RepRap: Blog

The LCD-as-a-backlight trick doesn't help image structures around 200μm across with the camera. It does help me see and find them on the slide, but that's a visual trick requiring binocular vision - your eye notices the discrepancies in the left and right images.

I tried to create the shape using the GCODE "dipify" code that turns GCODE slicer output into dots, but that went poorly because I've stuffed up the python script in a really weird way that'll take a bit of investigating.

But I did manage to get the lighting angle right in the cheap scope, so here's what happened:

Plotted in resin at 10μm/step using Probe One, 16 dots before recharging the probe, then cured under UV. As you can see, quite the distortion under deposition and curing though Probe One is a durable, blunt-ish probe and I might well do better with something more pointy if only I hadn't rammed it into the slide. I might be able to do better line integrity if I decreased the distance between plots and kept the object the same size.

However, that image is definitely resembling the test loop in promising ways. Being able to image something at last by waving lights around the microscope stage is a big deal. Now I can do that I have four things that need doing and I'm undecided about the order:

• Fix the "dipify" GCODE script
• Print a foldable or flexing structure
• Try to deposit actual layers
• Try to attach a printed object to a wire or probe tip for handling

Feedback welcomed. 

Just for giggles I worked out that assuming the hole (~70μm diameter) was the flagpole hole on a Benchy, and I can do layers, overhangs etc. (bridging in just resin is unlikely at this stage) we'd be looking at a 3D Benchy roughly 1.6mm long. If I cheated and filled in that and the funnel hole like every other beggar printing tiny Benchies, we'd be looking at a 0.5mm long Benchy, or possibly a 300μm Benchy-Shaped Object. Of course, this is all pure speculation because I haven't deposited an actual shape in layers and the whole thing may just melt into a puddle.

# posted by vik-olliver @ 8:40 PM