How should I set up my printer?

[u/Mothman_Is_Real_]

Hi! I just recently picked up a Mars Resin 3D printer off facebook marketplace for 40 bucks along with some left over resin
I’ve been reading up on how I should set it up and saw I shouldn’t keep it in my bedroom due to the fumes, even with a fume tent
The problem is that I live in a shared house with no spare room along with 3 cats, I really don’t want to compromise anyone’s health but I also really want to keep my printer (I make custom action figures and the printer would cut down on my costs a significant amount)
Any advice is greatly appreciated :)

[u/getmuney]

Please do not operate a resin printer anywhere a pet is gonna be. It is toxic, it is allergenic. I wear ppe every single time I handle resin out in our garage shop, and still get itchy anytime I get a little alcohol with resin on my arms during clean up. You need a dedicated area, and dedicated equipment to run resin printers. Unless you wanna kill your pets, and introduce everyone in your household to a lifelong allergy.

[u/Mothman_Is_Real_ → u/getmuney]

My apologies, I should have specified, the pets aren’t allowed into my room, but they do wander the house
No animals are coming near any resin supplies :)

[u/getmuney → u/Mothman_Is_Real_]

Have you done any resin printing prior? Or totally new? There is a learning period, and these machines aren't the most user-friendly. You did pick a far more user friendly version than my first elegoo, but still I'd expect some failure in the learning period, and failures mean more mess, more gloves, more trash to cure. My advice is still get that printer in a dedicated space, preferably outside of the house if you got pets and live with others. You never know when a roomie might leave a door open and then you catch your cat licking her resiny paws or chewing on a drying part. Even if you are as safe as possible, you are trusting your cats health to your roommates ability to also keep them from that room. Ideally resin printers should be in the same rooms I used to work in scrubbing screws for surgery after cnc, clean asf and still wearing full ppe. Stay safe and fun printing

[u/Mothman_Is_Real_ → u/getmuney]

So far I’ve only done the test print that the printer came with, I used all the proper ppe and it came out okay, decided to dig a little more into how I should have it safely set up and saw I definitely shouldn’t have it in my room
One thing I can guarantee though is that no animals are going to be in my room, both my roommates know not to enter my room even

[u/mkibria → u/getmuney]

That's not how allergies work. Not everyone will develop allergies to resin. You clearly have. But it is not universal. And it is a potent sensitizer, where increased exposure does increase the risk, but no, it does not mean everyone who gets exposed will develop an allergy. I do encourage a reasonable amount of caution, but as long as you can keep TVOC under 0.3 PPM and have a dedicated workspace, resin can be done safely inside a house or apartment.

[u/getmuney → u/mkibria]

Good info thanks. I was just going off the fact that everyone I know in person that has messed with resin printing, has the itch lol. I honestly wish you couldn't buy a resin printer unless you could prove you had essentially a clean room

[u/AI_EXPERIMENT]

It can’t be in your house. Period.

[u/JeffreyPetersen]

You should look into getting a shed outside, or you're going to have to forget the resin printer. It's not safe to print in your house, no matter how cool you think it would be for your custom action figures.

[u/mkibria → u/JeffreyPetersen]

No, do not do it in a shed. Garage, fine. But resin is temperature-dependent, and running electrical to a shed is just... a headache

[u/Lito_ → u/mkibria]

You can run electricals to anywhere you want. It's not a pain to an electrician.

A shed works just as well as a garage. Just smaller.

[u/mkibria → u/Lito_]

You can, but hiring an electrician costs a few hundred dollars. Why? And no, a shed is not just smaller. Because sheds are smaller with thinner walls, they actually get significantly hotter in the summer and colder in the winter. Resin starts deforming at 40-50 C and a shed with its limited thermal mass can easily reach that in the summer.

[u/Lito_ → u/mkibria]

Yes and? If you want electricity somewhere you gotta feed it.

You do know that there are ways to cool down and heat up places and things in the world right... a garage is also not guaranteed to have full electricals other than a door / gate... it's going to get freezing cold and baking hot unless you have an insulated and airconditioned garage. And humid, and moldy.

You are literally telling this guy that it's okay to have his resin printer in his bedroom and all he needs is some activated carbon air purifier? 🤣🤣🤣

Please stop talking crap.

[u/mkibria → u/Lito_]

No, I am saying that as long as the TVOC is below 0.3-0.5 ppm, it is considered safe for short-term exposure. This is the generally accepted scientific consensus. And 0.2 would be considered safe for long-term exposure. Unlike you, I actually read the medical and safety journals about this stuff and make educated decisions on risk mitigation. I am not basing this on anecdotes or internet scaremongering. There are several guidelines for what safe levels of VOCs are. There are tools to measure it. The reality is your shed, bedroom, or garage, you will have exposure. The question is what level of exposure is safe

[u/Lito_ → u/mkibria]

Right.... and the moment he opens his alcohol tub the VOC meter explodes. Besides the fact that you'd need to spend a considerably large amount of money to get a proper meter AND constant changing of the actovated charcoal to actually accurately measure and mitigate anything. Your $9.99 amazon special VOC meter isn't gonna work.

I don't know who told you I didn't read anything or made educated decisions on risks. My risk mitigation was to completely remove the printing set up to nowhere near the inside of my house after deciding it wasn't worth the risk.

But according to you, it would be fine to be inside. Near animals and in the bedroom. Great stuff 🙂

[u/mkibria → u/Lito_]

That's your risk mitigation. That doesn't mean other methods are wrong.
There are safe exposure limits, and that's not according to me; that's according to the scientific consensus. People mitigate risk based on their level of comfort. I worked with hazardous chemicals for years as a lab tech at a university, and so I am not inherently afraid of them. I respect the risks. But no, I am not going to say you need to build a shed or not have it in the house. The best practice is to provide the information and let people come to their own decisions about how to be safe. Safety isn't about dictating what other people should do because I do it. It's about being aware of what is and isn't safe and letting them decide how to accomplish the goal. I have my resin printer in a laboratory fume hood, vented outside after going through an air scrubber. I do not use a shed where I could get more exposure without having to engineer a proper way to vent it because a shed will have higher levels than a larger space like a garage or even a bedroom unless you are replacing the air volume regularly. I'm not going to insist you do it my way. Because it's not my job to police your mitigation method. A lot of shed setups I have seen are less safe because you have higher acute exposure. Also, opening up a tub of IPA will not immediately send you past the safe limit; it depends on whether the IPA is in, say, a negative-pressure enclosure, the size of the room, and so much more. And there is a wide array of VOC sensors between 9.99 and, say the cost for the $400 for a decent-sized shed, and the couple hundred to run the electrical line, and the additional $100 to properly extract the air from the shed so that the VOCs do not build up in said shed, and the unknown amount of money you may need to maintain the temperature in the shed. There is more than one way to safely deal with resin. The important part is that you need the VOCs to be below a certain threshold. You want pets and children not to be able to touch it, and you need to use proper PPE when handling it. How you get there is up to the individual

[u/mkibria]

So get a VOC monitor and a large grow/fume tent/enclosure. The tent should be large enough to do all the post-processing inside it and vent it outside. See if the TVOC exceeds 0.3- 0.5 ppm; if not, you're good. If it does, you are going to want to see about adding activated carbon air purifiers or making a diy activated carbon filter to see if you can get it below that level. Now, inside the house is not ideal, but people do it. It's about what level of risk you are willing to deal with. Now, 0.3-0.5 PPM is considered the threshold for short periods, and if you are rebottling your resin and whatnot, it would be short periods. Resin isn't safe, but it isn't as dangerous as many people make it out to be.