UV resin getting down to roughly the same price as ABS/PLA filament?
Originally shared by Ross Hendrickson
Looks like someone is starting to sell resin for cheap*. Don’t know how it compares to other sources but it looks like it might be worth trying out for those who have a resin printer.
*I tried to find other prices but wasn’t able to see how much B9Creator charges because their site is being updating ATM.
Horrible name…
(former UV chemist) I’ve been working with Josh on reprap irc on the formulation with tips, ideas to try, and suppliers to talk to and I’d say it’s comparable to the zero voc UV resins out there. From what I’ve seen, Josh has hit the nail on the head on the formulation he’s selling. It cures fast and it appears to have good physical properties and he has colored resins as well.
I can tell you this: the stuff MakerJuice sells doesn’t stink like some of the other “cheap” UV resins out there that cut their products with styrene to hit a price point. There should be virtually no odor.
It also hits that price point that filament has: around $40 per 2 lbs. If you have a UV printer, by all means try this stuff.
It is wrong to compare resin to filament by measuring price per weight. You can’t reuse leftover resin. Printing a 100 gram object will use much more than 100 grams of resin.
Shane, how fast is the curing? Definitely something to consider if I decide to move in that type of printing.
@Shachar_Weis : Why can’t you reuse existing resin that’s left in the vat? That is news to me.
@Chris_Reyes : That would be a question for MakerJuice. In talking with him last night, he told me it was curing faster than the other resins he’s evaluated in the past.
@Shane_Graber exposure to light degrades it. Also tiny flakes form where the laser/projection has passed through. Maybe some resins are less prone to that, but that’s what we were told by the B9 guys when we were testing that printer.
Physical contaminants can be filtered out with a fine mesh filter, so flakes and whatnot shouldn’t be an issue. The stuff MakerJuice sells is < 10 cps in viscosity IIRC so it will pass through a filter easily. From what I understand, the B9Creator group (correct me if I’m wrong) was using a styrene-based UV resin and that I would definitely discard the excess since styrene is so volatile.
Accually that is almost twice the price of fillament. $45 dollar per liter.
UV resin:
1 liter = 1000 mL
d = ~1.07 g/mL
1070 g per liter
1070 grams = 2.35 lbs
1 liter of UV resin = 2.35 lbs
@Shane_Graber That’s pretty much the math I did in my head. For reference, ABS is about 1.04 g/cm^3 (roughly equal to the resin), and PLA maybe 20% denser.
@Mano_Biletsky_Open_M While there are now some budget suppliers that sell filament for ~$20-25/kg, most (but not all) are sub-par quality, and I still consider the “going rate” to be about $40/kg, which is roughly equal to the price for this resin
+Whosa whatsis I agree. The cheap fillament is harder to print with. But still… I haven’t used anything else. And with the nescesairy precausions it is well printable.
What worries me about using a resin printer is, being the uncoordinated man I am, something could go wrong before it was even printing and I could spill/ruin 60$ worth of material in seconds.
Yeah. You don’t want to spill that stuff over you high fiber carpet! Lol