemist. Fuel+oxidizer+ "open flame" = bad outcome!. But using an electrically heated distillation unit is about as safe as it gets. The end product is no more / no less dangerous than it was before distillation). I don't smoke. I wouldn't do this around open flames. Distillation is the only practical way to accomplish what you're trying to do. Any yes, that's what we would do in a lab to purify alcohol.
If you really wanted to reduce the risk, lower the distillation temperature by distilling under vacuum.
(NB: the water content will NOT stay the same (it will reduce with each run) until you reach ~95% alcohol. At this point, alcohol and water form an azeotrope. You can get it to 100%, but it's beyond the scope of this discussion)
I just spent the last couple months trying to figure out how to purify isopropyl alcohol. I tried all the different ways I found on RUclips none of which actually purify the alcohol here’s what I found. If you take your dirty alcohol, put it into a clear container then set it in the sun for several days the sediment will settle to the bottom. However, there is still resin in the IPA. The way you can test if there’s resin in your IPA just take a small sample of your IPA and put a couple drops of water in it if the water turns cloudy white there’s resin in your IPA at least with the Elegoo resins that I am working with that’s what I found. The only way I was able to get all of the resin out was to then distill using relatively inexpensive lab equipment. After I distilled the IPA which boils at about 87° Celsius, there was a yellowish liquid residue left in the bottom of the flask which was the leftover resin. I tested the distilled IPA and it was 92%. This was pretty good because I started with 95% IPA. I would highly recommend that you don’t use water in your cleaning process (unless using water soluble resin) because the water does not mix with the resins that I have used and I found that that was causing the white haze on my prints. if you put a couple drops of water into your dirty IPA you’ll see a white cloud form. This is resin contamination. It will not be there after proper distillation. I used fractional distillation to get the cleanest IPA that I could. I Distilled about 1 gallon of dirty IPA and ended up with 85% of a gallon of very clean IPA. Absolutely no resin. You can have clean looking IPA that is sticky because there is still resin in it. Hope this helps.
I have not tried one of the canister distillers. They MIGHT work.
Never saw my own handy trick somewhere so I am just posting this here: After cleaning my IPA there is always some greyish coloring left. I put one of those "color & dirt catcher" sheets into the IPA and let it wash in the wash & cure for some time. Removes a visible amount of finest sediment and coloring.
If you want to remove the denaturing, you will need a graduated cylinder and need precise temperature control with it as well. You will also likely need to distill it several times. I haven't done it myself, just found out this stuff when I was researching it when I was younger and wanted to make my own alcohol for ultralight camping purposes.
I put my alcohol container on my magnetic mixer into my curing box and had it mixing during the curing time. It did not turn to mucus, but stayed granular. I ran it through a paint filter and it caught most of the cured material. Only did the one shot, will try it again, maybe even without the stirring to see if that helps.
Distilling works well - but requires precision temperature control like an induction burner to avoid fire risks. Also, I would use a secondary container inside your distiller boiler so that the contaminant (in this case resin) stay in the secondary container. Unless you want to spend big money for a dedicated distiller just for your iso.
I just have an aluminum pot I cut the handle off. I bought it at a thrift store for $2 and the bottom is lousy with residue, but my distiller is clean as a whistle.
That’s a really cool time travel suit, I hope to see more of it!
I think you’ll see it again in my upcoming multi-channel collaboration video. 😉
Not too bad. I may try this or maybe add it as a step in my current process.
I run 2 Form3's daily and use their cleaning tank which holds 2gal of IPA. I get about 35 wash cycles before I have to change it out.
To filter things:
I use a Radiator filler funnel kit with a 1.5 to 3 gal coffee filter and made a custom adapter so I can thread it onto an empty IPA bottle and siphon out the IPA from my wash tank. Takes one filter per gallon.
Then those hang out in the window till I've used up another wash tank (~2 weeks).
I will then use about 2/3 of the IPA of each bottle that's been sitting in the window, being very careful to not jostle the bottle too much.
The last 1/3 of IPA/sludge gets dumped into a very large (28qt) Storage Bin with a nearby fan.
Airflow with a large surface area and the excess IPA evaporates off fairly quickly.
Then I put the last of the sludge in direct sunlight to cure the resin so I can finally toss it in the trash.
After writing this, I realized how dauting this all sounds.
But it really only takes about 30 min or less with very minor effort to siphon out the IPA and start it's slow journey to the trash.
Thanks for the comments. Yeah for some people the entire process of resin printing sounds too daunting. But it's all just routine that you get into. No big deal once you're set up to do it.
Last time i used some clean plastic box and i let it sit closed for about week on sun and the resin nicely catched to walls and alcohol stayed almost clean in middle. I was super happy because i was able to salvage about 4-5l of alcohol which looks mostly clean but i'll get to know that once i print something
Thank you for the awesome video this was very helpful info for this Noob Ive been resin printing for a few months now.