Dissolving Support Material.

[Carrie Rise]

I am curious about how long does it take to dissolve the MB Dissolvable support material. I printed a skull (about 2 inches high) with a fair amount of support material around the jawbone and base of the skull. Does it take hours? min? I am at school and am "trying" some Orangey cleaner that I think is D-limonene or at least has Orange Oils in it, but not sure. I know I probably need to order the good stuff, but just trying a cheap option.

Just curious.

[Jetguy]

It has to be as pure and concentrated as you can get it, and it still does take some time for complete removal.

It sounds like your shortcut (using some random clearner) is the longcut and may never work.

 

The easiest and obvious method to determine how good your solution is, simply take a short piece of the HIPS filament and put it into a capful and wait. It should become soft first, then slowly dissolve. If you cannot even dissolve a tiny piece of filament in a capful, you'l never dissolve the material off the model.

[Scottbee]

My experience is that it takes hours... many hours... perhaps days worth of hours.

Heat and agitation appear to help though.

[Jetguy]

Also, I know there are lots of cleaners and so on out there but this was the one I use and is nearly pure dLimonene from my testing http://www.amazon.com/Orange-TKO-Tko-16-Liquid/dp/B001G4A6T4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396464554&sr=8-1&keywords=tko

 

And like others said, I left it for a few hours and saw in a resonable time it was working, overnight the filament was completely dissolved.

[Ryan Carlyle]

Some people have reported that using an ultrasonic cleaner is highly effective. I haven't tried it. My ultrasonic has a lot of ABS parts around the chamber and d-limonene DOES very slowly attack ABS, so I haven't really wanted to risk it.

You need to take into account solvent saturation -- if you're fully loading the solvent with dissolved styrene, it's going to stop working. Likewise using excess d-limonene will result in faster dissolving because you'll get more favorable concentration gradients for diffusion.

[Carrie Rise]

Thanks Jetguy! Ordered. It looks like...well...nothing is happening. Orange TKO ordered. God I love Amazon Prime.

[Ken Hecker]

I found it interesting, after taking six days to dissolve the HIPS support (which AdaFruit says is what MakerBot Dissolvable filament is ) around a complicated cube thing, that now, when I call the HIPS in my left extruder "MakerBot dissolvable" the temp of 250C is automatically added to the profile.  So I went with that, and the support is even harder, and hard to pull apart with pliers.  But when put in pure d-limonene, and with the support being a fine labyrinth of holes (and not squiggles that often did not stick), it softens almost immediately so it can be pulled off with the fingers.  It's still a sticky mess, but I can remove it complete in about a day with a little work with a toothbrush.  d-limonene will dissolve some interesting things.  I used an O-ral B toothbrush with those little molded-on grips, and those emulsified and disappeared very quickly.  Instructions that come with Joseph's HIPS (ToyBuilder - Prototype Supply) say even PineSol will soften the material.  I slightly heated (it IS flammable so I used a sort of double-boiler) the d-limonene, and even the ABS deformed a bit.  Once rinsed and left to dry, the deformation disappeared, and a bent part became straight again.  Strange.

Ken

[Ryan Carlyle]

D-limonene also takes oil stains off cement, cleans paint off paint brushes, and is one of the active ingredients in Goo-Gone and Murphy's Oil Soap. And it's an insecticide too, you can spray it on plants to kill pests.

It's really pretty awesome stuff. Kind of expensive unfortunately. One of these days I'm going to set up a distillation rig to reuse it.

[andre]

I suggest removing as much as possible by hand before dissolving into D-limonene.  Heated plate with a stirrer speeds it up as well.   

[Brian33433]

I'm surprised with all the work now being done with sugar printing, they don't make a sugar filament that would just dissolve with water. Than again not sure how 3d systems is extruding the sugar on there system because at these temps the sugar would solidify much more than it looks like it does in there pictures

B.