While boiling an egg for lunch it seemed the obvious thing to do.
Hi Martin,
I am assuming this comment was meant as a joke.
Has anyone tried putting their chairs in boiling water?
There is however a more serious side to the simple idea of heating "cured prints in water" because the water is quite easy to control the temp.
Firstly I have no objection to the Youtube video, it was very interesting and made total sense from a chemistry perspective. It should be noted however, he was talking about non water washable resins.
Broadly speaking its true, heating and or annealing most polymers will impact there final properties. In the case of light reacted polymers such as the resins we use, the Monomers normally Carbon, Oxygen and Hydrogen compounds, and the oligomers do react in the presence of Photo-initiators. when he says connect and form links, its correct name is crosslinking.
Now here is the important bit, not all the Monomers and Oligomers will crosslink fully, some will remain mobile. (this is by design and gives a solid object a degree of initial flexing). That is exactly what he is manipulating by heating.
A very good way to think about this is, to think of glass as a substance, which has a very high level of crosslinking (at extreme temperatures). Resulting in strong, but very brittle properties. Generally as you toughen the tensile strength of something you normally also make it more brittle.
Back to resins, if the resin used is water based, it opens up a new potential issue. In that the resin is designed to interact with water. It will also mean at raised temperatures when still in presence of water, there will be some leaching of the resin at a chemical level out of the solid object.
Therefore if you wish to use water a heat medium, you must also assume the water that was used will have a level of resin residue contamination.
My advise would therefore be, to treat any water used to heat any parts, in exactly the same way you would the water you have rinsed the parts in.
I am not suggesting that the level of contamination will be the same, clearly it will be less, its is however unlikely it will have lessened to what would be considered a safe condition.
I would also in no way then use the same pan for example, to cook anything after using it to heat resin printed parts. If you go down this path ensure the pan used is only used for this purpose going forward.
Hear endeth today's sermon on chemical safety.
cheers
Phil