Small part with letter engraving
Hello all,
I am having quite a good time with successfull printing from my own autoCAD designs. However, I think I may have arrived at the limits of precision the printer can provide. For the time being I am using PETG filament and attempting to print a 30 mm x 16 mm rocker switch cover. Each angled plane of the switch cover has lettering on it, 3 mm size simple font and 1 mm deep "PUSH ON" one word over the other and the other plane "BOOST PUMP" one word over the other as well.
The part itself does require supports and so does the letterring as the best way to print is to have sit on its side. The result so far with 0,05 mm accuracy is acceptable as far as the part itself but the letters are not acceptable if not unreadable.
I am now trying with a slow print selection but from I see, I may not obtain good result for the lettering once again.
Any toughts that I could attempt, rather than running around in circle due to my new experience here? A different filament type comes to mind.
Best regards
Marc
Whilst you can play around with orientation to increase resolution your baseline is the extrusion width of your nozzle. With a default 0.4mm nozzle it's 0.45mm.
For ordinary text taking no special measures the smallest for decent reproduction is around 1cm high, about 28 point text.
Traditional printers (people, not machines) talk in 'lines per inch', the number of adjacent black/white lines the machine can fit in one inch - cheaper magazines are printed at around 150 lpi. If you divide one inch by 0.45mm extrusion width you get 56 positions allowing 28 lpi - meaning the smallest readable text must be roughly 6 times larger.
OK, with care it's possible to go smaller and, as you note, one dimension can have increased resolution by printing on a veritcal surface, the other remains the same. For the best result in this orientation it is worthwhile looking at founts designed for in-transit reading - airline magazines have founts optimised for vertical vibration, rail magazines for horizontal shaking.
Having written that, your roughly 8 point text is never going to work with 0.4mm nozzles. You had better try to think of suitable simple symbols or merely accept adding sticky labels post printing.
Cheerio,