RepRap: Blog

I've got a process sorted for making thick 2D objects like Hello, World and possibly some structural items. I recreated the HW by the following process:

Text is created from an SVG and converted with jscut.org using a speed of 1000mm/min, 10mm tool diameter, outside cut, cutting 1mm in 10 passes. This effectively goes over the text 10 times while only moving the tool head a micron. I do not claim these settings to be optimal but they are repeatable.

Stick a very small piece of tape on the opposite side of the slide. This denotes where your part will be and makes it a helluva lot easier to find!

On the "right" side of the slide, smear a very small quantity of Nail Art resin (not doing well with 3DP resin yet) and use a manual probe to make sure it covers the taped area smoothly with no bubbles.

Set the μRepRap up, position the fibre as close as you can get to the thin film. Load "Hello World" GCODE. Hit 'Run" and turn the UV on. Wait until it finishes and immediately flip the UV off. In this example I did not flip it off, but moved the tool to (0,0) and then rapidly to (-50,50) before turning the laser off just to see what happened.

The result:

Looking from the side you can get an idea of the thickness. It is interesting to note what happened with the manual move of the UV beam (tail, bottom left). Apologies for lousy photography:

The result is table, can detach from the slide, and appears to be moderately flexible as per this animation. Do bear in mind that when I poke it with a needle it's the equivalent of poking a macro-sized object with an aircraft carrier:

 Obviously, this affects plans for making small tools and mechanisms...