There is wayer based varnishes. Not sure how the work on plastics but dont change the color of wood
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For light pipes has anyone checked how clear filament straight off the roll with square cut ends performs?
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Okay, what about a mold printed in TPU for an epoxy pour?
This was about my only real use for clead filament for a long time. I ended up using it as a light pipe to bring board mount LEDs to the outside of cases.
Well, and I used cut pieces of clear ABS in acetone as a bed adhesive slurry. I was quite disappointed in what I coild get from âclearâ filament in terms of printed end result.
It works reasonably well. Not as good as real fibreoptic, but not bad, and if you heat it up and stick it to a 5mm or 3mm LED it works very well. I did not try for SMD devices. Most of my experiments were pretty straight and short, but sometimes Iâd change the arrangement.of LEDs to space them out.
I had clear PLA and ABS. I only ever bought one roll of PLA, but a few of the ABS, since it made a really nice part finish dissolved in acetone on a glass plate.
Yes was going to be for my power wedge. For up and down.
Then my surf tabs in and out. (They are just like trim tabs)
The reason I was asking about abs as you can scuff it to 600 and give it a quick wipe with acetone on a lint free cloth and it makes it pretty clear. Itâs the ghetto fox for old fogged up headlights.
I have used the clear blue to make some neat end glow light up figures. And made some 3mm led clips that you put on the strip lighting to carry the light to the figure via end glow fiber optic
I set the fiber optic in before I uv cure to glue them in
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Well I am going to call this done.
That is like 3 coats of clear. If I printed with thinner layers and prepped a bit better I think it would be super clear. This shape made it hard to use a thick paint like this without getting runs. Clear makes that even harder.
Love itâŚuntil I make a clear plexy milled lid.
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That looks awesome!!! You did a great job!!
Thanks, if the board was closer it is super clear, being that far away it is super diffused.
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My wife makes those epoxy coated tumblers.
I wonder if a thin coat of that epoxy after sanding might fill those layer lines easier and make it a bit clearer
I think it would. I used an epoxy product years ago and it worked very very well. I have some epoxy here I was going to try it but I got side tracked.
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I donât know. Maybe itâs just me, but I donât care for the blurriness.
If it were me, Iâd redesign the case so that either a flat piece of acrylic or even a bent piece could be used. Acrylic sheet is super easy to bend with just a heat gun and a sharp edge of something for the bend point and you can flame the ends to make them super clear too.
You donât need to go all out with a vacuum table for just a few bends.
Only the front/top part of the case would be clear, but itâd be much easier to see through.
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I agree, it is awesome to see through a bit more than it was. That quickly wore off, now I want clear.
Since it takes less time and effort I might try an epoxy coated one real quick. If that is no better than at some point I will make some sort of acrylic version.
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The biggest bummer is at about 1" it is very clear. So maybe if I try smaller layers, or the epoxy.
Maybe an acetone bath???
I donât see how adding a layer of something makes it clearer. To me, all that does is hide imperfections in the top coat. From a reflections point of view, it probably looks nicer, but looking through it really shouldnât be altered much.
The acetone bath, OTOH, would smooth out the wrinkles and could possible make it clearer as youâre directly affecting the material instead of adding more on top. Itâd be similar to the above idea of using an open flame to smooth/clear up the edge of acrylic. It may also be similar to using a flame or heat gun to pop bubbles in resin pours.
Acetone only works on ABS.
I think the clear just smooths it out and combines them. So instead of a tiny lens at each layer it makes it closer to one giant lens.
Straight off the printer at close distances it is very very clear. The better the clear coat the better it looks at further distances.
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Iâll take a few more pictures.
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For the same reason that sanding and buffing your paint/clear coat goes from dull to mirror.
If the imperfections are only on the outside where the layer lines arenât smooth, then it will help. Adding the epoxy will fill in all of the voids on the outer layer.
Itâs the same as when you have scratched up glass that is hard to see through, you can wet it and it will become clear again if it is just surface scratches.
oh yeah⌠
Do they make clear ABS? 
Sure, but in a 3d print, you have multiple inner/outer layers. You can fill the inside of the print and you can fill the outside of the print, but unless the print is printed in vase mode, you canât get to any imperfections on the inside.