Wednesday, November 05, 2025
Slicer Changes, USB Video, Silly Season
PrusaSlicer, bless it's heart, can't cope with the concept of a 6mm print head. As I'm aiming for a 15-30μm line width, that means I can't run the slicer on a scale of one millimetre to one micron.
Back in the RepRap days all this was easily configurable by the user, because nobody was sure exactly what 3D printers looked like yet. Now things are more specialised and gymnastics are needed to cope with exotic extruder sizes.
I'm changing the "dipify" GCODE converter to rescale slicer output. That way I should be able to use probe deposition size values that give sensible layers. I'll start with a scale of 1mm to 10μm and see how it goes.
Other To Do items:
- Detect new layers and modify the Safe Z height as the object gets taller.
- Automatically stow the probe and expose the part to UV in the sliced GCODE.
- Make a slightly finer probe to get dots in the 15-30μm range.
- Design a slide/ground probe with a more conveniently located Z Touch plate.
- Make a 3D test object (minimug?).
- Establish a practical layer height.
- Maybe speed things up a bit.
Then I can move on to layered objects.
I tried writing a program that watches the probe and detects the flexing that occurs when the probe contacts the slide. Turns out that while the Mk I Human Eyeball can do this, a program has problems with all the video noise. I learned a lot about USB video devices under python though and may be useful later when controlling printed mechanisms:
Oh, I have to deal with writing the Everything Open presentation, and deal with the "Silly Season" that is looming upon us. Jingle Bells and all that.
