Support for really small parts

[micro]

Hi!
I’m very happy to have started testing and using Formware.
Came from Chitubox that really has a few miles still to go to make it work.

I print really small parts, just a few millimeters in x,y,z axis.
But I struggle with adding supports. The tend to be “enormous” of “incorrectly small”.
What supports parameters do I use for really small parts?

Maybe anyone can’t assist in this issue, but I’ll will give it a try…

An example is attached.

Ahh, couldn’t upload since I’m a new user…
Think of a part weighing in at 4x4x3mm.

[Trygve]

Which printer do you use?
Also, I would use the autorotate function to position it so that it needs the least amount of supports.

[micro]

I’m using Phrozen Shuffle 4K.

Yes, recently discovered auto-rotate. Great function.
Still struggle with type of support, dimensions of each support part, and distance between each support.
What I do know is I need the smallest top without jeopardize print success.

[Trillium]

Having pushed the limits of an Anycubic Photon, you’re looking at tolerances of about half a millimeter anyway. I reckon a Phrozen 4k might be a little tighter? But stochastically speaking anything under half a millimeter is Schroedinger’s Support: you don’t know if it’s there or not until you print it.

[formware]

Hi Micro,

Might make sense maybe to also view the photo’s we took in this post:

True 3D Antialiasing

One last update before the weekend. Today we’ve done some extra tests a noise filter like in the youtube link above. On the contrary to what Autodesk finds with a DLP chipset we find no effect yet in our low cost LCD printer. First a microscope image of the Creality’s LCD screen when turned on: [IMG_3421] Most probably this is not a Mono screen, but a regular RGB screen with a certain blue filter. Only blue pixels are used. It’s clear there is a large distance between each pixel. Then the…

Shows you sort of what happens in these ‘LCD’ screens. There is much light dispersion around the screen/glas plate which makes that the minimum feature size one can actually print is around 6x6 pixels (0.3mm x 0.3mm). Smaller is possible as you see in the photo’s, but it’s questionable if it consistently shows up as a feature.

Might be that as the Shuffle 4k uses a mono screen that this is smaller. Perhaps 2x3 pixels.
It’s something still on our list to test and put under the microscope as well.

A feature we’re contemplating at the moment would be to split the supports and parts in 2 seperate slices. This would allow you to double expose any support parts. This was somethign already done with the original B9 creator back in 2014 when i’m not mistaken. For those who know this machine

But the hard part is it requires control over the software running the printer; to be more precise GCode control. This is as far as I know only fully possible with the earlier Phrozen machines. Not with the later machines that run on chituboards.

Elco