Release agents are a good idea, but also not particularly practical.
I watched a recent video from JanTec Engineering testing different release agents.
But hold on, what is a “release agent”?
It’s a chemical application one typically applies to a print surface to ensure the print will come off the plate. This is used in peculiar situations with plates and materials that stick too well.
But there’s another way to use release agents: to permit easy removal of support structures.
Normally support structures touch the print itself, and that can make them challenging to remove: the materials are the same and bonding occurs. It can be minimized by shrinking the contact surface, but supports still stick and can be a pain to remove.
The idea of release agents is to pause the print and “paint” the release agent on the precise surfaces where support structures would contact. Then the next layer would touch the release agent, not the support structures, allowing for easy removal: there’s reduced adhesion.
JanTec Engineering tests a range of common substances as release agents to determine which ones work best, and there are several professional dedicated release agents that can also be used.
But is this something that is truly practical? I’m not so sure. In the video the only tests performed are for perfectly flat overhangs that require supports. That flatness allows painting to occur at a layer stop.
This does work — if the right release agent is used — but seems to me to be of limited utility. How many times do you have a flat overhang? Sometimes you do, but many times you do not. In my experience the easiest support removals are with this situation. It’s the more complex organic geometries that have really challenging removal issues.
You can’t really use this method if you must pause the printer on multiple layers and paint very precise areas. That’s impractical, so this really works only on flat overhangs.
There is one advantage of the release method that does provide value: perfectly flat surfaces. Normal support structures leave all kinds of surface problems where the supports were attached. In this method, the gap is set to zero — because there’s no adhesion — and the overhang is printed perfectly flat.
But again, that only works on flat overhangs.
The real way to make this work would be to have a second print head that would drop a release agent on every surface interface. But there are no 3D printers that do this.
But there used to be one from Rize. That company had that exact technology, and I saw how well it worked. You could easily pop out supports with literally no effort, even on non-flat surfaces.
Can you buy one of these now? Unfortunately, not. Rize went under back in 2021, and for a time, remaining equipment was sold by Sindri. They too are now gone.
This was an incredible technology that should be used. However, it’s likely that it’s patented and is lost for the majority of the 3D print world.
Via YouTube
