3D Resin Printing: Storing resin between prints

3dprinting articles

3D printer resin can be pretty unhealthy. It can cause burns if it cures when on your skin, rashes from being a skin irritant and it's generally quite messy. When I first got my 3D printer, I used to filter the resin back into the bottle at the end of my print sessions. The problem I would have with this is that depending on the resin brand, the bottle could be pretty terrible at preventing resin escaping - I'd come back in the morning and find drips had leaked down the side of the bottle and into the cupboard I store my resin in. It also meant quite a bit of resin was being wasted you'd inevitavely have some left in the vat and some in the plastic funnels that would then need to be cleaned, wiped and disposed of.

After a while I stopped putting it back into the bottle each night and began lefting it in the printer vat. Everything seemed fine - as long as you stir the resin well with a spatula or business card before printing it didn't seem to affect the prints at all. One problem with this lazier approach was that even the least-smelly resin I had, when left open like this, would cause quite a bit of small in the small utility room i printed in. The real problem with this storage method, however, became apparent a few months later when I came into my office one morning to find that a print from the night before must have slightly punctured the FEP film in the vat. Black risin had slowly oozed out of the vat overnight and spread into the inner gubbins of the printer. It took quite some time to clean the resin out of the machine and I decided to look for a better way.

That's when I realised the 1000ml plastic 'tupperwear' containers were ideal for this:

Pretty much every resin vat I have will sit snugglt into the lid of a 1000ml plastic container. The container itself fits comfortably over the top of the tank, and the air-tight nature of the containers means that the smell is kept inside. I've turned them upside down and laid some regular kitchen paper in the lid inset, just underneath the vat. Ths helps catch small leaks and drips. The containers are also stackable so you can store multiple vats really easily in a dark cupboard.

To summarise

• I use 1000ml plastic containers with a good seal to keep the resin smell at bay,
• I also bought some spare vats. It's really nice to be able to have 4-5 different resins all ready to go with no bottle-fuss,
• I keep them stacked somewhere dark. Even the smallest of UV leaking into a room will cure them over time.

Some links to get you started

There are for the UK, unfortunately, but they'll give you an idea of what to search for in other countries. The important thing is to find one that has a lid beg enough to house the base of the vat:

• Homemaid Living Premium Airtight Plastic Storage Containers (1200ml)
• Sistema 1L Rectangular Accents 3 Pack
• AmazonBasics Air-Locked 3-Piece Food-Storage Set, 3 x 1.2 Liter
• Emsa 508558 Clip & Close 3-piece set of food storage containers, 1 litre

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What I'm using to create

I use various bits and bobs to craft my shiz.

• Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra, Mars 5 Ultra, Mars 4 Ultra,
• 3x Mars 3 Pro backup printers for speed,
• Elegoo ABS-like Resin 3.0,
• Sunla Water-washable grey,
• Elegoo Resin Space Grey 8k,
• Phrozen Luna curing station,
• Vallejo Model Color, Game Air, various sets,
• Iwata Eclipse HP-CS & Studio Smart Jet Pro Compressor,
• Random cheapo airbrushes for base coats,
• 3D Studio Max, ZBrush and Chitubox Pro.