RepRap: Blog

I tried using the thickened resin again, and turns out manual flickering of the UV led is not accurate enough for a consistent result. Probably also temperature dependent. I noticed that the drawn-out lines of solidified resin warped and moved under my breath, but not a blowtorch draft, so the material seems to be very moisture sensitive in thin layers.

I got a thicker point which has heavy corrosion on it from not being cleaned properly after the electro-etching, and tried that as a dip pen. Just using a drop of resin off the end of a dental probe was too much material. The resin blobs when the point goes in, so using tissue paper I wiped most of it off, leaving a smeared layer approximately 0.3-0.4mm thick. This allowed me to dip the probe tip without causing resin to splurge everywhere.

Once dipped, I moved the tip away 1mm and lowered it to the slide surface. Not particularly accurately, just give or take 0.05mm. Raising the tip left a droplet roughly 100μm in diameter (don't know how thick yet). Moving back to the smear of resin, moving forward, new droplet, repeat, produced this line. Smear can be seen as darker area on the right.

 

An unforeseen problem is that the size of the smallest reservoir drop I can easily make is about the size of my work area, so I'm working around that by making the reservoir and manually aligning the probe with the edge of it before engaging the stepper drivers. Anyway, the Covid is starting to win again, so that's it for now.