In the final stage, instead of airbrushing the clear gloss coat, you should dip them in the varnish completely and then leave them to dry. Cover the item with a plastic container to protect the coat from dust. You will have a perfect mirror transparency.
I used to polish acrylic in a dental lab. The process was messy, but quick... We used wet fine pumice with a wet cloth wheel on a bench grinder. Stage 2 was a plastic brush with pumice and last was the red tripoli with a fine buff. All were mounted on bench grinders and super efficient. We could polish 30 retainers in 45 min, sometimes less if there was one person per machine! We used clear acrylic, powder + liquid then cured under pressure for 15 min. but I would love to try it with a 3D printed item. You coild get a beatiful liquid clear polish with that method! The only thing is it tends to thin out areas & some detail would be lost if you polished too hard
Yeah, sanding is certainly not an option for me, since the model I am doing has many bends and dips, where flat sandpaper simply won't get through. Wonder if I could go straight into coating instead.
I’ll be giving this a go pretty soon. Have two models I’m working on which need clear parts and my clear resin arrived yesterday. Thanks for all these fantastic tutorials!!
What if you don’t sand at all? I‘be used resin to remove scratch marks from acrylics by just brushing or dipping it works ok, it can create distortion if is optical quality but it does get clear just make sure that you shake off as much excess resin before curing. Nice job !
Hint: Do not wash the print. If the clear part is separate and not uber detailed, there is no need to wash in alcohol. Alcohol will cloud the print significantly. Instead leave it to cure on a box or paper with natural light or in your curing machine.
Yeah, I had that problem, where print looks astonishing, but alcohol ruins it, making the print turn milky/matte. What made it worse- the UV curing made it turn yellow. I will try your method, hopefully it works, and the print doesn't stay sticky.
Try micromesh. Starts at 1500 and goes up to 12000 grit. Commonly used with epoxy to leave a crystal-clear finish, no clear coat needed, so no risk of orange peel or thicker areas causing shimmering and bending the light weird
From my experience, depending on the part you don't need to go to all the way with the sandpapers and you can even forget the clear coat. As he says, it's better for flat parts, but you can do it for some curved ones (that doesn't have some details on it) so, my workaround is just doubling the grit for every step (like going from 300 to 600, then to 1200 and then to 2000) and if you feel confident you can use some electric drill with those sanding discs and there are some with some foam so it's not that harsh on your piece, just be sure to not get the part too hot or it will start to shatter. Anyway, after the 2000 grit sandpaper you need to polish it with some polishing pads and some polishing compound (like Meguiar's Ultimate Compound, which works great IMO) and then just a quick buffing and if you have a good car wax you can use it too. You will make it crystal clear without the need of a clear coat. With an electric drill you can do every step in like 2 minutes or so for parts like these and ready to use, no drying time needed
Or you can not poison yourself like an idiot and go through a hundred bucks of trash and just buy high clear resin and follow the directions then spray with polish 💅
