Does anyone have any experience regarding the minimum resolution I can print with? Any help or ideas shared are highly appreciated 🙂
According to the UM3 manual, the layer resolution is:
Thus, I expected the minimum printing resolution to be x: 0.25mm; y: 0.25mm; z: 0.06mm However I'm not getting good results for my fine structures.
I then had a look at the Ultimaker 3 feeder:
Moons 17HD6482_01N stepper motor (200 steps/round)
powering a 11-tooth gear
Transmission to a 36-tooth gear
powering 10mm diameter feeder wheel
These characteristics lead to a minimum filament feed lenght of: 1/200*11/36*10mm*3.1416 = 0.048mm / step
For the 2.85mm diameter filament, I thus assume a minimum extrusion volume of 0.048mm*(2.85mm/2)^2*3.1416 = 0.306mm³ per feeder step.
For a line printed with the 250 Mikron nozzle and 60 Mikron layer height I get a single line minimun printing lenght of 0.306/0.250mm/0.06mm = 20.4mm per feeder step
This value seems quite high I think. Am I really limited to print such long lines when it comes to a small printing layer hight? Is there maybe an errror in my calculations and assumptions?
Does anyone have any experience what happens when the amount of required material for a structure is below the minimun volume to be extruded by one feeder step? (e.g. printing a single line, 5mm long, 60 Mikrons layer height, 0.25mm nozzle)
I have the impression that in this case, the feeder stays still and the print core moves along the printing path, but doesn't extrude/print significant amount of matrial. However, I couldn't confirm my suspicion so far. Probalby I need to check my printed structures under a better microscope to measure width and hight of my line/layer.