finishing applied to printed pla parts

Hi everyone

I have a prusa that works OK. I am looking to improve the finish quality of the parts, hopefully by polishing the layer lines out of the pla parts.

Has anyone got any ideas?

Cheers

Apparently acetone works on ABS but not tried it on PLA

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Experimenting in 3D in New Zealand

One method I've seen mentioned on the forums is to submerge the parts in powdered plastic (e.g. small flakes of ABS) and vibrate the whole container. If your parts aren't fragile, you could probably get the same effect by putting the powder + parts into a drum and use a motor to rotate the drum.

Ive been looking for powdered ABS or PLA, haven't found any yet....

But your never going to get injection molding quality from a reprap.

Ive printed stuff at 0.09mm layers and the human eye can still see the darn layers!

i've tried some Acetone on PLA part (at least a "green" alternative for acetone wich is not really acetone). and it works pretty well:

here, i use this methof on the top of the red part

to apply few amout of acetone i use a large brush.

I have been partially succesful in improving surface finish by putting the completed part in an oven at about 60-70°C?
Try at you own risk, it needs to be in there for quite a while and glosses the surface up as well as reduces the visibility of the build lines

Is your oven a controlled industrial one? seems a domestic one might be a little variable in temperature control as well as possibly creating the odd domestic :-) . Could a little benchtop oven be converted? It wouldn't be that hard to come up with better temperature control, fan assit etc.

Good old sanding works for me...

I start out with a low grid and work my way up to about 1000 grid(Wet sanding also helps a lot.). The parts will turn white with from the plastic dust but that can be solved by using a heat gun set at 200+ degree's or so. Run the heat over the part for only a few seconds because if you do it to long it will melt/deform the part. The heat works like magic. I have some dark blue PLA and it turns the white sanded parts back to the deep blue it started at.

Next option is to use some plastic filler(used on car bodies).This can be bought from Mitre10. Its usually a two pack that has an hardener that you need to mix in before it will set. After it sets you just sand it down and paint it.

I have been wondering about sand blasting and soda blasting but have not had access to that yet.

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