I bet you already know it but... outcome of some tolerance test I made
So I'm newbie in 3D world, and my personality is such, that I love testing everything on my own. Yea, I could have (should have?) done some research, but why do research when you can do tests! (well, when costs are low at least 😉 ) So I made testing gauge similar to maker's muse design (he had great idea I must say) to test accuracy of my prusa i3 MK2S, however I was playing with it for quite a while now, and here's what I learned:
1. when it comes to tolerance with which you print you need to take into account - the smaller the angle the bigger tolerance is needed. With about 60 degrees I barely made 0.3mm move, while with 45 degrees I made 0.2 move without much of a problem
2. sharp edges also need much bigger tolerance, not only on the bottom! that was the most strange for me, maybe for for you all, but part without chamfering was hardly able to move at 45 degree angle even at 0.3mm tolerance, same goes for part with chamfering on bottom (to compensate for elephant foot), but not on top. Printer would "weld" together both pieces. Using 1x45 chamfering fixed it
I used PLA from prusa shop for those prints, and I will do more test with my printer. I did not used any additional settings in slicer. Layer height - 0.1mm. I have small flat, so my printer is in my sleeping room, therefore I did not wanted to make print last forever with 0.05mm layer, but if you have time and are interested in this kind of stuff, I'll send you .stl file, or .prt if you use solid works so you can tweak it (I have only last thing I tested which is model with chamfering and 45 degree angle). If you have some nice test data and more info about making prints with moving parts I'm interested in all of it, since I'm during my engineering studies, so I'd like to have info on how to design moving parts so they can work, post it here please, I'll try them on my own for sure 😉
Re: I bet you already know it but... outcome of some tolerance test I made
I did not used any additional settings in slicer.
How accurate you want to print is filament (type, even color), speed, extruder tension dependent.... not calibrating the filament flow rate and other factors won't help get the most accuracy. Also nozzle pressure will mess you up on corners. try playing with linear advance.
Mechanically you have a 0.05mm Z resolution and a 0.010mm X/Y resolution. Also nozzle is 0.4mm..... look up images of cross sections of prints to get a good idea of how the layers look under a microscope...