3D Resin Printer Fumes - What's the Real Story?

After months of waiting, my wife's new whizbang 3D printer arrived a little over a month ago.  We have yet to get it set up and running for a multitude of reasons, but one of the factors is how and if to deal with the fumes.  For reference, the printer is the Emake3D Galaxy 1.  Our current plan is to keep it here in the basement where our home offices and craft-related things are.  We considered putting it at the shop, but it's a pretty dusty environment out there and we didn't want to worry about contaminating it with saw dust and metal shavings.  My general risk profile on fumes can be best summed up with a giant "meh, it depends".  Sure, a quick breath of brake-cleaner phosgene gas is going to be an extreme hazard at any level, but I figure that a quick inhalation here and there of most fumes isn't really a problem worth worrying about.  That said, if I'm spray-painting indoors or welding, I'm wearing a respirator.  Unpleasant smells aren't a concern, if something is a little stinky I just deal with it.

I have seen extreme responses on both sides of the coin as far as the resin printer fumes.  I'm inclined to think that the histrionics around treating the containers of resin like they're VX gas and wearing rubber gloves and a respirator and a bunny suit any time you open the bottle is pretty much an overreaction for occasional home use.  On the other hand, I'm also guessing that the "eh, who cares, just go crazy and print, it'll be fine" side of pendulum is maybe underthinking it a little.

The unit itself has a vent van with a fairly beefy charcoal filter in front of it, however, the door isn't sealed up in any way.  I haven't figured out how to just get the exhaust fan to run to see how much negative air pressure it creates.  I've read that a decent charcoal filter does a good enough job of trapping the bad stuff.

So how much do I really need to worry about this?  I could build a giant enclosure for the printer with a big exhaust fan and a tube to run the fumes out the window.  But that's a whole lot of work and I've already got enough projects on my hands.  What are those of you with resin printers doing?  Anything?  This isn't going to be an industrial operation where the thing is constantly running, but of course larger prints could see the machine running for a decent stretch here and there.

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Interested to hear responses as my son is running two of these things in his room. He says its all good, but it sometimes stinks in there, especially when he opens the lid of his resin printer. 

I think it depends on the type of filament being used.  PLA is pretty safe but others definitely require ventilation.  A (possible) rule of thumb is the higher the temperature settings the more you need to vent. 

I did a little experimenting with VOC monitoring and a charcoal filter on my printer with ABS. Scroll down here and you'll find details:

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/learn-me-entry-level-industrial-3d-printers/197951/page2/

So it looks like even with no filter the VOCs were elevated but not into a warning zone.

But that's with filament, not resin.

In reply to wae :

I don't have a resin printer yet. What I've been planning to do when I do get one is basically this setup, replace the pictured plant with a printer.

I'm just planning to Spring for a quiet or adjustable fan instead of just a cheap one, but I can tell you for a fact that a 4"exhaust fan in a tent that size will make it damn near a vacuum chamber. 

I'm more concerned with the stink itself I've heard about with resin printing than VOCs though. I figure as long as it isn't prolonged exposure, and the fumes don't get you highor burn your eyes, it should be fine, but I'm not always the sharpest crayon in the knife drawer. 

Our own member Rufledt has recently gotten a few and made several videos about them. I haven't watched but he may cover this. His channel, because my phone isn't letting me link the video directly

We have a Phrozen Mega 8K at work in a pretty large room.  After the first print on it we started working on a ventilation and enclosure for it.  The particular resin we are using has pretty good mechanical properties, but it seems that the better resins are also better at filling in all the boxes on the hazard label.

Almost all of the UV printer resins are a polyurethane resin at the base, some stink worse than others but they are all nasty chemicals.  I don't know about the inhalation risks but I have heard many horror stories of people developing horrible allergies to these resins over the course of even a few months from accidental skin contact from spills or splash from washing. Anecdotal, but I've seen it pop up a few times in the facebook groups for a couple of the resin printers.

I don't have one of the fancy cleaning tanks for my Elegoo Mars because those weren't a thing when I got into resin printing. I do have a full respirator, chemistry lab goggles and elbow length gloves for when I wash my prints in denatured alcohol.  You do not want that E36 M3 on your skin or in your eyes.  You also really need to think about how you dispose of the wash waste.  You can't just pour that E36 M3 down the drain, 3M just got their peepee slapped hard for polymer components contaminating water supplies.

The resin print quality is awesome but I don't like the hassle, mess, cost or poor mechanical properties. I've leaned back into FDM printing as it fits the more functional type of printing I like to do for 2A, cars and tools. FDM has it's own problems with plastic waste and VOCs like Tom touched on but that resin is bad stuff man.

I do like that tent.  According to the wife, that's what some other folks with the same printer are using. 

I've asked around about the wash and apparently most folks are just using a plastic tub with a gasket to prevent evaporation and just constantly reusing the alcohol.

It sounds like the best way to figure this out is to do what Tom did: bring the VOC monitor home from the shop, rip some prints, log some data, and go from there.