Comment by iLoveOncall | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iLoveOncall | Hacker News Reader

This is by far not enough for a resin printer. You need an enclosure and to vent out the air much faster.

That said, it doesn't have to be more expensive. I bought a 30€ inline bathroom fan, 8€ of tubing, and a 40€ cabinet from Ikea.

From there I cut a hole on the side of the cabinet, 3D print a "liner" to attach the tubing to the hole and vent it out through a 3D printed cover with a vent hole where I attached the rest of the tubing.

It is much much safer and vastly more efficient, while remaining affordable. The main advantage is that this is also suitable in an apartment without basement since the fan is much more powerful, and looks a lot better for a room which is not supposed to look like a basement.

Here's a guide I recommend: https://www.asianjoyco.com/resources-tutorials/ventilation-u...

The author here seems extremely ignorant regarding the risks of 3D printing with resin. You must wear full PPE including a respirator at all times when working with resin, even if you don't smell anything.

Author here. I fully agree with you that cheap Chinese resin should never be used in a living area, not even with my improvised ventilation. That's why I said in the first paragraph to "never use [China resin] outside a ventilated factory". That said, I now switched to using locally produced resin which is intended for dentists and is biocompatible (when hardened) and certified for indoor use and only has a class 1 warning level, telling you not to drink it or pour it down the drain. (As opposed to level 3 aerial lung damage with Anycubic resin.) It's quite expensive, but in my case that is tolerable.

And I believe this issue is not black and white. For most people who currently have no ventilation system at all, just adding something like mine will already be a huge improvement. Your article looks great and I agree that that might be even better, but it was not possible in my case:

I did not have any way to properly attach an exhaust, which is why I needed to use a solution that works with the existing window. And when I go on vacation, I need to close that window for insurance reasons. So I needed something that was easily removable, too.

Also, I sometimes work with Epoxy glue and Acrylic paint and I solder electronics and I wanted to make sure that the exhaust will cover these use-cases, too. That said, I think the best solution would be to combine your article and my window cover. I could probably connect a tube from the active coal filter port on my GKtwo directly to one of those fans. That way, it'd be sucking 25% of the airflow through the resin printer and the remaining 75% from the ambient air in the room.

And yes, I wear gloves, goggles, and respirator every time I handle resin. I thought that part was common knowledge, which is why I did not explicitly mention it.

I’ve build a similar setup recently. My partner even got excited thinking I’d finally start growing only to be disappointed when I explained what I was doing.

There's no way I'd have a resin printer in an apartment.

What's your plan when you spill resin on the floor?

Ignoring the fact that there's no way I can spill resin on the floor with my current printing / curing setup, I would just wipe most of it off with paper towels, then clean with water (or IPA but I use water-washable resin), and then if really needed I would cure it and scrape it off.

I don't have a single drop of resin anywhere on the desk where I take care of prints, so it's not that hard.

Note that it's in a room that I dedicate as my workshop, so I'm the only one that goes in and only for DYI purpose (and rarely).

Parent may be imagining a carpeted apartment, which would make cleanup more difficult.

When I was in such a location I used silicone project mats with raised edges fastidiously to avoid ever dripping on the carpet.

Yes that's what I was thinking of after leaving my own comment, but it's a lot less common outside of the US. I have wooden floors.

Otherwise I would definitely either avoid it entirely or cover the whole floor area one way or another.

Carpet or cracks between wooden floor planks, plus the fumes from the spill will then be in the room and need ventilating.

When I was briefly considering buying a resin printer, I was horrified by the comments on Reddit from teenagers who were printing D&D figures in their bedrooms, handling spills by rubbing them into the carpet, or assuming "low odour" meant "safe". In these discussions, comments from a chemist who claimed to work for a company producing the resin were downvoted, they didn't want to know.

"Well, I'll be careful" generally isn't an adequate safety precaution in industry or academia.

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