Most resins are hard and can crack when dropped. There are some great “tough” resins such as Siraya Blu and eSun Tough, but what if one doesn’t want clear? I needed a white. I tried adding white opaque pigment to Siraya Blu, and it was promising, but the blue color was evident and it was just not white enough.
Elegoo white is often on sale for $38 per KG at Amazon with an extra 5% off if you buy several, but it is a normal modeling resin, which is designed to be hard and detailed – and my part was cracking the first drop at one meter onto a hard floor. I decided to see if adding in Siraya Tenacious would solve that.
https://youtu.be/WXHNfCgrlHg
Tenacious is a clear and flexible resin that when used by itself, can form flexible rubber-like parts such as watch bands or tank treads. When used for thicker parts, it behaves more like a urethane from skate-board wheels and feels solid. The nice thing about mixing in Tenacious is that the exposure happens to be the same as Elegoo White, so the same settings work for any ratio – though optimally another second or two is best, and base-time can be lowered.
I tested Elegoo white dropped from 1 meter, and it failed first drop. I then repeated with another sample, and that also failed on the first drop. With 33% Tenacious, 10 drops were not a problem. Now we are getting somewhere.
https://youtu.be/W4UEm3Tuo0s
The color does turn into a warm/yellowish white, but I am happy enough with the look, and recommend 33% Tenacious mixed with a hard resin for an affordable nylon-like blend. This is a simple 2:1 ratio, so easy to mix up with whole bottles.
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