Will ABS plastic absorb E6 chemicals?

[wildbill]

Anyone have first-hand experience with any of the E6 chemicals permanently contaminating ABS tanks or equipment?

The Tetenal instructions attached below state there can be issues with some plastics. I've never had an issue with my jobo equipment and any E6 chemicals.

I'm inquiring because I have someone who needs some of my tanks which are made of ABS sheet goods. He's concerned.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Ordinary developing chemicals will not interact with ABS unless you have some esoteric reason to add an actual solvent dryer like acetone.
Some developers can leave a sludge which eventually needs scrubbing, as we all know. The biggest problem with new ABS tanks and so forth is that mold release compounds are used in manufacture. Sometimes these are not thoroughly removed prior to marketing. In other cases there can be sulfur residues from the mfg process, which can adversely interact with developers. So it's a good idea to scrub any NEW plastic gear with a gentle pots n' pans pad and give a generous ordinary water rinse before using them for darkrm chem.

 

[wildbill]

Thanks Drew.
I wasn't worried about it based on my experiences with this material.

 

[Athiril]

I was wondering about ABS myself, as I want to get into 3D printing parts.

 

[CatLABS]

The problem was and mostly still is in Ciba and other direct positive color processing (other then E6), where many materials do not hold up over time.

 

[DREW WILEY]

ABS was not affected in the least by Ciba. My first set of Ciba drums was ABS and were used for thirty years with Ciba, and are now still in
perfect shape, being used for RA4. The issue with Ciba bleach was sulfuric acid; and these plastics are not affected by acid. What Ciba destroyed was conventional iron pipe waste lines, if it went down the drain. No different than using sulfuric acid to clear a drain clog. Every
plumber knows about this. Thin plastic pipe can fail is the acid hits a lot of organic matter, and the heat generated from the reaction is enough to actually melt the wall of the pipe. But that is exactly why ABS drain pipe is thick-walled. PVC sink P-traps are a different story because they're thin, but the plastic itself is inert to direct acid attack. I don't know if anyone ever marketed styrene drums, which is a more brittle plastic. My favorite drum material is noryl because it has excellent thermal insulation properties which hold the temp of chem inside the drum better. Any decent plastics handbook or web link can give you a list of specific chemical compatibility.

 

[wildbill]

Yeah Drew, I looked into what chemicals ABS isn't friendly with. Glacial Acetic acid is one that appears on some charts but isn't harmful at the dilutions used for stop bath. Most charts don't have data for many of the chemicals listed except for the nasty stuff that turns ABS into liquid, like the solvents used to bond abs parts together. I'm pretty sure E6 will be okay at this point.

 

[DREW WILEY]

We had an industrial pipe supplier right across the street for many years, who has subsequently moved one town over. They had everything, and it they didn't, could get it. This is the world epicenter of pharmaceuticals, biotech, etc, but still has some hard chem industrial like refineries in the general area. If you wanted a teflon ball valve for your darkroom sump line, they had it in stock. I would cost you $3000 instead of $3 like an ordinary PVC one. I opted for PVC, of course. But you've got different potential chemicals and their mixtures, different concentrations and temperatures. They had hard data on all of it, right in their catalog even. If you wanted some exotic pipe in a six foot diameter, they had it, and other stuff clear down to micro-pipette dimensions. By the time I personally use glacial acetic acid, it's no stronger than kitchen vinegar, probably even less.