hey man i just wanted to say thank you for the tutorial ... i ordered Rit dye from amazon and tried the same method myself on my ne mf8 master kilominx as it only comes in original plastic color .. and i hate white puzzles...only difference is that i added a little more acetone .. probably 40 % mix ... the method is flawless ... quick and works like a charm ... and it is literally indestinguishable from an originally black puzzle .. again .. thank you :)
You can dye keys on keyboards too but I've found that they are a softer plastic so you have to use less solvent. I've caused smears in my keys before from cleaning my keyboard with acetone. Also, you can only dye something darker. You can't dye something white and then red. You would need to find a white keyboard and then dye it red. As far as I know the only way you could "bleach" a dye out of plastic is with UV light. It also causes the plastic to become brittle though too...
thanks for the info. I've dyed lot's of shape ways puzzles black, but not ABS. My friend actually just finished dying a sticker less zhanchi with great success. Thanks for making this video =)
Yes, I have tested it on colored plastic now and it does work. Make sure to keep the parts fully submerged in the water and dye when you pour in the acetone so that no pure acetone flows by the parts. I was able to get all of the colors to turn fully black and with stickers, the parts look great.
Dumping acetone down the drain is a bad idea for many reasons. As for storing dye, it goes rancid after a short time. Not sure if the acetone would help it stay fresh but water and dye doesn't last.
Interesting approach. I used undiluted acetone to remove the grain of my 3d printed parts, but this solves the ABS so quickly that I feel I am not really in control what happens. I will try a solution next time (among other methods), the ratio you determined will be most helpful. I would favor adding a dye to this post-treatment rather than buying a lot of coloured filament. Thanks for sharing
Yeah it does. The dye does not change the feel of the plastic in any way so it turns the same as the black one. It seems like (and this just may be a misleading perception) the white plastic is a tiny bit softer than the black plastic. This softness is retained after dyeing and the resulting black puzzle seems a tiny bit softer just like its white brethren.
I highly doubt you'll see this cause you commented 6 years back haha, but I was thinking of doing the exact same thing. Did they key stand to all the wear it'd get from playing?
@@TheChromaKid the color didn't wear out at all, it still has a nice red color. We're talking dye sublimation here, so it paints literally the whole plastic even inside, not just its surface.
@@iiGerardoii Ah I was wondering if it was a surface change or not. Great to hear that it's held up all this time! Feeling pretty confident to have a go at mine now :D
Yeah I tried some dye I found at walmart and it didn't work so I got the rit dye. It didn't seem like it was working on my red cube so I poured all the parts alone with the dye and acetone into a pot and started to boil it and the parts soaked in the dye and they look perfect
Interesting an reasonably informative. It's possible that the process would be improved by maintaining the initial 60 deg temperature. Which might reduce the need for the quantity of acetone used.
No. I have tested acrylic and very bad things happen when you put a solvent like acetone on it. It becomes cloudy / milky and flakes apart and will not retain the transparency. For what it's worth, it does take the dye color but gets destroyed in the process.
@deathcheze I've been hesitant to try boiling the parts because I think some formulations of ABS have a melting point very close to the boiling point of water. I'm glad it worked. I'm in the process of trying to dye some colored plastic so there should be a video of that coming up soon.
Isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol) might work if you used a ton of it and got it very hot. I can't think of a way to get it and keep it very hot without it being a fire hazard though. Acetone is the safest choice I can think of. The ethyl acetate in "non acetone" nail polish remover might work but I can't find much information on the effect of ethyl acetate on ABS plastic.
1. you should do individual pieces or in sets of a smaller amount 2. you need to use heat to help the ink set and STOP taking it out every 2 seconds and rinsing it (oven @ 450) or (put the dye solution in a pot and leave it over the stove) 3. you need a higher concentration of acetone but a smaller ratio of material (ABS) to solution. 4. youre going to stain your countertop so use a disposable surface like a mat
If i wanted to dye the abs plastic thoroughly would it work to dissokve the abs in acetone and add dye? Andthen reharden the abs by evaporating the acetone and creating a new sheet of colored abs?
Great vid! Thanks for sharing. I want to dye a dry bag made of PVC-coated fabric. Do you think this technique will work? or would it just melt the PVC off? Thanks!
If you just get the dye on the surface of the plastic without using a solvent it'll wash right off and won't leave any marks. If you get the dye on the plastic with a solvent it will penetrate the surface and there is nothing that is going to get it off. You'd have to sand down the dyed part which is likely to ruin most plastic parts.
Spraypaint alters the texture and size of the pieces. Spraypaint would probably work for a 3x3x3 but there are some puzzles where it would change the turning quality.
Yes. Just be more careful than I was about pouring the acetone in the water. You don't want the parts to be anywhere near the acetone when it pours in because before it mixes around, it's a really high concentration and some of the cosmetic damage was because the parts touched the acetone as it poured in.
@NaCl586 Rit Dye is intended as a cloth dye so possibly. I think it depends a lot the dye and the concentration of the dye and how the dye works. If you don't use too much acetone you aren't going to harm your puzzle. The worst that will happen is that the puzzle simply won't dye and you will have wasted your cloth dye.
I don't know. I need to test. I've had 3 puzzles ready to dye for several months now but I haven't gotten around to it. I'll test those with cold water.
Both of those videos use boiling. You can't boil ABS plastic puzzles because the heat causes the shape of the pieces to distort. I don't know what the plastic gas tank is made out of in the first video but it can't be the normal ABS puzzles are made from. In the second video, those are 3D printed nylon parts from Shapeways. Nylon can withstand the heat of boiling. I had to use acetone because ABS can't be boiled.
Yes I saw somebody die a white puzzle red with red rit dye. The color may be slightly uneven but it should come out pretty good. With black you can't really tell when it's uneven but it shows more with colors.
Do you mean smoothness of the turning or smoothness of the surface of the pieces? The turning quality would be unchanged. If you're careful and don't get any spots of high acetone concentration (like when pouring it in) then you'll also keep the surface of the pieces smooth.
@EMPER0RC0W i would like to add that there was no damage to any of the pieces .. and they still maintained a nice black shine .. for the record .. i left them to soak for 25-30 minutes ...
A simple plastic liner would have prevented you from wasting time trying to get the dye off your counter. Prep time can seem like a pain in the ass but it saves way more time eventually. Next time cover the counter, cabinets and floor...you never know when an accident could occur and cost you money. Thanks for the video though, I will be trying this soon.
@a510592 I did not notice any spots however I did noticed a bit of haze of less reflectivity that went away when I scrubbed the pieces with a toothbrush and gritty toothpaste. Hopefully the stickers cover most of the spots and it just looks like a factory-dyed puzzle.
The only thing that's dangerous about acetone is that it's flammable. I used to order my acetone on Amazon however shipping is too expensive for it so now I buy it at a local hardware store (Home Depot).
Spraypaint isn't a very good option. It adds a thin layer around the surface of the pieces which can cause them to not fit together very well. It also can make the surface texture a bit grippy which can cause two painted surfaces to partially fuse and it can be hard to separate them without tearing paint. Finally, after a while the paint can become brittle and flake of which causes ugly specs of paint to come out and stick to your fingers and the surface of the stickers.
Does anyone know if it will work on LEGO pieces? I’ve tried boiling Rit Black Dye in Water however the dye doesn’t stay in the plastic and just melts the piece, any help 12 years after this video please?
Interesting. Are you planning to make it "competition legal" while retaining the different feel? (for what it's worth, I do like the stickerless feel better than the white or black ones)
@AetherPhantasm Yeah I really wanted to capture the whole process in one continuous take so that people wouldn't cry foul. I was too aggressive with the acetone. I wound up with about a 27% concentration but I think 15% - 20% should be enough. I haven't taken apart a V-5 so I can't provide any input. What's the issue? Is is too big? Not ABS?
@deathcheze At the end of this video I stated that I think it would work with other colors. Indeed, others have dyed many different colored plastics black without any trouble. You would only run into trouble with colored plastic if you were trying to dye it some other color. For example, red plastic wouldn't dye blue.
I haven't seen the video. Did they boil them? I've tried boiling ABS plastic but it distorts the shape too much and makes the puzzles non-functional. Can you get me a link to that video?
Is there any risk of acetone melting the ABS over a period of time? I'm considering dying a doll made of ABS and the general consensus from the community is acetone is a no no as even after it's rinsed 'residue' could still cause melting
I think if you had kept the water at a near boiling but not actually boiling it would have work way faster....but good job any how thanks for posting..
Rit dye is safe and non-toxic (although I can't tell you the specific chemicals in it, besides salt). Acetone is also quite safe. Although it is a powerful solvent, Acetone isn't a carcinogen, it isn't a neurotoxin, and it isn't mutagenic. But please don't take my word on it. You can search for the MSDS (material safety data sheet) for Rit Dye and Acetone and come to your own conclusions. The most toxic substance in the whole video is the plastic.
Do you think that this will work with a v-cube 6 or 7? I originally wanted black ones but they were out of stock so I got the white ones, I've wanted to try this for like a year now, but never got around to it. What do you think?
@@LazyEinstein Tried some Lego and a purple Gamecube console housing. Both are ABS but maybe there's other chemicals in those particular plastics that are interfering with the dye.
@a510592 Lol, yeah it takes a lot of work, but it'll be worth it. I don't feel like paying another 70-100 dollars for new ones :P I already started on the 6x6 and it's turned out great so far, except the weird things is that even though I cleaned all of the pieces with goo gone and made sure there was no residue from the stickers left, there are still weird spots where the dye set differently as if the residue was still there.
You could store and reuse it. I don't think much dye gets used in the process. Acetone is pretty volatile though so if you stored it in the open at room temperature it'd probably all evaporate in a few days. You'd need to use a sealed container.
I assume you mean you're trying to dye a white GameBoy some color other than black. That is, your'e not trynig to dye a red GameBoy black. I have not experimented with using other color dyes but I'm not surprised that they won't take as well. The black dye is extremely concentrated. Other colors are probably much less concentrated because for normal products like fabric, too saturated a color look strange. For example, yellow can look orange. I don't have any tips, sorry...
well of course, you need white or primer colored parts to take the dye and show color.....like when you color dark hair you need to bleach it first, same principle
