working with clear parts.

Some of our parts such as emergency lamps or headlights will contain clear parts. These parts may be either colorless clear or a colored clear. When you receive the parts you may notice that they appear slightly hazy or cloudy and some may have light support marks, rest assured with minimal work they can shine like glass. Heres a few tips to get you started.

We take a great deal of effort to keep the supports necessary for printing parts in hidden areas, particularly with clear parts. From time to time the supports must be placed in an obvious area to ensure the part prints correctly. If your clear parts (or any of our 3D printed parts for that matter) require sanding to remove a support mark we do recommend wet sanding. With clear parts we like to start around 600 to 1000 grit and work our way up to a minimum of 6000 grit for a smooth surface finish.

After sanding is completed a quick wipe with an alcohol wipe or a swab dipped in isopropyl alcohol (if desired) will help to remove any remaining sanding particles.

The cloudiness in the parts when you receive them is from the post printing cleaning procedure. All of our parts are thoroughly cleaned after printing to ensure a resin residue free part. The cleaning process does “haze” the part but with a high quality clear coat, they will shine like glass. 2K clear will be the king when it comes to clear parts but any high quality clear will bring the shine. We do NOT recommend the use of Duplicolor 1K clear as it does have a tendency to yellow over time. We have had great success with both spraying or dipping the part in a variety of clears including Future floor polish. If dipping the part use the corner of a paper towel on an edge of the part to wick off the excess and then allow to dry completely.

This is the same bottle. The bottle on the left shows the light haze that is typical when you receive your clear parts.

The bottle on the right had zero sanding or other prep work done and was sprayed with the 1K clear we told you NOT to use(we are not good listeners sometimes, LOL take our word for it, it will yellow over time). One single coat and the shine came through immediately. We have had great success with Tamiya gloss clear as well.