Pigmenting Resins

Given that I really don't need one, much less, two resin based printers one could question all the time that I am spending calibrating, mod'ing, and generally learning about them.  But it is fun so I do it.  If it felt like work, why would I do it?

I have a collection of resins that I am working with to better understand their characteristics.  I have another article that will review a number of these resins but here I am going to briefly talk about pigmenting.

My thought process was that I could offer my 3DHubs customers a wide range of colour choices without having to stock a wide range of expensive resin.  Enter two of my resins, both from Fun To Do.  

Enter also the Fun to Do Pigments.  

Finally, from stage left, enter a collection of dyes meant for fabric painting!

An easy first test was to pigment the IB resin so I chose red.  The result is pretty good!

I can stock IB unpigmented and offer black, red, yellow, and blue.  Or mixes thereof!

A second test was a little more odd ball as it involves using some pigments that are 'def not designed for the task.  My first attempt showed an obvious need for better mixing and filtration!

A subsequent test, however, was a dramatic improvement.  

I think some better filtration and it would be perfect.  This opens up the FTD SW to being able to be a lot of different colours!  I have not done any strength testing on the final product but I would note that it seemed as though it might be a little more brittle than the nature resin.  I would also say that the addition of this non-standard pigment has "softened" the look of the model.  Slightly less surface detail.

Finally, I wanted to see if the FTD pigments would work on a non-FTD resin.  The only thing that I had to test with was the Wanhao sample so I added some black to it.  My intent was only to add enough to change the resins printing characteristics.  The print on the right is pigmented (slightly I will admit) and the one to the left is not.   Note that on the red I used 15 drops of pigment for 225ml of resin.  On the Wanhao resin the ratio was more like eight drops to 100ml.  It seems like it should be much darker!

When I had tried to calibrate for maximum sharpness I had so many issues that I gave up.  The slightly pigmented resin, however, printed much better.  I am still giving up as I do not intend on using Wanhao resin but I thought the impact of the pigment was interesting.