I have a project that I would appreciate some help with. It is not related to entomology or the insect collecting hobby, but someone who is familiar with the killing jars used in insect collecting might be able to help me. Here is my situation:
I am trying to cast a 3d printed ring in metal. In order to do this, I have printed a ring in PLA and encased it in plaster. Now, I need to dissolve the PLA while leaving the plaster untouched to serve as the mold. I should have searched more about the chemical (ethyl acetate) before deciding on using it, because apparently plaster will absorb it. I assume that it will also dissolve the PLA, but some portion of the ethyl acetate will soak into the plaster. If I pour the molten aluminum into the mold and it still has some ethyl acetate in it, I imagine the results would be boiling ethyl acetate that would be quite harmful to myself even with a gas mask. My question is this:
If I leave the mold in a well ventilated area, how long will it take for the ethyl acetate soaked into the plaster to evaporate away? Will it even evaporate away in the first place? I don't want to do anything super dangerous.
I apologize for the off-topic question. After googling "ethyl acetate and plaster" the top results were for insect collecting, so I turned to this subreddit as I am sure that this would be the place for answers about this particular question. I hope you all are having a wonderful day!
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/Entomology/comments/lbsvhn/question_regarding_ethyl_acetate_and_killing_jars/
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