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[T] Magnets for reusable supports

A project log for SecSavr Suspense [gd0105]

The best of resin with the best of filament; is such a 3D printer possible?

kelvinakelvinA 08/11/2022 at 21:120 Comments

I just realised that resin can adhere to room temperature metals, unlike FDM. This could simplify the resuable supports idea I had in #SecSavr Sublime [gd0036] where magnets would be stacked in a tower. The first magnet will be lightly press fit into a printed housing to keep it from moving. 

This might be more sustainable in the long term than a supports printed from the more versatile recyclable resin I found talked about a few weeks ago. The researchers use ethylene glycol and heat to break down the printed part back into resin that can be used in the printer again, and can be done so up to 4 times. That already sounds miles better than the kind of hoops you need to go through to recycle FDM waste. The drawback is that the parts aren't fully cured from UV alone, which might make layer cleaning difficult, as well as bring in safety concerns. I wonder if higher viscosity resins could eliminate these problems, because this resin would work great for draft prints aswel. There's also this article talking about a more recent method and I'm reading it right now.

Anyway, magnets don't have those limitations and print time might be similar, but the height that can be used is dependent on the max height of the pick+place attachment. That PnP could also be doing things like inserting nuts or magnets into the part, so there's now a strong reason to obtain a higher height than what would be needed for PCBs.

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