elasto-plastic finishing techniques?

Anyone have any plans for testing any new finishing techniques with this material?

Cleaning:
It sounds like these models have alot of residue on them upon arrival, whats the best way to clean them? People were mentioning warm water (not hot)+ dish soap ( a great degreaser IMO). Any or suggestions/practices to try?

Sealing:
I'm actually going to try to "paint on" some foodsafe silicone to seal my model, and provide an airtight, food safe attributes.
I cant unfortunately share pictures of my upcoming testing results because of the nature of some of my designs (planning to use one of them as grounds for a utility patent).

Anyone know anything that might be easier to paint on than silicone caulk? Caulk isn't very viscus for a "paint on" style application. I would love some kind of silicone sealent that I could "dip" my models into.

Dying:
I imagine we just simply use same recommended dies for WSF?

Rit Dye:
Went from this:


To this:


With this:

WOW @ the iphone case, very cool! I wish I had a SGII 3d model to more easily make a new case for my phone, thats looks amazing! Also That dye looks like it stuck very well.

@Ultrasonic cleaner / Mitchell
Did that completely depowder the model without any ill-effect?
If so thats AWESOME! I actually need to fully depowder my models, so if it works that well I will run out for a ultra sonic cleaner immediately. Heck maybe some dye too!

Thanks for sharing!

Hmmm, if thats the case I guess I'll be doing some handwashing. Thanks for the info though!

Two things:
1) Small details are very faint, I would stay away from anything smaller than a 1/16" deep or wide.
2) Scrubbing the model down and soaking it make the model take the dye very well.

You could give a try to PlastiDip Spray-on Rubber Coating: http://www.plastidip.com/home_solutions/Plasti_Dip

I have been working with this professionally on steel parts, and when used with the special primer, it sticks to the surface really well.

looks pretty good. I had some of the Plastic dip spray around. It is rubbing off on some spots. The primer might fix that.

Very cool, I wish PlastiDip would work for my application(but I'm hesitant with the PlastiDip Temp Spec), based on what I'm working with I think I'm going to end up making my own silicone molds for prototypes (using polished 3d printed WSF. ElasoPlastic is a great material, but its flakeyness, and heat tolerence levels make the material a poor match for my application.

You may want to consider some kind of clearcoat or coating to keep the rubber from scuffing off. I did some research and thats apparently the biggest weakness to plastidip coatings. So if you can clearcoat over it to give it a better "shell" ontop of the plastidip, it may hold up to everyday wear and tear better.

I picked up some Fabricmate permanent markers in the clearance section of Hobby Lobby the other day figuring they might work with elasto. On fabric they take 24 hours to dry without additional heat application. Today I tried yellow, green, and orange with the orange providing the best saturated color. All colors went down uniformly with overlapping coverage. Do yourself a favor and use the larger chisel tip versions. Seeing as they were in the clearance section Hobby Lobby might be dropping them from their stores or cutting down on the number of colors they carry (or these were old markers?). The markers are available online from other sources. In 24-48 hours I'll see if the colors bonded well to the elasto and post a photo.

http://www.yasutomo.com/index.php?option=com_content&vie w=article&id=84:fabric-mate-marker..




photo update: Here's the image. The colors appear to have set well into the elasto. I might go buy a black marker of this brand and see how that works. I still have room for more colors!

has anyone tried sanding?

I just got this printed, I've never 3d printed anything before, so I don't know if it will be ridiculous to sand it. I was also thinking of taking a scalpel to it to sculpt more details into it? Its not hollow btw

https://www.dropbox.com/s/v1st81u18435d2r/themoon.jpg

I've tried using both sand paper and a file on this stuff. It can be done but it's definitely harder to affect the surface than a stiffer material like WSF or alumide. Since it's somewhat elastic I guess it's harder for the abrasive to get a good hold on the surface to remove it. Also depending on your sandpaper or file there's no good way to predict what will happen to the surface after sanding. It could get rougher or dirty from any abrasives or oils on your sand paper or on your file.

I haven't had the material in my hand yet, but for sanding and filing you might try freezing it. Deep cold, such as a liquid nitrogen bath, would be one method. Saturating with water and freezing might be another, though expansion of the water as it freezes may be a problem.

my ones pretty solid, I didn't hollow it out. Ill try it out soon, and tell you what happens lol.

Elasto does not appear to be as porous or "soakable" as alumide. Alumide will slurp up most liquids like a ShamWow shammy.

I put together a pen using a blank made of elasto and experimented with dousing the elasto in thin CA glue to see what happened. Firstly I hoped the glue would soak through the elasto or wick between the internal brass tube and the inside of the blank to glue them together. Secondly I wanted to see what would happen to the outside of the blank that would be exposed and handled. With a wall thickness of approximately 1 millimeter the elasto became more translucent and yellowish.

The glue did not appear to soak all the way through the elasto. When I sanded the ends of the elasto blank to make them flush with the ends of the brass tube it took perhaps 5 to 10 passes with 220 grit sandpaper to get through the CA glue filled elasto and back to the original elasto material. With firm pressure on a flat surface the 220 grit sand paper actually did a good job of sanding the elasto as well. As far as what elasto feels like after being coated in CA glue it seems to raise the "grain" of the elasto so that it feels a bit like an emery board at the surface but overall it still has them same amount of squoosh underneath. I'll post some photos of my experimentations this weekend.

Here's the same elasto part shown above but now with more gunk on it. Below it is an unprocessed part except for powder removal with a brush and rinsed with distilled water.




A -> Orange FabricMate coated with thin CA glue but with excess glue quickly blotted off with a paper towel.
B -> Orange FabricMate
C -> Orange FabricMate coated with thin CA glue but not blotted.
D -> Black Sharpie coated with thin CA glue but not blotted.
E -> Black Sharpie
F -> Green FabricMate.
G -> Black FabricMate.
H -> Black FabricMate coated with thin CA glue but not blotted.
I -> Yellow FabricMate coated with thin CA glue but not blotted
J -> Plain elasto coated with thin CA glue but not blotted.

The black FabricMate gave a slightly more matte black surface with less streaking than the Sharpie, probably because it takes many hours to completely dry. CA glue is not a great idea for your elasto if you plan on flexing it much since it will crack. However a thin blotted layer of CA glue will provide some surface protection from dirt and finger oils.

If you blot the super glue you need to work fast to prevent your paper towel from being glued to your item. Be sure to follow all safety precautions since CA glue can be nasty stuff. You could also use something like a clear lacquer to coat your part. Many lacquers will yellow materials as white as WSF or elasto. The best clear lacquer I've found so far is a Testors spray lacquer which is also extremely water resistant. I have not yet tried other Testors varieties or this product in brush form. http://www.testors.com/products/137178

Here's another experiment gone horribly wrong yet it is still instructional.

For this pen I used an elasto pen blank with a 0.381 mm (engraving or embossing?) height honeycomb pattern for a metallo pen kit. The wall thickness
beneath the pattern is 1 mm. The goal was to get a subtle hint of red color through the wall of the blank by painting the brass tube in the kit with red enamel
paint before assembly. Originally I was not planning on gluing the blank to the tube but the wall of the blank was too opaque so there was no hint of color.
So I poured a bunch of thin CA glue over the blank (with brass tube aligned inside) in a cupped piece of aluminum foil. The CA glue made the elasto translucent
but it also wicked between the painted brass tube and the blank at the ends allowing the underlying paint to be seen. The wicking action is a function of the
inside diameter of the elasto and it looks like it was too tight in the central part of the blank, or the CA glue cured before it could wick in all the way. After
removing the blank/tube assembly from the CA glue bath I quickly blotted the exterior of the blank to remove excess CA glue.



A potentially better way to do this is to first paint the inside of the blank. That may add a hint of color observable from the outside. If not a quick dousing
of thin CA glue and blotting with a paper towel should do the trick. Of course the alternative is to color the blank from the outside with a colorfast dye that is
not easily removed with handling. More experimentation is required!

In case you did not see how I dyed the Elasto Plastic Spring Bracelet (here not dyed on the picture):

with Dylon All-purpose Dye, here is the video.

How does the dye hold up to handling? I was trying to color my elasto blank from the inside so the color would not wear off after writing the first three chapters of my proposed design rules.