fun with acetone?

[EF57]

Hey what are some good uses of acetone?  I have a whole bottle sitting around.  Not to clean tracks with it I know already. 

[kvp]

It's good for stripping paint, welding lego blocks together and generally good as an ABS plastic solvent. The best idea is to keep it far away from all plastic and/or paint based models. Personally i use it to get paint stains off my hands after painting models. Just be careful as it also dissolves many synthetic cloth materials.

[multivac]

Smoothing the surface of 3D ABS prints. Take care else you might end up with shapeless blob of plastic.

[cteno4]

Yep only a few places to use it and then with caution.

 

it is the best solvent to get acc (superglue) off stuff and in weld your fingers once glued together w.o tearing of layers of skin...

 

It is good if you need to strip paint of metal. Stripping paint off many plastics it can work if done gently and quickly as will start to soften many plastics. There it’s using it with a q tip not soaking it.

 

you can use it as a metal contact cleaner in a pinch but again have to be very careful of surrounding plastics. Best to just use a plastic safe metal contact cleaner.

 

its kind of the far end of organic solvents to have around.

 

jeff

[chadbag]

 

It burns really well...   

 

Lots of fun to be had there.

 

[enoden]

6 hours ago, EF57 said:

Hey what are some good uses of acetone?  I have a whole bottle sitting around.  Not to clean tracks with it I know already. 

 Acetone is a proven carcinogen and considered very toxic.  It was removed from the lab where I worked a few years ago and is now kept in limited amounts in a locked metal cabinet and only used under a well ventilated hood.  Suggest that you take the jar to a recycler of dangerous chemicals, paints, solvents, etc.  The community where I live has  chemical recycling collection days twice a year.

[cteno4]

It’s not a proven carcinogen.

 

It’s very odd, in the last decade acetone has seemed to have made it onto a dangerous carcinogen lists in a lot of places, but there are no studies at all showing any carcinogenic or strong mutagenic effects. Last I had heard it was on the might be a mild carcinogen but I just looked around at all the main hazard sheets on it and it’s still A4 as not classifiable as a human carcinogen. It’s been used for a long time in a lot of places where workers got a lot of exposure and if a heavy carcinogen it would have jumped out by now. That’s not to say it can’t be carcinogenic, just it’s a weak one if it is and there a lot of those and at the exposure we get in hobby and shop use are pretty minimal.

 

Hazards are mainly drying of skin with repeated use and it’s an eye hazard and very flammable, but it’s the same as most paint thinners and alcohols. Just don’t slosh then all around and use them in well ventilated spaces and not near flames or sparks. Always best to dispose of waste like this at your local hazardous waste site properly, but most of the waste just evaporates from the rag used and some residue washed down the drain when you wash anything. It does biodegrade non toxically so the hobby bits that do get out will eventually biodegrade gracefully.

 

Jeff

 

 

[chadbag]

Isn't nail polish remover a weak form of Acetone?

 

When I want to thrill the kids I spray some from the can onto the sidewalk and let her burn!   Otherwise I use it as a solvent on things that other solvents don't work well on -- like heavy machine packing grease that comes on equipment from China, cosmoline on mil-surp rifles, and old paint.

 

And to help clean up spilled CA ("super") glue.

[cteno4]

Yep nail polish remover is acetone based, but now some new ones w.o acetone as well.

 

neighborhood kids must love you!  ;-p.

 

I spent a lot of late night wait time in the lab in grad school making pretty flames and small explosions and indoor rockets... ain’t chemistry grand!

 

jeff