(WORKING) Nicks-Fix "Continuous IPA Filtration" system
It doesn't seem to take many resin prints before my cleaning alcohol is slimy as snot; fortunately for me this issue now has a solution!
The "Who"
Nick Wilson of the Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/@nicks-fix posted a video about his new Continuous IPA Filtration system he had created. The breakthrough for me was seeing someone pairing up the cheap water filters I had already rejected, but now with an alcohol safe diaphragm pump to handle the pressure needed for the cheap filters! (...and WHY didn't I think of that?)
Resin Printer Mods and Continuous IPA Filtration! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfM1CXBOZns
The Basics
- Expose the alcohol to UV curing light
- Creates a suspension of tiny, hard to remove, plastic particles in the alcohol
- Creates a suspension of tiny, hard to remove, plastic particles in the alcohol
- Separate out the plastic particles leaving clean alcohol behind
- Unsatisfactory previous attempts to reclaim usable alcohol
- Cheese cloth - Soaks up the alcohol and can be wrung out to squeeze and separate the solids
- LOTS of time and effort splashing contaminated alcohol around
- Filter paper - Clogged almost immediately and didn't really trickle through even over time
- Cotton cloth - Used to "wick" from higher "dirty" container to lower "clean" container, but too slow to be useful
- Waiting - Settling out solids takes longer than I am willing to wait, since 90 days was not even a start
- Vacuum filtering caused far too much loss of alcohol with my setup (I'm not a chemist)
- (I chose not to use alum or other chemical additives to help precipitate particles out of solution)
- Cheese cloth - Soaks up the alcohol and can be wrung out to squeeze and separate the solids
- Nick's usage of a diaphragm pump to push alcohol through the filters
- Filter out these solids using a diaphragm pump and cheap water filters
- Unsatisfactory previous attempts to reclaim usable alcohol
The "What"
- Silicone tubing - flexible and mostly resistant the these specific chemicals
- Gets alcohol from dirty container through the UV exposure and into the filters
- Returns the cleaner alcohol back into a clean container
- OR could be used to simply recycle from and to the same container making it progressively cleaner
- Hose barbs - hollow threaded fitting with a nozzle for the hose to slide over
- Connects filters or pump to the silicone tubing
- Plumbing Nipples - Hollow tube with threads on each end
- Connects filters to each other
- Connects pump to filter
- Diaphragm pump - Liquid pump capable of moving alcohol without danger
- Inlet pulls cleaned alcohol through the filters
- Outlet pushes cleaned alcohol into clean container
The "How"