Tuesday, March 17, 2026
PIKA Test Grid
I fired up the PIKA and ran a test grid. Been having a few camera issues after the laptop upgrade, but that's sorted now. More generally useful stuff on that in a later post, TL;DR vlc, mpv etc. aren't doing what I want so I've hand-rolled something.
The python script for creating the grid GCODE is here: https://github.com/VikOlliver/RepRapMicron/blob/main/utils/grid_gcode.py
Here's a 10x10 grid of 100μm squares etched into marker using Probe 9:
Spacing is pretty good on the Y axis, but the X axis needs a bit of love. The X deviations seem to be regular, so I suspect I just need to centre the Drive Screw a bit better.
Line widths are different on the X and Y axis this is because my particular PIKA prototype has the Z Tower 2mm too close to the centre and I have to tilt the probe at an unholy angle to get it in contact. The PIKA chassis takes a lot of printing, so I'll probably print a temporary probe assembly to work around that, which is a much smaller part.
The actual consistency of line width (given this is subtractive scraping) is reasonably constant over a 1mm square, though does fade out a bit towards the top right. My office got unreasonably hot yesterday, so I think I may need to re-level.
