So yesterday I started working on my jets and I didn't know what was the best method to get them smooth for painting so I tried the two that I know.
The first of those was just simple sand paper which i spray glued to a scrap piece of wood.
It gave good, but not perfect results
The next thing I tried was acetone vapor bath smoothing. I have never done this till now so I wanted to try with one part while sanding the rest.
This was my first (very crude) setup. It only worked on the side closest to the acetone, but that side was very very smooth.
I decided to try this process on all my parts so I did my youtube research and drove to home depot before they closed to get a steel paint can and some magnets. I used the magnets to hold some paper towels on the sides of the can. ( this was the video I used as inspiration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvCEnA0NEG4)
So the parts wouldn't stick to the lid of the can i cut out a circle out of roofing tin that I had laying around. After putting some parts on the (upside down) lid I pored a liberal amount of acetone in the can and turned it around so that the paper towels would absorb all of the liquid and placed it above the parts. I noticed right after I put down the can the hole thing got ice cold, it was just to Cool not to show you guys.
I left all the parts in for 40 minutes then pulled them out and let them sit for about an hour. You can still see the build lines on each part but the surface is really smooth. After running all the parts through the process and letting there surfaces cure the results were awesome!
I'm not sure the picture does it justice, but trust me its smooth.
Working on all these parts did teach me something about getting 3d parts finished and i suggest you think of this if you try.
ONLY sand parts that absolutely need it, even then take the grit count high. The best surfaces on my parts are the ones I did no sanding on. They are all smooth, but the sanded ones have a noticeably different feel to them and is frankly not as good.